The subject of inquiry of this study is "gender" within diasporic philanthropy in the discourse on migration and development. The contribution of this paper to the current literature on the migration-development-nexus (MDN) is the questioning of the major assumptions behind the migration-development discourse by challenging its notion of migrant networks as being homogeneous. As it will be shown, the latter perspective does not do justice to the hierarchies and diversities between and within networks. This is demonstrated by a gender analysis of philanthropic migrant organizations.

By analyzing the discourse surrounding diasporic philanthropy, I will argue that the MDN leaves out important features – which corroborates the hypothesis of the instrumental appliance of diasporic philanthropy within the MDN, in the interests of the North. I will demonstrate the different social and spatial articulations of diasporic philanthropy by revealing particular ways in which women and men participate in transnational communities.