One of the more benign and virtuous aspects of globalization in the past three decades or so has been the increase in the migration of people from the poorer, labour-surplus economies of the South to the richer , labour-scarce economies of the North, as well as to some resource-rich, labour-scarce economies within the South, itself.

Although, the process has been severely stymied by the over-reaction in the US and the West in the wake of the horrific 9/11 incident in 2001, overseas emigration continues to provide considerable support to the developing economies, including Pakistan.

These expatriates, who have been forced into temporary or permanent self-exile for the sake of gaining employment not available to them in their home country, are often referred to as diaspora. Whatever, the motivations or circumstances of their decision to leave the country, they often provide invaluable support to the process of development, and wittingly or unwittingly help in meeting the enormous challenge of alleviating poverty and promoting economic and social development that their home countries face.

Historically, the phenomenon of overseas migration is centuries old. The term diaspora originally derives from the dispersion of Jews from Palestine following the Babylonian conquest of the Judean Kingdom in the 6th century BC, and again following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D. Most later mass emigrations were not the consequence of such political or religious persecution, but the result of increasing economic and social deprivation in the home country, largely as a result of increasing population and colonial domination.

In the Indian subcontinent, people in the 7th and 8th centuries went to East Africa and elsewhere, as part of the slave trade. During this period, Gujarati businessmen financed Arabs in the buying and selling of slaves. In the 19th century, the people of Indian origin were taken on as indentured labour in roughly 24 countries, including Fiji, the West Indies, South Africa and East Africa.

After the Second World War, a new wave of emigration, largely voluntary and impelled more by the pull rather than push factors started to Western countries. This wave consisted both skilled and unskilled labour, a large percentage of the former went for further training and education, a fraction of whom stayed back lured by better living and working conditions than at home, giving rise to the phenomenon of the brain drain.

Most of the unskilled workers stayed back in view of the shortage of unskilled labour and the availability of better social amenities, such as health and education, to them and their families. The second and third generations of many of those unskilled workers who migrated in the 1950s and 1960s are far removed from and have a less emotional bond with the home country.

There is a need for sending countries to focus on these third and fourth generation expatriates as the earlier generations will soon wither away and dry up the reservoir of emotional bonds that link them with the home country.

An ancillary wave of migration to the Western countries has been generated by the visas issued to the family members of those who had already migrated. Shahid Javed Burki in the chapter authored by him in the recently-released South Asian Human Development Report 2003 shows that in the 1990s this was the predominant source of emigration to Western countries. It is likely that this wave will be adversely affected by the very stringent procedures introduced by the immigration authorities due to security concerns arising from 9/11/02.

Indeed, there are some indications of a reverse migration to home countries following the harassment faced by South Asian Muslim emigrants under the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Although, the analysis in the South Asian HDR 2003 is very sanguine about the possibility of increased migration from the developing countries to the Western developed countries based on the evidence of demographic asymmetry, especially between the US and Pakistan, the short- and medium-term prospects for such an increase look quite bleak.

In addition, the US is more likely to fulfil its labour shortfalls more from the Mexican and other neighbouring sources, rather than far-flung Pakistan, with its presently tainted image. The most recent wave of emigration from the developing countries, especially South Asia, was triggered by the information technology boom in the 1990s,.

The principal beneficiary of this wave was India, which had a huge reservoir of trained scientists and other educated labour force, along with an established chain of technology institutes and universities, which helped it to capitalize on the technology boom in the United States and other developed countries. Much of this educated labour force was unemployed until recently and had presented a serious economic problem to the country.

The policy mistake of the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to an economic bonanza in the past. The marginal social cost to India for exporting such labour was negligible and no hue and cry was raised against the brain drain, unlike in the earlier decades.

Pakistan, which had underinvested in education, was not well-placed to take the advantage of this boom, although some sections of the population, who could afford quality education, did benefit. With the technology bubble suddenly bursting this wave of emigration has dried up even for India. However, India is a beneficiary in terms of the job relocation process occurring in the developed world which are transferring back-office and other related jobs to the developing countries in view of their lower wage costs.

The wave of emigration to the Gulf countries, spawned by the construction boom in the wake of the 1970 oil price hike, was of a different genre. The bulk of these migrants from South Asia are unskilled and semi-skilled workers in construction and service sectors, who have temporary employment, averaging less than five years, they generally live as single males and visit their home countries, on average, every two years during the course of their employment.

They remit a high proportion of their earnings to home countries and are eager to return home with some capital to start a better life in their countries. The Gulf emigrants, however, are treated as a lower species of the daispora and command very small clout in public policy to the extent one exists in South Asian countries, which attach a much higher weight to the preference of the more affluent sections of diaspora and domestic elites. The phenomenon of elite capture is no less omnipresent than elsewhere in public policy.

As analysed above, the diaspora is not a homogeneous entity. The temporary migrant worker in the Gulf can hardly compare his life-style with that of the Pakistani professionals and businessmen in the US and the UK or even in the Gulf, for that matter.

Many of the permanently settled Pakistanis in North America and Europe, however, now hardly send any remittances, the bulk of which still comes from the Gulf. Indeed most of the non-Gulf emigrants facilitate capital flight from Pakistan by helping their relatives and friends to immigrate. Whether, the diaspora is entitled to a greater role in policy making, than in the many ways it already does, is a debatable issue.

Given the elite bias in those capable of articulating the diasporas views, it is likely to promote a nexus between the domestic and the expatriate elite and strengthen the trend towards elitist development, which has already been recognized as a major bane of South Asian development.

Most developing countries were content to adopt a policy of benign neglect towards their expatriate communities after independence largely because of the fear that the latter would be accused of divided loyalty between the home country and the one in which they had settled or were seeking a living.

This fear was partly borne out when the newly independent nations in East Africa, particularly Uganda, expelled large numbers of Indian and Pakistani origin, and in many cases confiscated their property and businesses. Most of these, however, never returned to their home countries but decided to settle in the UK and other countries as political refugees.

Both countries started taking real interest in their diasporas once it became evident that they were a rich and unencumbered source of getting foreign exchange in large amounts at times they were really strapped for such resources. Initially, the diaspora became a milch cow for both foreign-exchange hungry states. However, it soon became that more needed to be done to make the resource sustainable.

Since the size of these emigrant populations relative to the domestic population has now assumed considerably high proportion although in most cases it remains well below 5 per cent - many developing countries have realised that they can no longer treat their diaspora as a passive resource but have to give due consideration to the latter's concerns so that they continue to have a link with the mother country and do not get permanently estranged from it.

The diaspora itself has begun to realize its importance to the mother country and has begun to demand that it be treated, not only with affection and dignity, which is of course its due, but is also given some preferential treatment vis-a-vis other foreigners and often vis-a-vis the domestic population in view of the remittances, investments, skills and a broader world outlook it supposedly brings with it on occasional return visits or on permanent change of residence to the home country or even while living abroad.

This somewhat supercilious attitude has often become a source of tension between the domestic population and the diaspora at different levels in the mother country. In South Asia, in particular, where a significant proportion of the diaspora resides in America and Europe, the umbilical link is often nurtured through family ties and business connections in the home country, exercising considerable leverage in shaping the directions, if not the contours, of domestic policies and development strategies.

The diaspora also exercises considerable influence on domestic consumption patterns and life-styles, which has both positive and negative developmental and social effects.

The diaspora has played an important role in the development of many countries. The two most successful examples cited are those of Israel and China. South Asians wonder why their diasporas cant emulate those two examples. However, there are large contextual differences in the situation.

Israel's diaspora is much larger than Israel's population and takes a keen interest in the country's development, largely through ensuring its security and a large volume of foreign aid from the US. Non-resident Jews and Chinese do a lot for their countries because they have confidence that their government values their contribution and they demand nothing in return.

Overseas Chinese, who are settled in neighbouring areas, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia or Thailand, are essentially businessmen and have a close attachment with the mother country even though hardly any plan to return home.

South Asian expatriates, in contrast, are by and large professionals who cant be expected to undertake large investments, except in real estate or stock markets. Some professionals such as doctors or engineers want to establish their own hospitals, research institutes or universities but demand large concessions from the state.

Many countries in recent years have tried to build a mechanism to engage their diaspora in a meaningful way so that both the mother country and the diaspora community abroad derive maximum mutual benefits from each other.

Both India and Pakistan hold consultations with their expatriate communities, abroad and in their respective capitals. India has initiated since last year an annual meeting of expatriates, called Pravasi Bharatiya Divas on the 9th of January, celebrating the date on which Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 to settle permanently, and lead the freedom movement.

A large number of expatriate Indians, including Nobel prize winners, artists and businessmen who had distinguished themselves in their fields in their countries of residence, were invited to attend the meeting.

Along with them the meeting also invites Indians from all territories of the world to listen to their problems and to sensitise them about the country's development programmes. Such a meeting is of course more a public relations exercise than a serious effort to mutually understand the problems of the two sides.

The diaspora needs to be perceived in a broader framework of international interaction and as a part of the ongoing process of globalization. If foreigners have reached out to the developing countries in the past as colonialists and as international investors currently, then it would also be of advantage to the developing countries to reached out to the rest of the world as workers, students and technical experts.

To view the diaspora as those who have betrayed the country for the sake of personal gain would be myopic. The government needs a coherent diasporic policy, and it cannot formulate one on its own - the Diaspora should have an input.

While the diaspora, cannot herald fundamental changes or force transformation of the home country in a particular direction. It must, lend a helping hand towards the solution of the perennial problems faced by the country, which resulted in its becoming the diaspora in the first place.