From Transferring to Transforming Remittances:

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From Transferring to Transforming Remittances

• Emigration and Infrastructure Reform in Morocco,
  1985-2005

Natasha Iskander New York University -- Wagner
School of Public Policy June 16, 2006
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Outline
Souss Valley
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Standard view

• Generated elsewhere and transferred back

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Standard view

• Generated elsewhere and transferred back
• Vector of economic change remittances

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Standard view

• Generated elsewhere and transferred back
• Vector of economic change remittances
• Policy Channeling remittances

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Alternate view

• Constituted through social processes

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Alternate view

• Constituted through social processes
• Vector of economic change processes of
  constituting remittances

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Alternate view

• Constituted through social processes
• Vector of economic change processes of
  constituting remittances
• Policy Engaging with migration communities

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Infrastructure reform

• Electricity
• Water
• Roads
• Development Planning
• Adult Education
• Political Participation

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Infrastructure reform

• Electricity
• Water
• Roads
• Development Planning
• Adult Education
• Political Participation

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Rural electricity in Morocco

• Abysmal coverage
• 1980s 4-18 rural electricity coverage
• 1990s 21 rural electricity coverage
• 70 villages per year receive electricity 300
  years for national coverage
• Tunisia 70 Algeria 60
• World Bank programs (1978-1988) led to a decline
  in electricity coverage rates

Between 1960 to 1990, rural electricity was
not a priority. Director ONE
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Imagining electric

• Layoffs at Péchiney
• Legal battle over severance pay/start-up funds
• Without electricity, we cant do anything.
• Migrations et Développement

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Learning from (others) experience
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Networks and knowledge

• French consultants through labor organizing
  networks
• Bricolage
• Eucalyptus poles
• Recycled wires
• Smaller regulator
• New technological model for electricity network
  letter vs. spirit of standards
• New social knowledge and social identities

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Funds and meaning

• Villagers Grounding electricity
• Emigrants Claiming home
• External donors Funding for the future

Villagers 40
Emigrants and external donors 60
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Organizing electricity

• Electricity Organizational challenge
• Emigrant labor organizing experience
• Reinvention of jemaa
• Electricity as communal resource
• Literate youth charged with maintenance
• Sliding scale fee
• Community tax for future projects

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State engagement

• 1982-1987 PNER dismal failure less than 60
  villages/year
• M/D villages We want to bring the state by the
  hand
• 1987-1996 PPER pilot program works with M/D
  villages

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Transforming insights

• Lessons embraced
• Networks and knowledge Adapted technologies,
  combining external and local experience
• Funding universal access, installment and loan
  schemes
• Organizing electricity Village associations

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Revamping electricity

• Office Nationale dEléctricité goes bankrupt
• 1996 PERG Generalized access to electricity by
  2010
• Knowledge Flexible standards and adapted
  technologies
• Funding 20 collectivité locale, 25 consumer,
  55 ONE (tax on urban consumers)
• Organization Some degree of community management

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Conclusions

• Innovation in multiple areas of basic service
  provision variations on a theme
• Large impact small group of Soussi migration
  communities transformed national infrastructure
  provision
• Impact visible to emigrants and communities
  protagonists in their own history over and above
  remittances
• Impact invisible through standard view of
  remittances

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Conclusions

• Process of constituting remittances as vector of
  economic development because
• Source of creativity and innovation
• Generative of new resources
• State engagement with process of constituting
  remittances can
• Enable policy innovation
• Magnify impact
• States/organizations seeking to link emigration
  with development should engage with emigration
  communities and their processes of constituting
  remittances