Transnational moral economies: The value of monetary and social remittances in transnational families

Abstract

Although migration scholars have called for studying both ends of migration, few studies have empirically done so. In this article the author analyzes ethnographic data conducted with migrant careworkers in Italy, many undocumented, and their non-migrant children in Ukraine to uncover the meanings they assign to monetary and also social remittances defined as the transfer of ideas, behaviors, and values between sending and receiving countries. The author argues that migrants and non-migrant children within transnational families produce a transnational moral economy or a set of social norms based on a shared migration discourse – in this case, either poverty or European aspirations – which governs economic and social practices in both sending and receiving sites. The author found that these contrasting transnational moral economies resulted in the production of ‘Soviet’ versus ‘capitalist’ subjectivities with consequences for migrant practices of integration in Italy, consumption practices for migrants and their non-migrant children, and for Ukraine’s nation-state building project.