International Conference

Global Migration: Rethinking Skills, Knowledge and Culture

26-27 November 2016

Organised by Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism, New Delhi

Globalization has brought about a new paradigm where socio-cultural, political, and economic landscapes get exposed to unexpected dynamics of challenges and change. It thus becomes a matter of both challenge and opportunity for the home and host countries.

On the one hand, the economic changes over the past hundred years that includes close integration, opening of trade, ideas and information, have resulted in benefitting the industrially developed economies. On the other hand, for the developing economies, the challenges remain though of different level and kind. However, the changed circumstances globally also bring along opportunities for these states to help them overcome the challenges.The increased movement of people has resulted in theglobal development of new ideas, intercultural linkages, democratisation of global space etc. In this scenario, diaspora has emerged as an important player in the transnational sphere for both thehome and host countries.

The actual process of engaging diaspora in the development process remains a challenge for the home countries. Policies result from a complex interplay of local and global conditions, including the role of lobby groups, socio-economic and political conditions of the country, level of institutional development, technological progress. This engagement process is also mediated by the social and cultural identities of the diaspora that are not just diverse but also contested. The challenge faced by the developing countries in this regard is very different from that of the industrially advanced states.

In recent years, the policies related to human and financial capital have been gaining serious attention. Contrary to the idea of brain drain that dominated the development debate in the 60s and 70s among the scholars and policy makers of developing countries, diasporas in the age of internet are viewed as instruments of human, ?nancial and social development of both the host and the home state. Many developing countries in the recent past have been playing a significant role in channelizing the resources through various institutional mechanisms by engaging both the government and non-governmental institutions. Developing countries have managed to channelise ?nancial resources from their diaspora quite e?ectively. India has emerged as the largest recipient of remittances in the world surpassing China in the last few years. Financial capital accumulated by diaspora abroad is often repatriated to the country of origin in the form of remittances or direct investments. Human capital plays an important role in this regard and is e?ectively transferred across borders with the use of ICT, creating opportunities in several sectors such as higher education, training, research and development, etc. There are evidences of successful diasporic knowledge transfer in areas such as IT and Healthcare. For instance, the success of Bangalore IT boom and corporate healthcare may be attributed to the contribution of the high skilled Indian diaspora in the US.
About the Conference

The conference will bring together scholars from diverse fields such as academic, civil society and policy from different countries. The conference intends to provide comparative perspectives in diaspora engagement. The papers will be published in a book by an international publisher.

The conference will have more wider reach and try to represent as many countries possible so that both macro and micro perspectives and diversities of issues will be covered. There are several countries actively engaged in policies and working on a new paradigm of global engagement to tap resources in the globalised world ever increasing human mobility.The conference is conceived to address these issues, both conceptual as well as applied areas so as to give a wholistic approach to understand the issue.

The following are the Themes and Sub themes for the Conference. However, all the related issues are also welcome.
Guidelines for Submission of Abstracts

All participants are required to submit a written abstract in .doc/x formats.
Format: 1 inch margin, 1.5 line spacing, Times New Roman, 12 font
File name: YOURNAME_INSTITUTION
The document must contain; a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) Abstract e) up to 10 keywords.

All abstracts will be peer reviewed and selected papers will be invited for final paper presentation. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you please send an query

Abstracts or requests for further information should be sent to: internationalconference@grfdt.com