Migration, Citizenship, and Development: Diasporic Membership Policies and Overseas Indians in the United States

Migration, Citizenship, and Development examines the effects of country-of-origin citizenship on the Indian diaspora in the United States and return migrants in India. It explores how the Overseas Citizenship of India affects remittances, investment, philanthropy, return migration and political lobbying. Using an inter-disciplinary approach, the book combines political concepts of state power and governance, sociological categorizations of behavior and identity, and economic scholarship on remittances and development. The author examines how a legal status shapes national and transnational belonging and how citizenship in the country of origin influences naturalization and attachment to the country of residence. He does this both through new conceptualizations as well as original empirical evidence about the causes and effects of diasporic activities.