Hometown associations and the micropolitics of transnational community development Deepak Lamba-Nieves Center for a New Economy, San Juan, Puerto Rico ABSTRACT This article argues that a closer inspection of the historical trajectories and the evolving micropolitics of hometown associations (HTAs) expands our understanding of how community development is practised across borders. Drawing from six years of ethnographic, multi-sited fieldwork carried out in the Dominican Republic and the United States, focusing on the experience of three Dominican HTAs, the evidence presented demonstrates how working dynamics and decision-making responsibilities between internal, international, and non-migrant HTA members shift over time, and identifies the organisational strategies employed to achieve transnational cooperation for community development. The ethnographic data also highlight and explain how communal legacies based on home country agrarian traditions laid the groundwork for future transnational development practices. KEYWORDS Hometown associations; migration and development; migrant transnationalism Introduction Why migrants band together and what they are able to accomplish collectively has been a topic of increasing interest for migration scholars. As one of the myriad forms of migrant- led cooperative activity, contemporary hometown associations (HTAs) have garnered the attention of practitioners and academics interested on understanding how cross-border connections between migrants and their communities of origin are built, and the develop- mental gains of their communal pursuits. Debates over HTAs have flourished in the last decades with the rise of transnational migration scholarship and the discussions on the migration–development nexus. Over time, scholarly interest has focused on the factors that prompt their emergence, how home country efforts affect their evolution, their development potential, and their trans- national character (Levitt 2001; Moya 2005; Orozco and Welle 2006; Smith 2006; Fitzger- ald 2008; Lampert 2013). Less attention has been placed on understanding how past communal practices underpin contemporary transnational relationships, and the shifting power dynamics within organisational structures. That migrants come together to work on projects in home and host communities is not under debate. Nonetheless, how they are able to do so and how are responsibilities shared, established, and negotiated is still an overlooked topic. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Deepak Lamba-Nieves deepak@grupocne.org JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1366850