The Politics of Remittances: Implications for Development
Résumé
The scholarship usually distinguishes between individual and group-oriented remittances, and between social and economic remittances. A communicational approach to transnational engagement, presented in this chapter, opens the possibility to unravel these categorizations and sheds a new light on the political dimension of transfers. Two levels of political structures shape the act of remitting. On the one hand, there always are the actors already embedded into a moral economy between migrants and non-migrants. And this power relation, which informs what is transferred, evolves over time along with the integration dynamics at stake in the place of arrival. On the other hand, the implementation of structural adjustment policies has affected the balance of this power relation. Local authorities are in competition with the volunteer sector for control of development resources. In this context, migrants and their organisations are key actors of development.