Migrant remittances and transnational ties: care, social change and development across borders

MIGREM aims to highlight the implications, meanings and functions of migrant remittances in transnational social fields. Migrant remittances represent a lens to study several crucial sociological questions, at the macro, meso and micro level, and their implications: the link between migrations and socio-economic development; family, gender and intergenerational relations; transnational social protection and welfare; social meanings, functions and implications of money; new lines of social stratification, inequality and social innovation; life styles and consumption patterns. The project furthermore aims at contributing to evidence-based public and policy discussions on migration, allowing a better understanding of the capacity of migrants to mobilize tangible and intangible resources for the benefit of their families and communities. From a methodological point of view, the study will combine: a) A national survey on migrants’ remittances (2,000 questionnaires, administered through vis à vis interviews). The sample will be stratified by gender, family structure, legal status, origin, time of settlement. Mediators will be hired to facilitate contacts with the interviewees and understanding of the questions. The questionnaire will analyse remittance behaviours and attitudes, with reference to senders and recipients, gender, amount, regularity of sending, meanings and functions of remittances. Collective remittances, or attitudes towards them, will be also considered. b) Case studies or transnational ethnographies on both sides of remittance flows. Each unit will further investigate via qualitative methods other aspects of remittances: family care circulation and family ties (Milan); moral economies and societal consequences of remittances (Trento); developmental use of remittances (Parma); cognitive remittances and high skilled migrations (Pisa); migrants associations, collective remittances and co-development (Florence). c) Each research unit will pay attention to the “remittance industry” that facilitates remittances circulation, on all scales from informal facilitators to formal remittance agencies. Beyond academic achievements (at least 10 scientific articles and an edited book), from the point of view of the social impact, the project aims, as a first goal, at rising awareness about the issue in the Italian society and political system as a way to deepen understanding of migrants and their capacities. The second social aim of the project will consist in a campaign to reduce the costs of remittances, involving migrants’ associations, pro-immigrant actors, financial institutions, public powers. The third social aim of the project focuses on collective remittances, migrants’ associations and co-development. The project will raise the attention towards this dimension of development policies, supporting the search for better ways to channel migrants’ remittances towards projects of economic and social development of sending communities.