Ear to Asia podcast Title: Edit Homelands harnessing the power of their diasporas Description: Diasporas, once viewed by their homelands as merely remittance cash cows, are increasingly being seen by labor- exporting governments as a broader resource for domestic development programs and capacity building. Political economist Prof Andrew Rosser and demographer Assoc Prof Yan Tan unpack the contemporary relationships between diasporas and their motherlands. Listen: https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode/?id=306144 Hello, I'm Peter Clarke, this is Ear To Asia. I think brain drain has long since disappeared as the central way of understanding the effects of migration from developing countries. These individuals are seen as a resource that the country can draw on, one that is beneficial as a source of investment, as a source of access to trade markets, as a source of human capital. So China and its engagement with Chinese diasporas, the government now encourages them to invest capital and attract highly skilled professionals from overseas to serve their country. In this episode, how do diasporas give back to their homelands? Ear To Asia is the podcast from Asia Institute, the Asia research specialist at the University of Melbourne. In Ear Asia, we talk with Asia researchers about the issues behind the news headlines in a region that rapidly changing the world. As of 2017, researchers estimate that worldwide, some 257 million people living outside their country of birth. This represents a huge 69% increase on the 1990 figure, for decades analysts have viewed diasporas, almost solely in terms of the remittances that people living abroad send back to their families. More recently, governments have many labor exporting nations are seeing departed workers as a source of funds for domestic development programs, and are exploring a variety of ways to engage their expatriates. Governments with an authoritarian bent are also seeking to influent and manage the attitudes and behaviors of their citizens living abroad. Diaspora associations purporting to represent the interests of their members in destination countries have emerged. But there are serious questions around how well these organizations represent the large numbers of semi skilled or unskilled workers compared to their more highly skilled, and better paid fellow expatriates. Our guests this time on Ear To Asia, argue that we need a new and more holistic way of understanding the diaspora phenomenon and how people living abroad might have an impact on development in their home countries. Professor Andrew Rosser is a political economist from Asia Institute at the Page 1 of 13
University of Melbourne, and Associate Professor Yan Tan is a demographer from the University of Adelaide. Andrew welcome back, and Yan welcome to Ear To Asia. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. We're going to be using this word diaspora right through our conversation today Yan and it's a complex word, it denotes something that perhaps obvious but as we dig into it, it's quite complex, isn't it? So let's start for our listeners to try and get their head around what a diaspora actual is and its pluralism, your specialty is Chinese migration. Help us understand what actually we mean by diaspora. I would define diasporas as migrants and their descendants who are born overseas, living on the basis of temporary or permanent visa situations. But the key thing is that the diasporas keep relationships with their native countries. Yeah, look, I think that's really the key difference between the notion of diaspora and international migrants, for instance, which is another term that often gets used as a substitute for diaspora. Diasporas are different to international migrants, in that they incorporate subsequent generations. It's about the descendants of migrants, not just the migrants themselves. And it's fundamentally concerned with those individuals who maintain a linkage back to the homeland. A migrant in theory could go overseas and become disconnected from the homeland. That individual would not be a member of a diaspora because they lack those linkages. Can I add another couple of parameters beyond the ones that Yan just laid out for us initially. Historic straight away. So in Australia, we can look at different waves of immigration generally. But particularly if we look at China and Indonesia, which is your special area, we do see different waves of migration that must alter things too. That's right. Yan and I are currently working on a research project around the theme of diaspora and development. And one of the things we're trying to do in that project is interrogate the notion of diaspora, and really disaggregate the diaspora. Very often people talk about diaspora, as if all members of the diaspora somehow are the same; they're defined by the fact they're living overseas; they're defined by the fact that they have connections back to the homeland, but actually, they're quite a differentiated lot. And if one thing, for instance, about the Indonesian experience, there have been, as you say successive waves of migration, and in each wave, there has been a different type of individual that's involved. Page 2 of 13
Initially, the Indonesian migration which occurred in the 1970s involved low skilled, poorly educated migrant workers. That happened in particular during the 70s and had a specific focus on the Middle East. As you get into the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s, you start to see more professional people, business people start to move abroad as firstly, education levels within the country improve. And secondly, as Indonesian businesses start to internationalize. And that base motivation for those different waves right then at the individual level, I guess are overall economic but are there differences there as well, political impulses from the home country? Well, look, I think about the Indonesian case specifically. I mean, by and large, Indonesia's diaspora consists of migrant workers, and so people are moving overseas because they're looking for livelihoods. If one goes back further in time, there certainly were dissident groups, opposition elements that were marginalized, for instance, under the authoritarian New Order regime that ran Indonesia from the mid 60s until 1998. So there is that sort of political element to it. But predominantly, it's been driven by economic considerations. And Yan. Similarly, for China going right back to of course, the Gold Rush in Australia and those earlier waves and later on, perhaps we can talk about shifting attitudes to those different cohorts. But is it similar profile for China, the early immigrants and then the more recent immigrants? In the Chinese case, generally we can divide two major cohorts of Chinese migrants, before the commencement of China's opening policy and economics reform, which started in 1978. Before that, old generations of Chinese immigrants, generally were less or semi skilled. But after that the new generation of Chinese migrants, including highly skilled professionals, and a growing number of Chinese students pursue the higher education degrees from developed countries. And also the young generations of old diaspora families growing in North America, European or Australia, or other Asian countries. Generally, they are well educated, they were born in those foreign countries. So this two cohorts in terms of the skill levels, certainly the later cohort become more highly educated and more successful in terms of their labor market out comes. We've already got that broad picture of a lot of those early immigrants and contemporary immigrants coming forward, basically economic reasons to be able to send remittances back home. Clarify for us just what that flow of remittances is like in the Indonesian situation, how much money is going back to Indonesia, and how regular is that return of remittances to the original country. The overall figure is around nine to 10 billion US dollars in remittances flows to Indonesia each year. Page 3 of 13
From all the diaspora? From all of the diaspora, that's- That's not really big amount, is it? Look, it's not a particularly big amount. And Indonesia is often compared unfavorably to a country like the Philippines for instance, in that respect, that 9 to 10 billion US dollars equate to around about 1% of gross national income. So it's not a particularly large amount. If you compare it again to a country like the Philippines or Bangladesh for instance, [crosstalk] but it'd not insignificant either. No, it's not insignificant. But of course, the Philippines would have a large number of people perhaps in the Middle East, working in perhaps low skilled roles, domestic servants, et cetera. Well, Indonesia does as well, the Indonesian diaspora is largely concentrated in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taipei and Hong Kong. And most members of the Indonesian diaspora are low wage, low skilled workers, the sort of typical profiles of Indonesian workers are the domestic maid, the male construction worker, the male plantation worker, they're far and away the largest types of Indonesian worker. Indonesia simply doesn't have the overall number of migrant workers that some other countries have. The estimate and they're not overly reliable range from about 2 million to about 9 million. The most recent one produced by the World Bank is that Indonesia's global working force, or migrant worker force totals 9 million people. I think of Indonesia these days as a very vibrant sort of country having a very vibrant export industry. Just describe for us more what that balance is between their... Well I don't know if it's a dependence, but certainly they enjoy the remittances compared to what they're doing in terms of export. I think, in contrast to a country like Bangladesh, or the Philippines, Indonesia is much less reliant upon remittances as a source of foreign income. The Indonesian economy for many years now has really been driven, at least on the export side, by natural resources, and as a source of foreign exchange, that's vastly more important. Nevertheless, I think the volume of remittances is particularly important for the families that receive those remittances, it plays a significant role in terms of reducing levels of poverty, improving access to health and education services, and so on. My sense in the Indonesia case, though, is that the conversation around the country's diaspora is increasingly turning to, that relatively thin sliver of the diaspora that is relatively well educated, relatively well off, often has employment in professional capacities, or in the business sector and the benefit that can potentially be extracted from Page 4 of 13
that particular group. When senior government figures have made comments about the diaspora's contribution to development in Indonesia in recent times, it's focused very much on these sorts of individuals and the potential benefits that they hold for Indonesia, in terms of, for instance, access to export market, transfers of human capital, there's a recognition for instance in Indonesia has some relatively skilled people abroad, who, if they were able to come home, could contribute to the development of, say, the education sector in Indonesia or improve the level of human resources available within the public service. So the conversation is increasingly turning to that sort of group and the- The brain drain? It's not really understood in terms of a brain drain, I think that notion has long since really disappeared as the central way of understanding the effects of migration from developing countries. These individuals are seen as a resource that the country can draw on. An overseas resource. An overseas resource and one that is beneficial as a source of investment, as a source of access to trade market, as a source of human capital. Even soft power? Potentially soft power as well, the Chinese government is much more advanced in terms of the use of soft power. But even Indonesia has sought to exercise a degree of soft power through its diaspora, for instance, by harnessing the diaspora to promote Indonesian cuisine. Back to China, Yan. And I'm very interested to find out your view on how the Chinese government's attitudes to the different waves of immigrants from China has shifted over time, earlier on as I understand it anyway, there was a fairly negative attitude to people leaving China, that's clearly shifted now. Could you just chart that broadly that shift in attitude from the Chinese government towards the Chinese diaspora. Since the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, in the following 30 years of a period under the Chairman Mao's administration, this country had experienced a very strict harsh time in its economic and cultural development in the cultural revolution until 1976, in particular. So China and its engagement with the Chinese diasporas, particularly those based in Southeast Asian countries become very difficult. A major shift has occurred since the commencement of the opening policy in the 1970s. Page 5 of 13
In the 1980s, the country successfully establish the four special economic zones in the East Coast regions, to attract capital investment, which exactly targeted not only the remittances but also other revenue sources from diaspora population. In the 1990s government very positively realized the importance of both cultural and economic development significance of Chinese diaspora populations, therefore establish the regulations to encourage Chinese diaspora capital investment in the country. And also offered good opportunities through established laws and policies, to offer Chinese diasporas more cultural, political, social, economic benefits they can receive if they go back to serve their country. And turning to the new century, the government now made great efforts to highlight the significance and urgency of Chinese diaspora's engagement with their motherland, encourage them to invest capital and also attract highly skilled professionals from overseas to serve the country. They are not necessarily required to physically reside in China return to China- But they can make a contribution. Yeah, make a contribution and they can keep Australian citizenship or American, British citizenship but they have a very close economic ties or academic relationships with the Chinese counterparts, that's very important way. And in particular, in recent decades, a very new program was established to target highly skilled overseas Chinese professionals, started in 2008 until now almost 10 years, attracted more than 8,000 high caliber professionals from overseas. Is that program focused more on science, engineering, IT? Or is in a broader program? Focused on science, technology, engineering and math. Particularly focused on those a high caliber professionals, academics and researchers. Meanwhile, China has established a separate visa category termed as Talent visa, it allows overseas skilled Chinese to easily get in the beginning one year and later three years. Would that include the arts? You used the word talent so I couldn't help but ask. That's fine. Does it include cultural and artistic activity? Yes exactly. So academic researchers and university students can be classified as a Talent oversea populations, and also they just lowered the Green Card threshold, so then more Chinese diasporas, those a semi skilled or even low skilled could return to serve the country. Page 6 of 13
Andrew. I was just gonna say that Indonesia is doing something similar, but with a whole lot less success as far as I can tell. Indonesia would like to see the quality of its universities improve, it has various targets in terms of where Indonesian universities will rank in global university rankings. And it's established a scheme that it called, initially, the World Class Professors scheme. And now it's known as I understand it, just a World Class Scholars Scheme, because they decided there weren't enough overseas professors for them to really focus on. So they've widened it out to a broader pool of academics, including junior academics. But the idea with this scheme is to try and get Indonesian academics who are living abroad to return to Indonesia, and at the very least engage with Indonesian universities through collaborative research projects, to try and help build up that quality of research occurring within Indonesian universities. Earlier this year, the government also opened up a stream within its public service recruitment program, especially for the diaspora and the job categories that were specified as available for members of the Indonesian diaspora through this program, included researchers and academics. But as I understand that they had only 19 applications of which 11 were ruled ineligible. So the government hasn't yet been terribly successful in getting Indonesian academics abroad to return home. And in large part that's because the government is not making the sort of significant investment in research and putting in place the broader policy frameworks required in order for Indonesian universities to move up the global rankings of universities, in contrast to the Chinese case. So the environment academically is not all that attractive, perhaps to Indonesians living abroad? Well, notwithstanding the fact that compared to a place like China where academic freedom is relatively strong. The issue is really more of the overall investment, the sort of academic cultures that exist, which is still quite sort of patriarchal, and patrimonial in nature, and teaching loads of massive as well as funding for research is tiny. You're listening to Ear To Asia, from Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. I'm Peter Clarke, with Asian diaspora researchers, Professor Andrew Rosser and Associate Professor Yan Tan. We're talking about the relationship between the diasporas and what they contribute to the public good in their homelands. Talking of education, Yan. As you know, Australia has a very large export industry in education - international students. Just outside the studio at the University of Melbourne, we can see many Chinese students walking up and down the street. It's very obvious here. And I know that even Page 7 of 13
amongst some of my own students at RMIT in earlier years, many did obtain permanent residency and with a view to, and some did obtain Australian citizenship. How does the Chinese government view that phenomenon, that process? Generally that's the free choice of people. Indeed, a growing number of Chinese students choose to pursue their degrees in firstly America; second, I think European countries, including Germany, Britain and France. In the Asia Pacific region, definitely, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore are the major destinations of Chinese students. The major concern for Chinese students, we know lots of them have a dream to take immigration when they finish their degrees overseas. But the situation of the global change in migration in recent years makes international students difficult to choose when they finish their degrees. Therefore, there are two ways for Chinese students actually to choose. One way, totally up to them, they are free to choose to stay overseas, for instance, in Australia to get their permanent residency or citizenship, seeking their dream in Australia and other parts of the world. But on the other side of the story is that Chinese government, and also local governments and industry sectors as well. If we look at this year in particular, the mainstream media in China reported that almost all provinces from East to West, from North to South, have made great efforts and offered very good salaries and living conditions. The purpose is to attract those educated overseas to go back to country. So this is really about human capital. So now, Chinese government and local governments realize the importance of overseas educated people. One reason is the aging population. China has developed a very quickly in such a short period of time and the aging population proportion is almost the same as the rate in Australia, that means labor shortage. And with that in mind, how active is the Chinese government and their agencies in student organizations here in Australia, but globally with that policy in mind, are they proactive? Very proactive, the Chinese government and a provincial government agencies, including major industry partners, or business groups, they send delegations to Australia universities. For instance, in my university, University of Adelaide, provincial groups come there to provide information sessions, and what offers if you come back to find work in your provincial capital in western or eastern provinces. So solve all concerns by providing them with for instance, what the salary might be compared with Australia and other parts of China, ordinary people if educated in China only. And also like the housing issue, a major consideration of people returning to their hometown, and also the household registration status. Page 8 of 13
That's very special in China. And people living in rural areas, they are classified as farmers but if they migrated or reside in urban areas, they're urban citizens and social security benefits would be extremely different. Therefore, Chinese students do ask, Can you offer me the Beijing or Shanghai?" And do they get that? Do they receive that? That's right. That's a very good offer, if you received degrees from good universities. And then if you go back home, they will offer good salary, housing and social security benefits. Andrew, earlier we alluded to these organizations, the diaspora organizations, could you tell us more about those, when did they start to emerge? And what were their aims? Well, look, if I think about the Indonesian case, there are a number of diaspora organizations. A lot of them have been around for a long, long time. Probably one of the most established is the Indonesian Students Association, which has been around since at least the 1940s, and which brings together Indonesian students who are studying abroad. And that organization has national chapters. The organizations that actually use the term diaspora, that operate under that label are much more recent invention and they really date from 2012 when an organization called the Indonesian Diaspora Network was established. The Indonesian Diaspora Business Council was established and the Indonesian Diaspora Foundation was established as well. The Indonesian Diaspora Network is a sort of general organization that claims to represent the diaspora across a range of different issue areas. The Indonesian diaspora Business Council obviously has a focus on sort of trade and investment and more generally, business linkages between Indonesia and its business diaspora abroad. And the Indonesian Diaspora Foundation is basically an organization that seeks to raise funds in order to invest in development projects back in Indonesia. So they're the three main organizations that claim one way or another to represent the diaspora. And in contrast to the broader composition of the Indonesian diaspora, which as I said earlier, is dominated by Indonesian migrant workers, these are organizations that really are vehicles for, or are associated with that thin sliver of more professional Indonesians, often working in business organizations that live in OECD countries. How well do these organizations represent the bulk of the diaspora which perhaps more at the other end of the spectrum are low skilled or even unskilled workers? These organizations vary in terms of the extent to which they seek to incorporate Indonesian migrant workers, Indonesian Diaspora Network subsequently split into two separate parts. Indonesian Diaspora Network Page 9 of 13
Global and Indonesian Diaspora Network United, the United version of that organization does make some effort to try and incorporate Indonesian migrant workers into their organizational structure. The other one Indonesian Diaspora Network Global has held a series of subsequent congress's all in Indonesia, those congresses have been quite lavish affairs, well covered in the media and various celebrities and so on have presented at them. But they've generally created a space for Indonesian migrant workers to give some sort of presentations. I would say that the general story though, is that broadly, there is a bit of a disconnect between these diaspora organizations and Indonesian migrant workers. They really do represent very different strategy of Indonesian society and have quite different interests and policy agendas that they're pursuing. Andrew, we've circled around this, I think, but lets sort of nail it a little bit more. How do you see the difference between the way the Indonesian government generally deals with its diaspora, and interacts with its diaspora, with development in mind and the Chinese government? We've heard a lot from Yan today about the Chinese government. How do you early on in this AIC research with Yan. How do you see the differences, the fundamental differences? Well, look, I have to say, I see an awful lot of similarities. The differences probably lie more in terms of the effectiveness with which that engagement takes place. The Indonesian and Chinese states are very, very different. The Chinese state is much better resourced than the Indonesian one, it's a much, much more powerful state, it has far greater reach internationally than the Indonesian state does. It's also an authoritarian state whereas the Indonesian one is a democratic one. And that really limits its capacity to exercise influence over its diaspora in quite the same way that the Chinese state does. Where there are some real similarities, though, I think, at least in two domains. The first is an emphasis on harnessing the diaspora for economic development purposes. China has really put in place a whole range of different policies and mechanisms to try and make use of its diaspora to support homeland development, particularly economic development. The Indonesian government, as I said earlier, has had very much a focus on the economic dimensions of their relationship with the diaspora. It hasn't yielded a whole lot just yet, other than via remittance flows. The other domain is in relation to citizenship. When you have a diaspora, the issue of dual citizenship inevitably comes up. And especially when you've got citizen to globally mobile, who work in professional capacities, who work for businesses who are jetting around the world if they've got a passport that makes it difficult for them to get in and out of countries, that yields demand for dual citizenship. And certainly that's happened in the Indonesian case, the response from Indonesia has been the Indonesian government has been so far Page 10 of 13
to deny the possibility of dual citizenship, I get that China has had a similar stance as well. Yan, would you like to confirm that? The idea of dual citizenship. In China, the central government doesn't recognize dual citizenship. Although dual citizenship is not allowed, it has basically allowed Chinese diasporas to hold their household registration status. For instance, the Beijing hukou ( 口 ) or Shanghai hukou, right. So there are still economic benefits including the aged pension or healthcare - still are there. So in that sense, Chinese diasporas get good benefits. But now we see this situation has been observed by the central government. So we would expect major changes. In the Indonesian case, I mean, the response has been similar in a way. You can't get any hard data on this of course, but it seems that it's not uncommon for Indonesians living abroad to actually have two passports; they just hide the fact that they have a second one and find ways of doing that. The other thing the Indonesian government has done has been to put in place a kind of makeshift temporary arrangement to make it easier for the members of the Indonesian diaspora to return home. So for instance, until fairly recently, the longest term you could get for so called visit visa was 12 months. That's now been extended to five years. And that was essentially the outcome of demand from the Indonesian diaspora organizations for visa arrangements that would make it easier for Indonesians to move back and forth between countries, pending the actual adoption of dual citizenship. The Indonesian government has also tried to follow the Indian model of introducing a so called diaspora card. India has introduced a card that has been quite widely adopted. And it's generally seen as something of a success. It provides real benefits to members of the Indian diaspora in terms of enabling them to purchase property, open bank accounts and move back and forward between India and the countries where they happened to be living. The Indonesian version of the diaspora card is so far regarded by the diaspora organizations as something of a failure, as something that doesn't really provide any additional benefits beyond what they're entitled to under Indonesian laws. There's still some work to be done on that diaspora card. And I think there are certainly elements with the Indonesian government the recognize that and are trying to improve the card. So what insights can you gain about migration more generally, by studying the diaspora? New forms of population mobility has emerged since the mid of 1990s. Transnationalism and the associated diaspora - the concept - have become very important not only in population migration studies, but also other Page 11 of 13
disciplines, including political science and sociology, development, anthropology, and so on. So studying diaspora could enhance our understanding about the recent new patterns and evolving dimensions of international migration. In particular, development is a highly associated with the purposes of migration. Previously development concerns more about economic and, particularly, in destination countries. Through incorporating diaspora population and transnationalism, we recognize that development is not only economic remittance based, but also non- economic, including social, political even environmental dimensions. I think the point is that once upon a time, migration and specifically international migration was really understood in terms of permanent movements of people, someone going from one country to another, and then residing in that country and becoming disconnected from their homeland. The notion of diaspora has gone hand in hand with the idea of transnationalism, which is essentially the idea that people living abroad remain connected, in fact, back to their homeland through a whole variety of mechanisms. It might be remittances, it might be voting in elections, back in the homeland, it might be communicating with relatives via Facebook who live back in the homeland. So diaspora is a concept that really shifts our focus away from sort of permanent movement of people involving disconnection to temporary, circular as well as permanent movement of people, but involving connection back to the homeland. Yan, Andrew, thanks so much for being with us today on Ear To Asia. Yeah, great pleasure. Thank you. My pleasure. Our guests on the Ear To Asia, political economist, Professor Andrew Rosser from Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, and Associate Professor Yan Tan from the University of Adelaide. Ear To Asia is brought to you by Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. You can find more information about this and all our other episode at the Asia Institute website. Be sure to keep up with every episode of Ear To Asia, by following us on the Apple podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher or SoundCloud. If you like the show, please rate and review it on itunes or Apple podcast. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. And of course, let your friends know about us on social media. This episode was recorded on the 8th of November 2018. Producers were Eric van Bemmel and Kelvin Param of profactual.com. Ear To Asia is licensed under Creative Commons. Copyright 2018, the University of Melbourne. I'm Peter Clarke, thanks for your company. Page 12 of 13
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