Diasporas around the world, unite!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:08AM 
Economist article, which highlights a favorite theme of mine: globalization allows for enclavism to flourish even as it forces society to integrate with the larger whole and submit to its overarching rule-sets.
Starts with a meeting in Chicago of NRIs (non-resident Indians as India refers to its ex-pats) who want to encourage market and political reforms back home. The transmission of such ideas is facilitated by globalization.
The old ethnic lobbying model was regressive and guilt-ridden: ex-pats working to get their adopted government to support hardline causes back home or supporting them directly themselves with donations. That model dissipates more and more as immigrants are more easily assimilated and no longer form a reliable lobby on such issues.
So what happens when grievances no longer dominate the ex-pat agenda? You see the residual nationalism refocused on progressive reforms--as in, give your homeland some of the skill and vision you picked up in your successful ex-pat lives abroad.
The social networks facilitate all this wonderfully.
