Decentring migration governance: the complexity in capturing migrants’ voice in local governance in Nepal

ABSTRACT

Migration studies have focused on the role of global, regional, and national actors in shaping transnational labour migration policies. However, how migrants and their families find avenues to engage in and shape migration governance in their home countries remain poorly understood. Drawing on the empirical evidence generated from a mixed-method approach involving in-depth interviews and surveys with key migration stakeholders in Nepal, this article examines various roles of international migration workers – prospective, current, and returnee – in shaping local public policies on migration governance. Findings reveal that Nepali migrant workers overseas have very tiny space in Nepal’ local governance to help (re)shape foreign employment policies. The article contributes to expanding the emerging scholarship on local migration governance in the context of labour origin countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration governance
• participation
• migrants
• Nepal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Annual handbooks are the local public policy and budgetary statements of local governments, which must be approved by the Local Council on annual basis. The process of making annual handbook is legally required to be participative. Any spending outside of the annual handbook is considered illegal. For more details, please see Bhusal and Pandeya (2021).

2 On this aspect of local governments’ participatory platforms available to concerned relevant actors, Bhusal (2023) has shown interesting findings. The paper shows that rural municipalities in Nepal are better off in articulating the views of stakeholders through informal settings while urban municipalities engage with communities mostly through formal mechanisms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thaneshwar Bhusal

Thaneshwar Bhusal is an honorary professional associate of the University of Canberra. His research interests include participatory governance, federalism, and public sector reforms in developing countries. He tweets from @tsbhusal

Ramesh Sunam

Ramesh Sunam is an adjunct researcher at Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS), Waseda University. He has extensively published on pressing issues around international migration, poverty, agrarian change, and climate vulnerability. He currently leads a research project on youth, agriculture and migration in Japan, Indonesia and Nepal, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Email: [email protected]