(Re)Conceptualizing the Role of Higher Education in Emergency Contexts

In post-disaster and post-conflict societies critical threshold events trigger or intensify diaspora mobilization and engagement in their homelands. Taking the 2010 earthquake as a 'critical event' that has transformed the course of Haitian society, this study builds on existing research on diaspora influence on homeland development by examining how diaspora engagement in higher education is shaping Haiti's capacity for recovery and reconstruction. With national rebuilding efforts in Haiti largely dependent upon international assistance, the diaspora emerges as an important but complex actor that engages national and international entities in rebuilding efforts in a way that requires serious examination and analysis. This study will answer the following research question: How is diaspora engagement in higher education influencing institutional capacity for recovery and reconstruction in post-disaster Haiti? This study contends that diaspora engagement in national recovery and reconstruction is embedded in larger transnational processes that involve multiple agents with competing agendas, acting from different institutional power positions. Drawing on practice theory and a post-structuralist notion of power, this study will generate an ethnography and analysis of sites and contexts of engagement where the Haitian diaspora negotiate their cultural understanding of higher education with local practices, within larger competing transnational paradigms that define higher education.