Can diasporas shape homeland health policies?

Across Europe and North America, controversies around the impact of immigration on the welfare state are recurring. Whether they are accused of being triggered to move by benefits or of being a burden on public finance in destination countries, few countries manage to discuss welfare reforms without connecting it to immigration debates. In this paper, we show that the welfare and migration literature’s focus on those debates entails that immigrant agency is neglected in the study of welfare reform and so it's the immigrant impact on welfare state reform in the home country. Interpreting empirical data on the experience of two diasporas —Mexicans and Congolese— in homeland health policies, we build a conceptual framework that articulate migration and development and welfare reforms approaches in order to identify the variables that lead to the formal acknowledgement of the diaspora’s role in their homeland social protection policies.