Nijmegen Conference
Diaspora Organisations and Science
Two Worlds, One Mission – A Dialogue on Migration and Conflict
The second International INFOCON conference was held on 22 & 23 april 2010 in Nijmegen.
Download the conference program.
Photos of the conference can be found here.
Conference summary
Welcome
Stephan Kampelmann (Coordinator INFOCON)
See the presentation.
Keynote speech
Prof. Ruerd Ruben (Director CIDIN), with input from Peter Hansen (Danish Institute for International Studies).
Prof. Ruben introduced the main themes of the conference and gave an overview of the characteristics and activities of diaspora communities in general.
See the presentation.
Transnational Communities in their Host Societies: Political Mobilization and Conflict Resolution
Nathalie Perrin (CEDEM)
During this session the findings of Work Package 5 of the INFOCON project were presented and discussed with the audience. In this Work Package, the team from the Université de Liège dealt with research questions focusing on the communities in the countries of settlement: the role of migrants and migrant organisations in the transportation, perpetuation or mitigation of conflicts; the importance of integration policies for the transportation of conflicts; the relationship between migrant organisations and the political authorities in the host cities; the role of the host city’s civil society organisations.
The audience pointed out that many phenomena that might be associated conflicts in countries of origin are actually about issues and processes linked to the situation of the communities in the host cities. In these cases, the ’’core conflict’’ (e.g. the conflict between Turkish and Kurdish interests in the countries of origin) might only be a label or a pretext for other, more or less unrelated problems. This issue should be dealt with in more detail in the report.
Another point that was made by the audience is to pay more attention to causal chains and linkage between the many descriptive elements that the Work Package presents. One way to provide an analysis linking different descriptive elements is by focusing on specific events in which they are all visible at the same time (demonstrations, special occasions etc). In addition, the conflict dimension of the Kosovo conflict was evaluated differently by some members of the audience.According to this view, almost no cases of conflict transportation linked to the Kosovo case exist, notably because the conflict was one between states and not directly between populations.
The audience recommended to analyse in more depth the many hidden mechanisms that influence the activities of migrants and their organisations (e.g. the persistance of mistrust inside the communities or of post-conflict traumata are often ‘hidden’ and lead to migrants to work against the disclore of information). Even the individuals themeselves might not be aware of their own level of trust towards others since members of diaporas might be self-contradictory, changing the level of trust over time etc. Trust should not be seen as a characteristic of a person, but as a relationship.
Also, more personal characterists of individual leaders should be taken into account. The working methods of organisations should also be analysed more closely to reveal the mechanisms of conflict perpetuation (how are organisations managed? Is their structure democratic or based on single individuals?).
Other suggestions concern the legal status of migrants that should be taken into account in the analysis of conflict transportation. The situation of political refugees, economic migrants, established diaspora communities etc has repercussions on the legal status and conflict-related issues that the terminology used in the Work Package should reflect.
In addition, the perpetuation of conflict and the linkages between migrant communities and countries of origin can have different explanations. Why are these linkages still so strong? Is is because of identity and belonging? Or are they fuelled by economic interests and power issues?
See the presentation.
Transnational Communities and Conflict Policies
Hugh Miall (Kent University)
This Work Package looks at the evidence for the involvement of the transnational communities in either mitigating or fuelling violent conflicts. For both cases numerous examples have been documented in the literature. It appears that diaspora communities can assume both roles and different stages of the conflict and at different moments of the migration process: it is better to think of transnational communities as extension of societies in which both peace-making and conflict take place.
The INFOCON research revealed that most of the civil society organisations perceived their influnce on the conflict in the countries of origin to be nil, very limited or rather indirect. This being said, the diaspora organisations in the Dutch Randstad appeared to be somewhat more active than in Brussels, London and Berlin. Similarly, many migrant organisations report that they make few efforts to influecne the conflict in the respective homelands. By contrast, there is more evidence for lobbying of international actors (media organisations, politicians and governments in the host countries). On the whole, only a small minority of transnational communities is involved in activities directed at the home countries. Commenting on this evidence, the authors express the view that the lobbying of host country governments can be a useful way to overcome instances of radical disagreement: these lobbying activities can make it one step less likely to engage in violent conflict. There is scope for CSO in conflict transformation, long-term impact
If the influence of diasporas is weak and their conflict-related activities sparse, why do we need more or new theories? What are we going to do with this result? Diaspora communities can be instrumentalised by host government for interventionism (e.g. Iraqi diaspora by US; Kurdish communities used by Iran in the 1960s). The influence of diasporas seem to be more important during violent conflict than during peace-building. Illegal activities might not show up in the interviews and the results biased in this sense.
The lobbying activities might depend on different factors: grievances (in the host country), social status (because lobbying requires education). We could compare the Muslim diaspora in the US with the Muslim diaspora in Europe: social status and grievances are completely opposite. There might be indirect, collaterate impact. Another important channel for influence are returnees.
’’Without Romance no Future?’’ A debate on the integration of diaspora organisations in the development sector
Do diaspora organisations and development organisations actually want to work together? If migrants’ organisations have such a good influence on the conflict in their home country, should development organisations still interfere in this subject? What is the actual surplus value of diaspora organisations compared to development organisations? Do development organisations feel threatened by diaspora organisations? What about migrants’ knowledge about their home countries?
Participants of the debate included directors of several migrants’ and development organisations from the Netherlands.
See the presentation.
See video footage of the debate (available soon).
Transnational Economic Networks in Post-Conflict Countries
Prof. Ruerd Ruben (CIDIN)
This Work Package deals with the economic linkages (remittances, co-investment) within migant communities, in particular the motives for sending economic support and the factors influencing the demand side. Based on the fieldwork carried out in Randstad, Berlin, London, Brussels (as well as in the Great Lakes region, Kosovo, Turkey), the research team from Radboud Univserity Nimegen created a data set allowing for a quantative analysis of migrants’ economic support activities. The main findings of this analysis include: (1) the higher the perception of the conflict in the home country, the lower the probablity of engaging in economic support activities; (2) the integration of migrants and a longer time since arrival in the countries of settlement decreases the involvement in economic support activities; (3) on the receiving side, there is a negative relationship between the perception of tension in Europe and receicing remittances. The conclusion of the work indicate that social networks strongly induce more engagement in economic engagement in their home countries. The perception on (deteriorating/improving) local conflicts influence engagement through economic linkages. In addition, it appears that `forced’ migrants are less likely to send remittances and recent arrivals result in stronger economic involvement.
The audience stresses that the conclusions of the Work Package should clearly stress the fact that the unit of analysis of the fieldwork was the organisation and not the individual, although the dataset includes individual-level data (e.g. date of arrival). Some of the conclusions might be modified if they are applied to organisations.
The report was discussed by Gentian Zyberi. See his presentation.
Conflict resolution workshop on Kosovo. A dialogue on radical disagreement with civil society representative from Serbia, Kosovo and the Netherlands
This workshop builds on a previous dialogue experience moderated by Prof. Hugh Miall in Lille in May 2009. The workshop is based on the idea that if the parties cannot agree, a dialogue can still help to assess the possibility of CSO engagement and their strategic possibilities for conflict transformation and resolution.
See video footage of the debate (available soon).
