Codevelopment: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:14, 2 February 2011

Revision as of 14:09, 21 July 2012

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In the last ten years, academic research on codevelopment increased, as a result of the strong immigration process experienced by the Spanish society from 2000 onwards (which represented nearly 80% of Spain’s demographic growth). Many universities decided to open up new learning courses on the matter, following the steps of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Several doctoral thesis are currently being carried out, focusing diverse aspects of codevelopment, including the impact of migration and remittances in the sending countries, mainly Ecuador, Colombia and Morocco. Migrants living in Spain remitted nearly EURO 10 thousands millions, in 2007 (while the overall Spanish OAD summed only half of this amount).

According to Graciela Malgesini , spontaneous codevelopment could be defined as the win/win effect, the linkage between migration and development, which generates mostly positive impacts on both the society of origin of immigrants, and the host society. This definition presumes the role of immigrants as actors and vectors of development, in "both sides", and the understanding of the relations between host countries (North) and sending countries (South) in a horizontal way. Codevelopment is directly related to Transnationalism.

Carlos Gimenez pinpointed other two characteristics of codevelopment: (1) The multiplicity of stakeholders (a network of participants that surpasses both quantitatively and qualitatively the traditional agents in the traditional development cooperation projects, as it includes authorities, social organizations, trade unions, universities, training institutes, businesses and immigrant associations). (2) Transnational citizenship (immigrants acting in codevelopment activities, embedded in a transnational dynamic, are also transnational citizens, to the extent that they have a dual presence. This dual space of belonging, in turn, encourages decision making, influences on the economic, political and social development, and allows the formation of a separate identity, based on two geographical areas, the country of origin and the country of destination).