Reaching out, inviting in: Pakistan’s approach to diaspora engagement

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the multi-dimensional approach through which the Pakistani state envisages, cultivates and practices state–diaspora relations. It examines the bureaucratic initiatives and official narratives to understand how the state extends its reach across its borders to bring the overseas population into its domain to fulfil the national agendas. The paper further argues that the state-diaspora relations in Pakistan are being developed through two main shifts: a) the way the state moulds its own identity in relation to the diaspora, and b) the way the state attempts to shape or create a diasporic identity for the overseas population. The paper adopts the analytical lens of why, who and how, to describe the motivations behind diaspora engagement, the discrepancies created between different diaspora groups and modes of engagement with these groups. From a neoliberal governmentality optic, these processes explain how the Pakistani state involves the diaspora members as partners in development, politics and governance and also treats them as subjects of governance and surveillance through identification and categorisation. It concludes that the Pakistani state’s enhanced interest in diaspora engagement is to articulate nationhood in a transnational setting to reconfigure state hegemony in a globalised context.

KEYWORDS:

• Diaspora groups
• emigration
• state-diaspora relations
• remittances
• overseas Pakistanis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Emigration from this region has historic roots in precolonial times, however, this paper is concerned with the emigration trends following the creation of Pakistan as an independent state.

2. Archived website of Ministry of Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Division n.d.

3. Archived website of Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis n.d. and MOPHRD (Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development) (n.d.)

4. MOPHRD (Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development) (n.d.)

5. An informal money transfer mechanism through a network of brokers.

6. National ID Card for Overseas Pakistanis

7. Information taken from websites of embassies, high commissions and consular of Pakistan in various countries.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayesha A. Qaisrani

Ayesha A. Qaisrani is affiliated with Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan