Griffith Asia Institute Research Seminar: Embedded Diasporas: Ethnic prejudice, transnational networks and foreign investment

Griffith Asia Institute Research Seminar:  Embedded Diasporas: Ethnic prejudice, transnational networks and foreign investment
Griffith Asia Institute Research Seminar: Embedded Diasporas: Ethnic prejudice, transnational networks and foreign investment

Principal speaker

Dr Diego Fossati

A large literature on the role of immigrant networks in the global economy has found that ethnic diasporas facilitate transnational investment through their social connections and cultural skills. Diaspora communities, however, are also ethnic minorities facing discrimination in their host countries, and their activism in the global economy, combined with cultural distance from native populations, may feed economic envy and resentment against them. Building on research on ethnic stereotypes and immigration, Dr Fossati argues that this position of social exclusion may constrain the ability of migrant networks to function as catalyst of international economic integration. When members of native populations learn about diaspora transnational economic activism, they may infer that economic openness unfairly benefits a privileged and culturally foreign minority, and they will thus be less likely to support policies to attract foreign investment. Dr Fossati tests this hypothesis with a conjoint experiment embedded into a large survey on a nationally representative sample in Indonesia, an open economy in which the Chinese minority has long played a key economic role. He further tests the causal mechanism through which ethnic cues decrease support for foreign investment, first by distinguishing between priming and informational effects, and then by investigating the role of socioeconomic status and cultural distance as triggers of ethnic prejudice.

Dr Fossati is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University. He was trained in political science at Cornell University, completing his doctoral studies in 2016 with a dissertation on health policy in Indonesia. He is currently working on various projects on political economy, democratic consolidation and voting behaviour in young democracies, with an empirical focus on Indonesia and Southeast Asia.


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RSVP on or before Monday 24 April 2017 , by email gai@griffith.edu.au , or by phone x54705

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