ABSTRACT
India has recently joined other sending country governments in acknowledging its diaspora’s potential role in homeland development. Academics have followed suit by debating whether the diaspora’s effect on sending country development has been positive or negative. While this literature has been useful in highlighting sending countries in the migration literature, its emphasis on individual connections to the homeland presents an incomplete picture of diaspora involvement in the migration–development nexus. This chapter introduces a new research project that sheds light on the group-based connections that the Indian diaspora uses to affect India’s development. Such efforts, which are prevalent, take place through transnational organizations that are founded and led by Indian-Americans to send financial and social remittances to India.
