Transnational Family Money: Remittances, Gifts and Inheritance

Abstract

In this paper we use the case study of professional Indian migrants in Australia to explore how family remittances function as a special kind of transnational family money. We draw on qualitative research to examine how gender significantly shapes remittances and gifts as well as inheritance in the transnational family. Transnational family money is continuous with family money in India in that money flows both ways between parents and children. Remittances and gifts differ from family money in two significant ways. First, geographic distance creates a disjuncture in the perceptions of the value and ease of earning money between remitters and the recipients. Second, money and gifts sent are seen as a medium of caring, but the money and gifts received are seen as less valuable when weighed against the physical care that is being delivered by others in the family in the home country. Our study places remittances, gifts and other forms of transnational financial negotiations within frameworks of the sociology of money and care, contributing to the cross-cultural study of money and care in the transnational family.

Transnational mobilities of Australia-educated and domiciled professional migrants from Vietnam

“…Transnational mobilities are also fashioned by communal practices, as well as family conditions and traditions (e.g. Biao, 2005Biao, & 2007Singh, Robertson, & Cabraal, 2012;Yeoh & Willis, 2005a). In this sense, transnational mobilities are seen as migrants' negotiations of their complex relations to the world, rather than brain flows, unanchored by affections and emotions.…”

“…Apart from a few exceptions that explore migrants' uses of things in relation to other people (e.g. Baas, 2006;Robertson, 2008;Singh, Robertson, & Cabraal, 2012;Yeoh et al, 2013), most studies examine migrants' relations with things in isolation. However, the latter perspective can limit understandings of how things are possibly related to each other and to other people in constituting transnational mobilities.…”

“…For example, Singh, Robertson and Cabraal's (2012) research on professional Indian migrants in Australia shows that while remittances and gifts are an expression of caring, they have less weight than physical care. In this sense, transnational flows of money are used to fulfil migrants' obligations and families' expectations of care, enabling them to reproduce family relationships through transnational spaces.…”

“…Conradson and Mckay (2007) have emphasised that emotions as the 36 "felt dimensions" are inseparable from mobilities, as migrants are always embedded in relations with other people, events and things, whether these constellations are geographically proximate or distant, and "located in the present or past" (p. 167). Skilled migrants may experience fidelity and commitment towards families, friends and communities, or guilt when they are unable to fulfil communal or familial obligations (Biao, 2005(Biao, & 2007Robertson, 2011a;Singh, Robertson, & Cabraal, 2012;Yeoh & Willis, 2005a woman was refused to go back to her country to attend a family funeral, making her feel guilty and sad. Therefore, emotions should not be seen as a "convenient and occasional resource" that researchers can call upon to explain events that migrants encounter, but a "constitutive part" of migrants' experiences of mobilities (Skrbiš, 2008, p. 236).…”

“…At a micro-level, migrants live their lives in relation to other people such as families and friends. They may employ various strategies for relocation, influenced not only by family members, but also by socio-economic, cultural and political conditions in both home and host societies (see Baas, 2010;Biao, 2007;Robertson, 2008;Singh, Robertson, & Cabraal, 2012).…”