Migrant remittances and household development: an anthropological analysis

Abstract

Over the past decade, influxes of remittances from overseas workers, mostly sent to families back home, have begun to attract policy and scholarly attention for their potential development impacts. This article seeks to answer the question: What is the development impact of these remittances for the households that receive them with reference to field data from remittancereceiving households in the Philippines. Recognising that different 'development logics' inform different understandings of development, this article analyses field data on migrant remittances with reference to three common sets of development logics: economic development, social development and sustainable livelihoods. It then dialogues and extends these findings with qualitative data on the way remittance-receiving households themselves understand the role of migrant remittances. An anthropological approach brings these different logics into dialogue, illustrating the complexity of households' quest for economic, social and livelihood outcomes, and the need to understand the contexts that influence their ability to meet their development goals at home and abroad.

Remittances and morality: family obligations, development, and the ethical demands of migration

“…As Faist (2010) and other authors remark (e.g. de Haas 2007;Carling 2014;Eversole and Johnson 2014), much of the nature of academic assessments of the 'impact' of remittancespositive/optimistic or negative/pessimisticdepend on whether scholars question or take for granted the broader epistemological and structural assumptions permeating policy-oriented research and initiatives. For de Haas (2007), researchers and policy makers may 'tend to project their own norms, preferences and expectations-for instance, on appropriate styles of consumption, housing and investments-onto the communities and societies that they study ' (2007:2).…”

Beyond family: Separation and reunification for young people negotiating transnational relationships

“…These studies often reflect cost-benefit analyses of parent-child separation without questioning the constructed nature of kinship and the dynamic ways kinship is practiced and altered across cultural contexts and during the life course. In this literature, it is often agreed that remittances can help families cope with economic precarity by enabling family members to purchase household goods, secure land and better housing, invest in microbusiness, and support children’s education (Asis and Ruiz-Marave, 2013; Basa et al, 2011; Eversole and Johnson, 2014; Fujii, 2015; Porio, 2007). Yet, these researchers argue that children endure psychosocial consequences as they grow up without one or both parents; parental emigration can provoke unhappiness, loneliness, social isolation, and poor guardianship (Graham and Jordan, 2011).…”

Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research

“…They may also be under heavy pressure to send money to kin or friends in the departure country or in refugee camps, which limits the amount they can invest in their own socio-economic integration in the new country (Lindley 2010;Hammond 2011). They may, for instance, find themselves forced to engage in lowpaying and exploitative work rather than continuing their education because the risk of losing income is too great when they need to send money regularly (Humphries et al 2009;Eversole and Johnson 2014). Asylum seekers may also expect to establish long-term relations of dependence with the volunteers and reception centre workers whom they see regularly (World Relief 2017; EURITA 2019).…”