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Hometown Associations and Transnational Community Development

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Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

This chapter examines how Dominican migrants and their counterparts back home are able to engage in impactful community development projects across borders through their participation in hometown associations (HTAs). Employing a transnational perspective, the analysis moves away from conventional approaches in the migration and development literature that center on migrant remittances and their economic impacts, and pays closer attention to the political and social dimensions of what transnational community organizations do and how they do it. The ethnographic evidence presented advances a more nuanced understanding of transnational community development by revealing the complexities of how members in both home and migrant communities define HTA projects, and are ultimately able to accomplish them. By carefully examining cross border ventures, the chapter reveals how HTAs generate new opportunities to experiment, learn, and deliberate who gets to decide what development means and how it should be carried out in localities impacted by migration.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Numerous academic inquiries have also raised important critiques that have led to calls for a more precise nomenclature, and to the advent of new concepts such as “translocalism”, “binational”, and “transstate” (Waldinger and Fitzgerald 2004; Barkan 2006, cited in Levitt and Nadya Jaworsky 2007). Others have disputed the seemingly ubiquitous nature of transnational practices, arguing that a rather small percentage of the migrant population engages in sustained transnational practices (Guarnizo et al. 2003; Portes et al. 2002). Several scholars have also argued that cross border connections between migrants and their homelands are not a new phenomenon, but a common practice amongst earlier waves that has been dutifully documented (Foner 1997; Morawska 2004).

  2. 2.

    The Mexico-United States corridor is the largest migration passage in the world (WB 2016).

  3. 3.

    Unless otherwise specified, all the interviews were conducted in Spanish. All of the translations from Spanish are mine.

  4. 4.

    Dominican 5-D clubs were modeled after the American 4-H experience and were oriented towards individual advancement and the reproduction of the values and ideas sanctioned by the regime in power (Pérez and Artiles 1992).

  5. 5.

    In order to protect the identities of the interviewees and other study participants, I have used pseudonyms. This does not apply to individuals who held public office at the time of the interviews.

  6. 6.

    Coproduction refers to “a process through which inputs from individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organization are transformed into goods and services” (Ostrom 1996: 1073). The primary logic behind coproduction is that citizens and state actors have different but complementary ideas and know-how that can be appropriately brought together to generate improved opportunities for providing important public goods and services. In addition, by working together towards mutually beneficial goals, coproduction arrangements can also help generate social capital between citizens and with public agencies that can be drawn upon for future endeavors. Duquette-Rury’s recent work (2016) on Mexican HTAs and the 3-for-1 program employs a “coproduction” framework to analyze migrant involvement in hometown development efforts.

  7. 7.

    See the Cuernavaca Declaration of 2005—a statement that emerged from a workshop titled “Problems and Challenges of Migration and Development in the Americas” and was subscribed by a notable group of scholars and practitioners (http://rimd.reduaz.mx/documentos/declaration_of_cuernavaca.pdf).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for a New Economy, PO Box 9024240, San Juan, PR, 00901, Puerto Rico

    Deepak Lamba-Nieves

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  1. Deepak Lamba-Nieves
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Correspondence to Deepak Lamba-Nieves .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Ram A. Cnaan

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

    Carl Milofsky

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Lamba-Nieves, D. (2018). Hometown Associations and Transnational Community Development. In: Cnaan, R., Milofsky, C. (eds) Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations in the 21st Century . Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77416-9_22

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