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Sending Money Home: Women’s Stories of Money and Migration

Sending Money Home: Women’s Stories of Money and Migration. Supriya Singh Supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au Presentation at the BRI Seminar RMIT Business Melbourne 9 May 2005. Main Themes. Seeing remittances as transnational family money , reaffirming the boundaries of the family unit;

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Sending Money Home: Women’s Stories of Money and Migration

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  1. Sending Money Home: Women’s Stories of Money and Migration Supriya Singh Supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au Presentation at the BRI Seminar RMIT Business Melbourne 9 May 2005

  2. Main Themes • Seeing remittances as transnational family money, reaffirming the boundaries of the family unit; • Focus on women’s remittances, power and status in the transnational and nuclear family; • Making place for domestic/public relationships within the discussion of globalization and diasporas – connecting the personal and the social; • Using family as a dominant metaphor to chart diasporic relationships; • Multiple migrations shift attention from the homeland and the diaspora to relationship between nodes of the diaspora.

  3. The Personal Experience of Money, Family and Diaspora • Born in India, migrated to Malaysia and then to Australia; • Children born in Malaysia and one son lives in Australia; • Have one sister resident in the US but too-ing and fro-ing to India; • Have a sister and extended family in India; • Nephew in US and now in Singapore.

  4. Workers’ Remittances, 2003 Mexico US$ 13.2 billion India US$ 8.4 billion Philippines US$ 8.0 billion ………. China US$ 2.4 billion Informal money transfers can account for 15 to 80 per cent of the true amount of remittances. Global Development Finance, 2004; Buencamino and Gorbunov, 2002

  5. Factors Influencing Remittances • Temporary migrants send more; • Recent migrants with families left behind; • Unskilled workers send a larger share of their income; • Women remit more of their income; • Earning power in the host country; • Cheaper ways of sending money; • Some money moving to official channels because of anti money-laundering legislation; • Export of professional and business services.

  6. Impact of Remittances • Second only to foreign direct investment; • Increases foreign exchange balances; • Reduces poverty at the regional and local economies; • Change in attitude to the value of NRIs; • Setting up of an NRI ministry, NRI cities; India fairs for NRIs; proposals for separate courts to deal with NRI property disputes and marriages.

  7. Sending Money Home • The family is the domestic financial unit; • Remittances occur mostly with first generation migrants; • Changes because of increasing individualism in the parental and children’s generations; • Lessening of the wealth gap between parents and children. Un

  8. A Research Agenda • Connecting remittances to money cultures. Exploring the characteristics of transnational family money vs local family money; • Gender, migration, family and the meanings of money; • Globalization as a domestic phenomenon. Rethinking diasporas as a relationship between nodes rather than between the centre and the periphery; • The congruence of media and money networks.

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