Local democratic governance and transnational migrant participation -- Decentralization, democratization, and the feedback effects of sending state outreach -- Micro-politics of substitutive and synergetic partnerships -- Effects of violence and economic crisis on hybrid transnational partnerships -- Synergy and corporatism in El Mirador and Atitlan, Comarga -- Systematic effects of transnational partnerships on local governance -- Conclusion : the paradox of cross-border politics
Exit and Voice is a compelling account of how Mexican migrants with strong ties to their home communities impact the economic and political welfare of those they leave behind. In many decentralized democracies like Mexico, migrants step in to supply public goods when local or state government cannot. Though migrants' cross-border investments often improve citizens' access to these goods and create a more responsive local government, their work allows them to unintentionally exert political engagement and power, undermining the influence of those still living in their hometowns. Exit and Voice sheds light on how migrant transnational engagement refashions the meaning of community, democratic governance, and practices of citizenship in the era of globalization. "An extraordinary analysis of what it means to be a migrant. Duquette-Rury gives us a text that goes well beyond the familiar, and situates the migrant in a complex set of vectors, both local and transnational, opening up the meaning of migration itself." SASKIA SASSEN, author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy "How do people who move to another country sometimes become more influential in the place they left? Exit and Voice combines surveys and lively details from original fieldwork to explore this paradox and identify the fragile pillars sustaining efforts to live in two worlds." DAVID FITZGERALD, author of Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers "Despite distance and difficulties, migrants around the world reach down into their pockets to help out the communities they left behind. Hoping that migration can spur development and possibly even democracy, scholars and policy makers find the effort laudable. But as Duquette-Rury demonstrates in this brilliant, beautifully written book, engaging from abroad is a challenging enterprise. A book to be savored by scholars and students alike." ROGER WALDINGER, Distinguished Professor and Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration LAUREN DUQUETTE-RURY is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University.
Contemporary debates on the relationship between migration and development focus extensively on how migrant remittances affect the economies of sending countries. Yet remittances also produce dynamic political consequences in migrants' origin communities, but receive less attention in scholarly accounts. Emigration and income earned abroad create political opportunities for migrant groups to participate in the provision of public services with the sending state in their hometowns. This article examines the conditions under which the transnational coproduction of public goods between organized migrants and public agencies at origin shapes democratic governance by focusing on the organizational variation in partnerships across time and space. First, the paper argues that local citizen inclusion and government engagement interact to determine four different types of coproduction: corporatist, fragmented, substitutive and synergetic. Second, using four comparative case studies based on fieldwork in three Mexican states, the paper traces central mechanisms to organizational form of coproduction and describes how emergent variation affects democratic governance and state-society relations. The article shows the ways in which transnational forces, when collaborating with local social and political institutions, can profoundly impact democratic development.
Migrant hometown associations (HTAs) are mobilizing collective remittances to improve social welfare in their countries of origin. This paper assesses the effect of transnational coproduction of public goods in migrants' places of origin by studying the 3x1 Program for Migrants. The 3x1 Program is a national social spending program in which the Mexican local, state and federal government matches HTAs' collective remittances to improve public services through cross-border public-private partnerships. The statistical analysis across municipalities that do and do not participate in the 3x1 Program shows that coproduction improves citizens' access to public sanitation, drainage and water, although not electricity. Moreover, a negative and statistically significant interaction term between 3x1 Program expenditures and family remittances reveals a substitution effect: in the presence of transnational coproduction, migrant households are less likely to improve public goods using family remittance resources, but in the absence of 3x1 Program participation they continue to improve their hometowns with family remittances. This research offers a theoretical mechanism and supporting empirical evidence of an important kind of intermediary institution improving social welfare in migrant places of origin.
Social spending by central governments in Latin America has, in recent decades, become increasingly insulated from political manipulation. Focusing on the 3x1 Program in Mexico in 2002-2007, we show that social spending by local government is, in contrast, highly politicized. The 3x1 Program funds municipal public works, with each level of government – municipal, state, and central – matching collective remittances. Our analysis shows that 3x1 municipal spending is shaped by political criteria. First, municipalities time disbursements according to the electoral cycle. Second, when matching collective remittances, municipalities protect personnel salaries, instead adjusting budget items that are less visible to the public such as debt. Third, municipalities spend more on 3x1 projects when their partisanship matches that of the state government. Beyond the 3x1 Program, our findings highlight the considerable influence that increasing political and economic decentralization can have on local government incentives and spending choices, in Mexico and beyond.
