Money Migration And Family

This book tells the story of nearly five decades of Indian migration to Australia from the late 1960s to 2015, through the eyes of migrants and their families. Firstly, there is the marked increase of Indian migrants, shifting from the earlier professionals to a dominance of student-migrants. The India-born in Australia are the fourth largest overseas born group. Secondly, remittances flow two ways in families between Australia and India. Thirdly, family communication across borders has become instantaneous and frequent, changing the experience of migration, family and money. Fourthly, mobility replaces the earlier assumption of settlement. Recent migrants hope to settle, but the large group who have come to study face a long period of precarious mobility. Lastly, recent migrants re-imagine the joint family in Australia, buying homes to accommodate siblings and parents. This is changing the contours of some major cities in Australia.

This book provides a fresh perspective on the understanding of transnational families by examining the one-child generation of Chinese migrants who came to the UK to study, and their parents, who remain in China.

This book is about transnational migration (familiarly called “bushfalling”) and remittance flows to Cameroon. With the current dire economic state, Cameroonians increasingly aspire to go abroad to make a living. Migrants achieve this through a collective (family) strategy and with the help of migration brokers. Relations between migrants and the family that stays in Cameroon can be characterized as follows: Families raise and educate their children to become adults. In return to giving their children the “gift of life”, families expect reciprocity, best secured through economic success abroad and the sending of remittances by migrants. As families in Cameroon heavily contribute to the funding of migration trajectories, often by selling properties such as land or houses or borrowing money, they also expect a return on their investments. All that constitutes this study explores under the notion of the moral economy of transnational remittances. In this study, remittances are understood to be a composite of financial, material, and cultural flows—maintaining and transforming social and kinship ties. The book proposes also a large exploration of themes in relation to transnational migration: why and how Cameroonians migrate (the role of the operational family in terms of decision and funding; the role of migration brokers through the identification of “lines” and the provision of the necessary papers); the moral justification for migration; the ways social relations and customs are changed by status gained through migration; the ways people explain the failure of migration projects, the difficulties to stay abroad; the matrimonial strategies to go and stay abroad. This is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study that takes thinking on transnational migration informed by African strategies and experiences a step further.

This handbook offers an analysis of Asian diaspora and development, and explores the role that immigrants living within diasporic and transnational communities play in the development of their host countries and their homeland. Bringing together an array of interdisciplinary scholars from across the world, the handbook is divided into the following sections: • Development Potential of Asian Diasporas • Diaspora, Homeland, and Development • Gender, Generation, and Identities • Soft Power, Mobilization, and Development • Media, Culture, and Representations. Presenting cutting-edge research on several dimensions of diaspora and development, Routledge Handbook of Asian Diaspora and Development provides a platform for further discussion in the fields of migration studies, diaspora studies, transnational studies, race relations, ethnic studies, gender studies, globalization, Asian studies, and research methods.

In recent years, a large number of Ethiopians are travelling to various countries as labour migrants. The Republic of South Africa and the oil-rich Gulf countries have emerged as major destinations for many documented as well as undocumented Ethiopian labour migrants. The majority of the migrants send a substantial amounts of money back to the country for different purposes. Out of this, the largest share comes through ‘informal’ channels, bypassing banks and other money transfer institutions. The use of informal means of money transfer is problematic as it does often violate government financial regulations, both in the sending and receiving countries. In addition, the use of informal channels denies the country valuable foreign exchange income. This monograph examines the various channels that Ethiopian labour migrants in the Republic of South Africa and the Middle East use to send remittance money to their families; and the respective advantages and drawbacks thereof. It also looks at how remittance money is utilised by receiving families and its socio-economic impacts.

The contributors investigate the inter-relationships between migrant remittances and the family in Asia. They argue that, in the context of Asian transnational labour migration where remittances tend to become a primary currency of care, the making or breaking of the family unit is mainly contingent on how individuals handle remittance processes.

By linking the experiences of immigrant families with the increased reliance on cheap and flexible workers for care and domestic work in Southern Europe, this study documents the lived experiences of neglected actors of globalization - migrant women - as well as the transformations of Western families more generally. However, while describing in detail the structural and cultural contexts within which these women have to operate, the book questions dominant paradigms about women as passive victims of patriarchal structures and brings out instead their agency and the creative ways in which they take control of their lives in often difficult circumstances. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, the author offers a valuable dual comparison between two Southern European countries on the one hand and between two migrant groups, one Christian and one Muslim, on the other, thus bringing to light unique detailed data on migration decision-making, settlement and on the multiple ways in which different women cope with the consequences of their transnational lives. Elisabetta Zontini was a Visiting Fellow at the International Gender Studies Centre at Oxford University and a Research Fellow in the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group at London South Bank University. She has published a number of ethnographic articles and book chapters on gender and migration in Southern Europe and is now Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham.

"Based on research with transnational families in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and North America, Writing for Love and Money tells the story of how families separated across borders write--and learn new ways of writing--in pursuit of love and money"--