Introduction: Theorizing Remittances — Social Positioning and the Making of Migrant Subjectivity

Abstract

Remittances connect migrants to their homelands, manifest cross-border relations, and shape the transnational social field. By doing so, they have a transformative effect on both the place of origin and the destination. Their power to change individual lives trajectories, household conditions, and community infrastructure results from structural inequality in the transnational field. Thus, while generally considered an improvement, remittances also project the global divide into personal relationships and reproduce neocolonial structures. These asymmetries are negotiated through scripts which give meaning to financial and social transactions and assign a social position to the senders and recipients. More than constituting ways of being and belonging, remittances are also ways of becoming. This chapter aims to theorize remittances by exploring the forms of social positioning that accompany remittance scripts and the making of migrant subjectivity.