1. THEORETICAL APPRAISAL: UNDERSTANDING REMITTANCES
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to new locales, and remittances funnel earnings home. In this sense remittances are an economic hedge, a way to support a household, cover expenses, and perhaps invest even as there is economic decline at the national level. Finally, although the majority of research is focused on remittances as they flow from immigrant worker to their sending households, evidence is growing for a return flow (though often not monetary) from sending households to settled immigrants (Gamburd 2008; Rose and Shaw 2008). Remittance outcomes are defined by migration practices as we noted above. But the habitus, or “the socially and culturally conditioned set of durable dispositions or propensities for certain kinds of social actions” of the sender, his or her household, community, and nation, also defines outcomes (Vertovec 2009: 66; see also Bourdieu 1977) as do the economic and political realities of the movers’ world (and these include not only the sending nation, but the destination nation as well). In other words, remittance outcomes are rooted in migration decisions. Migration decisions and outcomes are in large part, as we noted in the introduction, a reaction to violence, whether that violence is physical, economic, political, or otherwise. Migration is also influenced by the strengths and weaknesses that define the mover’s life; the advantages and disadvantages that define him or her and his or her household and community; and finally the pulls, pushes, opportunities, and costs that create global economic patterns in sending countries and countries of destination (see Åkesson 2009; Eversole 2005; Lubkemann 2005; Parreñas 2005; Schmalzbauer 2008; Stodolska and Santos 2006). A migrant’s status influences his or her remittance practices. It is important to remember that a majority of movers globally are traveling in the open, often with papers, along well-planned routes and with well-organized plans. This does not mean that migrants are free of harassment; rather, even in the best of situations, migrants face choices that can undermine outcomes. We noted that a migrant’s status infl uences remittance outcomes. So too does the way a migrant is described by his or her destination country. Migrants are recruited to jobs, some to highly skilled positions. The highly skilled migrant is likely to be welcomed into his or her destination country (Cornelius, Espenshade, and Salehyan 2001), earn well, receive benefits, and potentially support higher remittances. The unskilled migrant may find that he or she must sneak across a border, move about without documentation or with questionable documentation, and take lower-wage work with potentially far less to send home. Deciding on an internal or international destination will influence remittance practices (Trager 2005). The internal mover in a small developing nation can usually find a cohort of individuals from his or her sending region or community. Language is usually not a major problem, and differences that divide nations are not present (although see China for a very different situation). In these internal settings remittances are likely much lower, yet they are not invisible and can be critical to the strategic organization of a household’s labor. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that although the international migrant likely faces legal barriers, the internal mover does not; for some movers the sojourn to an internal destination can be destabilizing and lead to far smaller remittances.