Being a community of roughly eleven million Pakistanis scattered throughout the Gulf states, the United Kingdom, North America, and continental Europe, the Pakistani diaspora possesses a paradoxical dual nature of being at once a consequence of economic constrains in Pakistan and an invaluable asset of the country. It becomes clear when analyzing ways in which this diaspora manages to establish itself as a successful community outside its home country in terms of professional achievements while maintaining close ties with their native land.
While the financial aspect of such ties is rather significant and increasingly well-researched, the fact is that Pakistan received record remittances from its nationals working abroad amounting to a total of $38.3 billion during fiscal year 2025, which exceeded the merchandise exports by a great deal. The important thing here is that composition of such financial ties between diaspora and its native country demonstrates a certain tendency towards contributions of communities in the UK that form a rather minor part of registered expatriates, yet provide the largest portion of total remittances due to professional earnings in such spheres as law, medicine, finance, and technology.
In addition to remittances, engagement with the diaspora has assumed some structured institutional forms as well. The Roshan Digital Account program, which was introduced in 2020, enabling non-resident Pakistanis to invest in domestic bonds and stocks without coming back to Pakistan, has received more than twelve billion dollars in cumulative flows, which is an indication of the extent to which people may be willing to engage not only with their families but with the country through investment as well. The contributions of diaspora members to academia, the medical profession, and the tech industry in foreign countries cannot be overlooked either, although a few of them have returned to set up businesses and to educate the local people.
Indeed, this kind of contradiction reflects a reality which needs to be noted rather than overlooked. It is because the same set of factors which contribute to the success of the diaspora, access to better educational institutions and functioning labor markets, are those same factors from which many of these skilled emigrants run away from Pakistan. To present the diasporic contribution only as a triumph for the country might ignore some structural causes of the outflow of skilled people from Pakistan.
It is thus possible to speak of a dynamic of true but partial reciprocity. While the diaspora helps to finance the external accounts of Pakistan and to develop an investment environment in the country, the latter loses the very people whose success outside it contributes to the former’s success.
