Developing a segregated homeland: How internal displacement in a remittance-receiving region affects transnational migrants’ development practices

Abstract

This article contributes to research on migration and development, in particular to the studies that seek to move beyond ahistorical approaches and those that seek to explore the long-term consequences of internal displacement. Existing studies of migration and development have arrived at numerous insights into how transnational migrants act as agents of development in remittance-receiving regions. They have less often asked the related question; namely, how migrants’ ability to enact such roles is constrained or enabled by internal migration within these regions. This article demonstrates that processes of internal displacement and residential segregation within a remittance-receiving region influence where transnational migrants can direct their resources. It investigates how the development activities of transnational migrants (including household remittances, real estate investments, and philanthropic donations) are emplaced, and how emplacements and their meanings change over time. The analysis is based on multi-sited ethnographic research in a remittance-receiving region of India, a country that has been described as the largest recipient of remittances in the world, and with overseas Indians in the UK and the USA. While the overseas members of regionally powerful Hindu groups are relatively well-positioned to cultivate a role as agents of development in their villages of origin in Gujarat, the overseas Gujarati Muslims whose relatives left or lost power in their villages have been challenged to redirect their development activities to another location in the region. Drawing recent theorizations of home in relation with critical discussions of migration and development, the article views migrants’ development activities as homemaking; as emplaced efforts to cultivate relatedness and belonging.