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theses

3R-migration issues are the crucial part of the national poverty reduction strategies of the migrant sending states in the post-Soviet region. Migrant sending states prioritize one R migration issue over others. 3Rs - organized recruitment of labor migrants abroad, the transfer and utilization of remittances, and return of migrants - are the most important migration management issues. Some states prioritize transfer and utilization of remittances more than any other R policies, others focus on return of their emigrants, and still others prioritize organized recruitment to increase the number of their labor migrants abroad. This dissertation looks at the possible factors that explain states’ prioritization of one R over others and demonstrates the operational process of prioritization utilizing policy network institutionalism, organizational state and advocacy coalition models. Various types of the advocacy coalitions that transfer specific R-policy to a state based on their understanding of ‘best practices’ for the migration management are discovered through systematic comparison of three post-Soviet migrant sending states’ policy networks. Centrality and cohesion measures of the migration policy networks (calculated via the UCINET) are used to identify the dominant and influential advocacy coalitions within the networks, while controlling for the variation of the number of organizations and degree of dominance of the advocates across cases. The dissertation concludes that the dominance of other migrant sending states, international organizations, and the EU are the explanatory factors behind the diversion in R- prioritization. In absence of these factors in their migration policy networks, migrant sending states are more prone to only manage transfer of migrants’ remittances. They do not prioritize organized recruitment of labor abroad if not advised and supported by other migrant-sending states, as well as ignore remittance investment if the support of the World Bank is not observed. They also do not prioritize return of migrants back home if not advised and supported by the European Union to do so. Antecedents of networks, including geopolitical location, foreign policy value and migration salience determine the type of the advocacy coalition that migrant sending state will have.

ETD_7045

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Gulbahor Saraeva

doi:10.7282/T3GM89GP

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.