Diaspora engagement policies and migrants narratives across the Atlantic

ANA IRENE ROVETTA CORTES

Shaping Migration between Europe and Latin America New Approaches and Challenges

Institute of Latin American Studies

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018;

Latin America and Europe share a long history of population exchanges. And, as it happens with any long-term process, this history acquires different nuances according to the people remembering it. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the readings of the overseas journeys made by different social actors in order to understand how they have influenced the ways in which contemporary migration is conceived and managed.With recent studies on diaspora engagement policies and return migration as a theoretical framework I will analyse, first, the diaspora engagement policies in two regions in Spain and Italy aimed at their diaspora in Argentina (and other Latin American countries) and then, a collection of narratives of Argentine migrants who entered the definition of diaspora before they moved to these regions and became `returnees´. The purpose of this dual-perspective approach is to shed light: (a) on the anchorages or starting points used for interpreting current overseas migrations, (b) on the objectives underlying diaspora engagement policies, (c) on the reasons offered by the so-called returnees to describe their own journeys and (d) on the the way their senses of belonging are shaped.