Episode 23: The "Who", "What", and "How" of diaspora engagement - Roberto Cancel's insights from a global diaspora career

The Migration & Diaspora Podcast

Good morning and you are listening to the Migration & Diaspora Podcast, a podcast where we talk about all things migration. I'm your host Loksan Harley and as always I'm so happy to be bringing the best of the best migration and diaspora experts to your airwaves to share what they're working on and what they've learned. And today I'm joined by my friend Roberto Gil Cancel Comas, Senior Regional Labour Mobility and Human Development Specialist for South America at the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Part of the great puertorriqueño diaspora, Roberto has been working with migrants and diaspora groups for over a decade, with a focus on civil participation and migration and development. He has an extremely diverse set of work and life experiences, spanning from East Asia to Europe and North Africa to the Americas. Before taking up responsibilities in the Regional Office for South America, he worked for IOM in Egypt and Kosovo, and supported Latin American communities in Belgium. Previously, Roberto worked with Latin American migrants in the US to promote their civil and political participation.

I'm excited to present to you our wide-ranging discussion on diaspora engagement, in which I picked Roberto's worldly brain on the roles that diaspora organisations and governments play (or should play) in engaging diasporas. We discuss regional differences in diaspora engagement and Roberto's fantastic work to bring diaspora organisations around the world together to share good practices via the iDiaspora platform. Also great to get to know Roberto's own migration & diaspora story (spoiler alert, it's a fascinating one!).

Useful links

• iDiaspora platform
• IOM South America
• IOM’s 3E’s Strategy to Enable, Engage and Empower Diaspora
• IOM/MPI Handbook on Diaspora policy development
• Contributions and Counting: Guidance on Measuring the Economic Impact of your Diaspora beyond Remittances by Leon Isaacs, star of Episode 4
• Global Diasporas reacting to the COVID-19 crisis: Best Practices from the Field
• Related podcast episodes 2 (Doing Diaspora), 4 (remittances), 9 (diaspora investment), 12 (diaspora humanitarianism).