Kith & Kin: a recurrent issue

[davidbfpo]

An Indian columnist on India's dependence on remittances:

Between 2001 and 2012, they remitted $339.3 billion. This was more than the total foreign direct investment flow into India during 2000-2014 which was only $326,509 million according to our commerce ministry.

I note he cites the Phillipines too:

Their 10.5 million overseas workers, including 1.074 million “irregular” workers, remitted $20 billion during 2011. This is 11.17 per cent of the country’s gross national product (GNP).

Link:http://www.asianage.com/columnists/o...t-out-mind-047

[Dayuhan]

An Indian columnist on India's dependence on remittances:

Back when I was spending a lot of time in that region I used to often not the peculiar symbiosis between the determined socialism of Kerala and the capitalist bastion of Dubai. Kerala's much-praised educational system produces quantities of graduates who can find no work in Kerala, so they end up filling Dubai's huge demand for mid-level bureaucrats. Not sure either could survive without the other.

I note he cites the Phillipines too:

I found that Philippine languages grease the wheels as effectively in the Middle East as they do in the Philippines, maybe more so. Speaking Tagalog in a hotel, restaurant, or shopping mall in the Middle East can get you a pretty amazing level of service.

The Gulf pattern seems to be that Filipinos are preferred for jobs involving face to face contact with customers, Indians dominate the back offices. Laborers are from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Technical expertise comes from Americans and Europeans, with a growing Korean and Chinese presence.

Of course Filipino workers are all over the world, not just the Middle east, less sure about the Indians on that score.

[davidbfpo]

The protests in Hong Kong have not appeared here (yet), but their impact is way beyond the special administrative region (SAR) as this Canadian article explains:

Because there are 300,000 Canadian citizens (most of Hong Kong origin) living in Hong Kong, and about 500,000 people of Hong Kong descent living in Canada, we have a big stake in the events playing out in Hong Kong.

Link:http://www.asiapacific.ca/canada-asi...-uncertainties

[davidbfpo]

A strange tale:

After Speaker John Boehner tapped him (Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) as House Intelligence chairman in January, Nunes was in a better position to directly challenge the Pentagon. He set his sights on relocating the Joint Intelligence Analysis Center (JIAC), an “intelligence fusion center” that Congress approved for construction at U.K. airbase RAF Croughton.

Link:http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...air-force-base

Update June 2016:

The US is moving forward with consolidating its transatlantic intelligence analysis operations within a planned Joint Intelligence Analysis Complex at RAF Croughton..

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rce-leave-vote

[davidbfpo]

An unlikely headline in The Guardian, after a skirmish between the Italian state and:

Some 50,000 Chinese work in the area, making clothes and handbags with the prized “Made in Italy” label....Some of the firms are accused of using illegal migrant labour, ignoring safety rules and evading taxes. The area is also the focus of an investigation into allegations of money smuggling worth €4.5bn (£3.8bn) to China from Italy between 2006 and 2010.
Regional president Enrico Rossi .....vowed to tackle crime in the area, where he said half of all economic activity is illegal, €1bn in taxes go unpaid every year, and money is laundered through international transfers.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-near-florence


Chinese diplomats have visited the town and made their own comments.

[davidbfpo]

Thanks to a pointer at a RUSI-British Yemeni Society conference on leaving Aden in 1967 (more on another thread one day) I learnt that Yemenis from the Hadhramaut Region, the former colonial era Eastern Aden Protectorate, had a diaspora across the Indian Ocean to India and Indonesia, which remains active today. Not only with commercial trading, religion and family settlements long-established that remain today.

I wonder if these links have helped AQ and more recently ISIS with their mission to expand, not only in the Yemen, but elsewhere.

There is a new book, from July 2017, on the theme: 'Hadhramaut and Its Diaspora: Yemeni Politics, Identity and Migration'. For a review see:http://middleeastreviewsonline.com/m...ity-migration/

[davidbfpo]

As if by magic yesterday Hurst Publishers notified this book was due out: 'Pan-Islamic Connections: Transnational Networks Between South Asia and the Gulf', which has this short review:

Connections of trade, family, learning and faith have existed between South Asia and the Gulf for hundreds of years. This book focuses on their workings in the modern period with especial emphasis on Islam. It demonstrates the significant and complex interactions which take place across the region, some of which are of strategic potential.

Link:http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/...-connections/?

No doubt there are books on the Omani relationship with East Africa, as a "lurker" reminded me; after all they were Zanzibar's rulers.