Trans(actions) : Trans(acciones)

A recent post in the “All About Finance” World Bank Blog by David McKenzie makes the following assertion: while microfinance, conditional cash transfers, and deworming—yes, deworming—may be some of the most popular development interventions, they do not measure up to the positive impacts on income that accrue from seasonal migration programs. A recent evaluation—produced by McKenzie and John Gibson—of New Zealand’s seasonal labor program, known as the RSE, yields some impressive results:

In addition to estimating per-capita income gains of 30-40%, we find that participating in the RSE leads to greater subjective well-being, more durable asset purchases, housing improvements, and in Tonga, a large increase in secondary schooling. Moreover, as a recent evaluation by New Zealand’s labor department found, these gains came with minimal displacement of native workers, and overstay rates of less than 1%.

There are several caveats that policymakers and development workers need to consider before they start shipping people off—or receiving them. Nevertheless, the authors contend that well-desinged seasonal worker programs can become important development strategies for small island economies. This is not a new argument, and there is sufficient historical evidence that many guest worker programs were not entirely beneficial—or favorable at all —for migrating laborers (the Bracero Program and Puerto Rico’s Operation Bootstrap come to mind). But before throwing away the baby with the bathwater, we should take a closer look at New Zealand’s contemporary experience.

Of course, development is not just about raising incomes and asset purchases; this narrow definition fails to capture many of the political and sociological dimensions of the migration-development story. In other words, there’s even more work out there for those of us who examine the more “messy” side of development.

Click here to read the cited post.

Tags:   economic development · migration · seasonal workers · World BankNo Comments.

I know; I’ve been neglecting this space. September was a complicated month given our transition from a two-month Caribbean Summer to the start of a new semester in the cold spaces of New England. As I start a new phase of academic life, without the pressures of course-filled terms and qualifying exams, doctoral work seems much more interesting and stimulating. I’m supposed to be working on my dissertation proposal, so a lot of time is spent reading, searching and reflecting. Stumbling upon interesting reads is part of the process, so here’s one:

Mark Kurlansky is an excellent writer with a rare gift: he can weave great stories that contain important facts and interesting characters. The proof is in his work. He’s produced texts titled: Cod, Salt and 1968. Talent is definitively needed to write an engaging, non-fiction text that focuses on a fish or a condiment. “The Eastern Stars” tells the social history of a town, San Pedro de Macorís, that has produced some of the greatest Dominican baseball players in the Majors: Pedro Guerrero, Sammy Sosa, Robinson Canó and George Bell, to name a few. I’m looking forward to reading it. In case you’re interested, here’s a brief review published by the folks at NPR.

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Image Borrowed from La Prensa San Diego

Several weeks ago, in an article published in El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s principal daily newspaper, the Director of the University of Puerto Rico’s Graduate School of Planning argued that increased migration from Puerto Rico to the United States would transform the island into a “ghetto of old and poor people” [Spa].  Although I’ve grown accustomed to reading nonsensical comments in the local press, I felt the need to respond to the myopic assessment advanced by one of our local “experts” on social processes and policies. Today, El Nuevo Día’s Sunday business magazine published my riposte [Spa]. In the brief text, I talk about transnational migration processes and the links between diasporas and development. I also explain that transnmigrants forge diverse linkages that impact the social, political and economic experiences of those who leave and those who stay behind. In sum, my commentary advances the idea that under certain circumstances, and with the right incentives, migrants can contribute to development processes in home and host communities.

If you scroll down a bit, you can read the Spanish text. I hope the debate picks up steam.

:

Aquí les incluyo la columna que salió publicada hoy en la revista Negocios de El Nuevo Día. Como se darán cuenta, le respondo al Director de la Escuela Graduada de Planificación de la UPR, quien hace unas semanas argumentó que la creciente salida de jóvenes hacia el Norte convertirá a Puerto Rico en un “gueto de viejos y pobres”. Déjenme saber qué les parece.

[Nota aclaratoria: el texto a continuación es la versión íntegra de la columna que sometí al diario. Allá sufrió un cambio de título y una modificación minúscula en el texto. La versión publicada lleva como título: Gracias a la guagua aérea.]

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Migración y desarrollo

Varios expertos en asuntos poblacionales y sociales nos explican que el número de personas jóvenes que empacan sus maletas y arrancan para el Norte va en aumento. Según sus análisis, el resultado neto es preocupante:  la isla se está vaciando a la vez que se convierte en un gran “gueto de viejos y pobres”.  Admito que el comentario del gueto me sorprendió, no por su profundidad, sino por la falta de erudición. De acuerdo con ese postulado, la migración es sinónimo de ruptura y desconexión. El que se va no contribuye a su comunidad originaria, abandona el terruño y deja a los que se quedan desprovistos de herramientas para echar hacia delante. Nada más lejos de la realidad.

Hace tiempo que los debates sobre la migración se han nutrido de los postulados de autores que examinan el fenómeno desde una perspectiva transnacional. Aunque existen diversas venas teóricas, los adeptos del enfoque transnacional coinciden en que los procesos migratorios promueven la creación de múltiples redes que trascienden las fronteras nacionales. Es decir, los que se van —y en ocasiones su prole— crean lazos fuertes con sus comunidades de origen mientras se adaptan y establecen en sus nuevos destinos. Gracias a numerosos avances tecnológicos, las distancias se acortan y familias e individuos pueden mantenerse conectados y participando del quehacer social, político y económico de varios lugares. Así las cosas, las vidas de los que salen y los que se quedan son marcadas por la migración.

El comentario del gueto se torna aún más absurdo cuando tomamos en cuenta que la migración transnacional también genera oportunidades para el desarrollo.  La lista de países caribeños y latinoamericanos que cuentan con remesas monetarias como una de las fuentes principales de divisas es bastante larga. Por más difícil que sea la vida fuera de su país natal, la mayoría de los migrantes que buscan salir de la pobreza envían dinero a los parientes y amigos que se quedaron. También construyen casas, montan negocios y financian carreras educativas, entre otras cosas. En algunas comunidades de la República Dominicana que he estudiado, los acueductos, carreteras y el servicio de bomberos —por sólo mencionar algunos proyectos— son desarrollados por asociaciones transnacionales que se nutren de remesas colectivas donadas por migrantes y los esfuerzos de organizaciones locales.

A pesar de que los migrantes puertorriqueños ya no remesan como antes —gracias, en parte, a la existencia de diversos programas de beneficencia pública— son muchos los que se montan con frecuencia en la guagua aérea y contribuyen al panorama del desarrollo mediante la consolidación de redes comerciales, realizando inversiones y fomentando la circulación de remesas sociales: flujos de ideas, prácticas, normas e identidades.

Está por verse si el tétrico panorama socioeconómico que enfrenta la isla transformará el rol del migrante puertorriqueño contemporáneo. Por un lado, los despidos masivos y la menguante actividad económica pueden incentivar la reactivación de las redes de remesas financieras. Por otro, si la esfera gubernamental le prestase atención a la relación entre la migración y el desarrollo, se podrían generar proyectos interesantes de colaboración transnacional que entrelacen las ideas y aspiraciones de los de aquí y los de allá.

Las experiencias de países vecinos nos deben servir de guías. En la Hermana República y Haití, por ejemplo,  los efectos de la migración están detrás de la transformación de poblados, vecindarios y ciudades. Abundan los viejos y pobres, pero también las ganas de querer echar hacia delante, la fe en la autogestión y el trabajo colectivo, y los deseos de que las cosas cambien para bien.

Tags:   desarrollo económico · migración · planificació · Puerto Rico · República Dominicana2 Comments

I’m keeping an eye out for these two new films: The Radiant Child and Downtown Calling. Asides from their primary subject matter—J.M. Basquiat and the music and art culture of NYC, respectively— they offer some clues to a pressing question: in what ways do cities/places inspire creativity? The primary stage is New York City in the mid-70s and 80s, an era marked by urban fiscal crises, rising crime and other woes. Amidst all the apparent chaos, great sounds, images and ideas flourished. How did it happen? I guess some answers are contained in these works. Hopefully, these documentaries will also add more pieces to the the academic puzzles and themes that keep me busy: social organization, migration, poverty and the city. The Radiant Child will be playing in Boston-Cambridge on September 17. I’m not sure if Downtown Calling will be making it to my adoptive city any time soon, but I’ll be waiting.

Check out this Q&A with Director Tamra Davis on the Basquiat flick, and Downtown Calling’s facebook page.

Tags:   creativity · documentaries · New York City · urban sociologyNo Comments.

image by standardpixel: borrowed from creative commons

Several weeks ago, while visiting some of my friends in Jamaica Plain, I saw a Census worker sitting in a small restaurant. He had a pile of forms besides him and looked tired. I tried to imagine what his day was like but came up empty since it’s hard to picture all the different people he visits and all the answers he gets while on duty. Yesterday, while walking through the narrow streets of Old San Juan, I saw the wall adjacent to a building entrance filled with big sticky notes that read: Census Bureau. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the federal workers had been knocking at that old door for weeks in an attempt to get an accurate headcount. Compared to the Jamaica Plain enumerators, the San Juan crew has a lot of terrain to cover. According to the Census Take 10 Map, mail-in participation rates for households in some JP areas stood at 76%. In San Juan, half of all households did not mail their Census forms.

For folks like me, who study cities, policies and plans, the Census is a very big deal. I won’t bore you with the details, so let’s just say that it provides a wealth of information that we can sort, analyze and deconstruct to come up with interesting arguments and perhaps some theories. Thus, I see the Census worker as a friend, someone who makes my academic life much easier.

The SNL folks came up with a sketch that helps with figuring out what my pals face when they’re out there collecting data (see the video below—it’s classic SNL, both humorous and somewhat offensive). I’d love to hear some stories from folks who’ve been in the Census front lines. I’m sure there’s always some humor—and some pain—to relive.

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By Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College and Harvard University
Deepak Lamba-Nieves, MIT and Center for the New Economy

May 1, 2010

Migrants sent $338 billion to their homelands in 2008, according to the World Bank. Origin-country governments and aid agencies alike readily acknowledge this is no small chunk of change. In the last decade, they have adopted a wide range of policies designed to purposefully tap into the economic power and promise of remittances.

Whether we see remittances as a development panacea or as a way for states to shift responsibility for solving structural problems to migrants, economics is not the whole story.

Migrants from the developing world bring with them social remittances — defined as ideas, know-how, practices, and skills — that shape their encounters with and integration into their host societies. They also send back social remittances that promote and impede development in their countries of origin. Social remittances are often referenced in the literature but not well understood.

[...]

Read the full article

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image by UNDP : borrowed from creative commons

By now, many people have begun to forget about the situation in Haiti. As an urban planning student from the Caribbean, I’m constantly thinking about what the future holds, especially now that immediate relief projects are slowly moving towards reconceptualizing and rebuilding efforts. But my mind is severely overloaded these days as I get set to take my doctoral exams in urban sociology, transnationalism and development.

In order to soothe my tiring mind, I often surf the blogosphere in search of short, interesting articles that can help me keep up with what’s happening outside my window and contextualize many of the theories that come my way. This morning I found an interesting report from NPR’s Planet Money on how small enterprises have been flourishing in the tent cities of Port-au-Prince. It’s quite brief, so I urge you to take five minutes and watch it.

Thinkers like Weber, Durkheim, Park, Castells and others have provided fundamental texts on how cities develop and what types of social relations are forged. Some of their ideas serve as starting points for explaining how Haitians are moving forward. Nevertheless, urban resilience needs new theories. There are some smart people already working on this issue, but I think development and urban scholars might find important lessons in situations where state presence is minimal, the physical environment has been reduced to rubble and the informal-formal duality is almost nonexistent.

Here’s a link to the report:

The Pedicure Economy in a Haitian Tent City

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Image by Salim Virji: Borrowed from Creative Commons

I recently finished reading an engaging text for a seminar on transnational migration. As part of the course requirements, we were asked to draft a detailed review. Here’s what I came up with.

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Dominican-Americans and the Politics of Empowerment

By: Ana Aparicio

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. 210 pp.

Reviewed by: Deepak Lamba-Nieves, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

On September 1, 1992, journalist David González published an article in the New York Times titled: “Dominican Immigration Alters Hispanic New York”. In the piece, González provides an account of how the Dominican population in New York City was quickly growing and how they were making inroads into its highly contested political sphere. More than just an informative note, the news story provided insights into the tensions that were brewing between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, as the former group sought to defend its electoral turf and reputation as an ethnic group that made important claims for minorities throughout the city. Although González did a good job of weaving together different voices and points of view in the text—which provide a sense that the competition is not as fierce as some sources claimed—by the end, one gets the feeling that the road to political advancement for Dominicans in New York City was fraught with hurdles and disputes with fellow Hispanics.

Interestingly, Ana Aparicio’s book, Dominican-Americans and the Politics of Empowerment—published fourteen years after González’ report—tells a different story of how Dominicans living in the Washington Heights neighborhood participated in the local political arena, from the 1980s until the early years of the twenty-first Century, and transformed the institutional and community landscape of “‘the Dominican Mecca’ in the United States” (3). Her main argument centers on the idea that Dominican-American organizers were able to advance politically, not by relying on a neatly defined and bounded ethnic identity as a source of power, but through a series of local alliances with “native-born minorities” which included Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans. What distinguishes her approach from previous studies on Dominican political activity in the United States, is a focus on second generation activists who were able to formulate a powerful political discourse that hinged on a flexible and strategic redefinition of being Dominican in the United States. Thus, her work attempts to bridge the literatures that focus on the political involvement of first and second generations migrants, and expand discussions on race, ethnicity and identity pertaining to minority populations in the United States.

[Read more →]

Tags:   Dominican Republic · politics · transnational lives · Washington Heights1 Comment

The interview was originally published by the MIT News Office

Photo: United Nations Development Programme

3 Questions: Lawrence Vale on rebuilding Haiti
An MIT urban design expert explains why devastated cities are nearly always rebuilt — but why Haiti faces special challenges to reconstruction.

Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
January 20, 2010

The human and economic toll of this month’s earthquake in Haiti has yet to be fully measured, but it is clear that the country faces an enormous rebuilding task. Lawrence Vale, MIT’s Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, is an expert on the reconstruction of cities devastated by natural disasters or warfare; a 2005 book he co-edited on the subject, The Resilient City, explores how and why modern societies choose to rebuild ruined metropolises. MIT News asked Vale about Haiti’s long-term prospects for renewal.

Q. In The Resilient City, you write that throughout history, devastated cities have almost always “risen again like the mythic phoenix” and “are among humankind’s most durable artifacts.” What are the crucial first steps that could allow Haiti, and the Port-au-Prince area, to rebuild?

A. Before 1800, it was more common for cities to be destroyed and abandoned, leaving the world with “lost cities” later to be recovered only as touristic ruins. In the last 200 years or so, however, it has been rare for governments to let their cities die, even after massive annihilation from war — think of Hiroshima or Warsaw in WW II. Similarly, cities tend to be rebuilt in the same location even after massive natural disasters — half a million people may well have died in Tangshan, China from an earthquake in 1976, yet that city regained its population numbers within a decade. More generally, the combination of nation-states, insurance industries and global philanthropy have all made “caring-at-a-distance” much more prevalent. Cities are no longer left on their own.

That said, the thing we loosely term “rebuilding” is at least a three-part challenge.  There is physical rebuilding, both in terms of the necessities of daily life such as basic shelter and in terms of more symbolic structures — civic institutions such as a destroyed cathedral or palace. Then there is socio-economic rebuilding, an especially difficult challenge in a place like Haiti where poverty was so broad and deep even before this particular disaster struck. Finally, there is the challenge of emotional rebuilding, the need to cope with great personal losses. Each of these entails a form of resilience.

For Haitians, resilience may well be substantially undergirded by faith, and the restoration of the Cathedral and other houses of worship will surely be regarded as key symbolic milestones signaling recovery. The leaders of most societies have also chosen to use disasters as opportunities to “build back better,” and I hope that it will become possible to enforce safer building practices in Haiti.

[Read more →]

Tags:   earthquake · Haiti · MIT · rebuildingNo Comments.

cuarteles de la ONU en Puerto Príncipe : prestada por creative commons

Aquí les dejo dos notas periodísticas sobre la lo que acontece en Puerto Príncipe y en Pétion Ville luego del terremoto masivo del 12 de enero. Comparto éstas y no otras porque están bien escritas, capturan detalles importantes de cómo se sobrevive y tienen garra. La muestra también resalta los contrastes constantes del país: aquellos que polulan las calles con las barrigas vacías y los que miran desde las colinas el desastre capitaleño. Ambos artículos se publicaron en El País.

Haití ya no existe

La última imagen del presidente René Preval es la de un hombre que balbuceaba ante las cámaras, sin corbata y con los pantalones sucios, que había tenido que abrirse paso entre cadáveres, eso dijo, y que esa noche, la primera tras el terremoto, no sabía dónde iba a dormir. Pero ya han pasado cuatro días con sus noches y nadie sabe a ciencia cierta dónde está Preval ni quién manda en Haití. Tal vez no se sabe porque ya no manda a nadie. O porque, como dice Bernard, un funcionario haitiano que acompañó al reportero en su recorrido por Puerto Príncipe, “el país ha desaparecido, Haití ya no existe”.

Los ricos salen casi indemnes

-¿Qué está haciendo la clase alta de Haití por sus compatriotas afectados?

-Muchas cosas. ¿Usted sabe cuántos funerales de mis empleados he pagado yo? Eso es una ayuda, pero no se ve.

-¿Cuántos funerales ha pagado?

-Ni lo sé. Tengo 70 empleados, pero ahora mismo ni lo sé. Ya me lo dirá mi contable cuando pase esto. Primero hay que hacer la tortilla y después contar los huevos. Hacemos lo que podemos, aunque también estamos afectados. Mi sobrino ha perdido tres de sus almacenes. Y mi cuñado, que es el dueño de la Pepsi-Cola en Haití, está regalando los refrescos. Le he pedido para el hotel y me ha dicho: “Si te doy algo lo vas a vender y todo lo que tengo ahora mismo es para regalar”.

Tags:   desarrollo económico · Haiti · terremotoNo Comments.