Under the s way of growth fetishism’ resulting in development practices that infringe up on our biosphere ’s limits and human wellbeing, there has been a surge of interest in local community development. It is plausible, with recourse to community based approaches, to envision a road map to the establishment of a green and caring economy because, in a local community , people are normally positioned to use locally available resources in a more sustainable and equitable manner, while their top most priority is to balance material goals against their non material wellbeing arising from social contentment and environmental conservation.

This rese arch project is aimed at bringing to light potential roles of state and market forces in promoting local community development. Instead of positing a dichotomy between state interventions and local autonomy, or between marketization and local self-reliant activities, efforts will be made to elucidate synergies that can be forged between the state or wider market and community-based activities.

This research strategy has been adopted in view of “deterritorialization” that local communities are typically going through; community residents have been building extensive social networks beyond their own localities Research findings will be disseminated in regular meetings as well as at the JASID conferences. Results will be published in the JASID journal and in the form of a co-authored book.

The research group aims to analyze the impacts of migration on the economic and human development in their home countries and destinations. Migration, both within and beyond national borders, is a broad concept that encompasses refugees or internally displaced persons of conflicts and natural disasters as well as those who move to seek opportunities of employment, education, or marriage at their own will.

The impacts of migration have been discussed mostly in terms of economic development, particularly its contribution to poverty alleviation through the migrants’ foreign remittance to their home countries. However, the on-going discussion is not sufficient to analyze both the negative and the positive aspects of the migration.

Its negative impacts may include the so-called brain drain, the excessive dependency of households and national economies on the foreign remittance, the disintegration of families, and the underdevelopment of local industries in their home countries. In the present era of global migration, it is no longer realistic or feasible to “develop a community to prevent its members from migration.”

This research group instead starts with accepting migration as an inevitable reality and attempts to seek the potential of migration that contribute to the development of people and societies both in their home countries and destinations.