A focus on the sending states, and not just the societies, of the global South has a great deal to contribute to our understanding of the multi-faceted phenomenon of international migration. The traditional European/US bias of political science studies of border controls and immigration policy, combined with the civil-society and network emphasis of much of the transnationalism literature, leaves significant parts of the migration story untold. First, because the majority of migration is South–South, not South–North; and second because the state plays a preeminent role in shaping employment and investment, as well as identity and security policy, all of which have been shown to contribute to the nature and magnitude of emigration as well as the subsequent management of communities of nationals abroad.

In attempting to discern the forces behind the establishment of state institutions involved in expatriate affairs, this work first derived a general proposition from the transnationalism literature that such structures could be understood as the product of a particular stage of capitalist development, that of the late twentieth – early twenty-first centuries. While there has certainly been a recent proliferation of these institutions, a close examination of the historical record of our four case countries demonstrated that such structures are not new. Indeed, the initial initiatives by the Tunisian, Lebanese and Moroccan states appear to have been driven by decolonization, not more recent economic globalization.

Another juncture of profound importance in the history of some of these institutions was the 1973 oil crisis.