Migrant Assemblages

Building Postsocialist Households with Kyrgyz Remittances

Bibliographic Data

ID2990907
AuthorsIgor Rubinov (corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume87
Issue1
Pages183-215
Publication date2014-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anq.2014.0006
OpenAlexW2073674048
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited66

More money now flows into developing countries from the remittances of labor migrants than from official foreign aid. To make use of these crucial inflows, migrants rely upon transnational livelihoods strategies to allocate remittances. Remittance practices support individual needs and communal reciprocities by engaging a site of inter-household collaboration. While recent theories of transnational migration situate households prominently within these practices, ethnographic research in Kyrgyzstan reveals that households do not make use of remittances on their own. Communal practices span households by employing relations of debt, reciprocity, and trust. This article seeks to bridge the development literature focused on transnational livelihoods with an anthropological attunement to the social reciprocity of remittances. The resulting assemblages require constant upkeep while exposing social obligations to distortion and normative change

Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Ethnography · Geography · Livelihood · Normative · Political science · Precarity · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) · Remittance · Social science · Sociology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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