The Social Dimension of Sending Remittances

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Introduction

The social impact of remittances is a very important area of research and discussion within academia and in the wider world. What is the effect of remittances on the senders, the receivers and the wider communities in which both sides live?

This essay will attempt to address the issue of the social dimension of remittances by analysing the debate on this issues through a number of examples of both the sender experience and the receiver experience. In this way we are able to get a better picture of the power of remittances from a social context and what it means to both sides.

Remittances

Migrants remitted $338 billion globally in 2009 (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves, 2). In the past 30 years studies into remittances have increased greatly. This has enabled us to learn a great deal about who, why and how people send remittances. There are numerous questions that must be addressed to further our understanding of this important area including:

- What motivates the sender to remit money?

- What are the expectations of the receivers?

- What are the obligations of sending and receiving remittances

- What is the impact of the remittances sent?

This essay will address these themes using examples in studies and research carried over the past few years. However I will also use my own experience as a remitter to show how this process effects myself and those I remit to in Yemen.

The motivations for remitting money back to the country of origin are many depending on the person remitting. One of the main reasons to send remittances is to support family back in the home country who may be unable to earn a living. What is clear is that for the majority of migrants this is the reason they left their home countries in the firs...

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...olitical Dimensions of Individual and Collective Remittances, University of York.

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IOM (2007) Financial and Social Dimension to Remitting [Online] available from http://www.innovativefinance-oslo.no/pop.cfm?FuseAction=Doc&pAction=View&pDocumentId=11790 [accessed] on Friday 22nd November 2013.

Datta el al (2006) Challenging remittances as the new development mantra, Queen Mary University of London.

Vargas-Silver (2013) Migrant remittances to and from the UK [Online] http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migrant-remittances-and-uk [accessed] on Thursday 21st November 2013].

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