From social to intangible remittances: Toward a comprehensive framework of remittances

Janine Isabelle Pinkow-Läpple and Judith Möllers

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2025, vol. 13, No 70, 21 pages

Abstract: Levitt’s ground-breaking concept of social remittances has inspired many empirical studies in migration research, yet its theoretical underpinnings remain relatively underdeveloped. Most fundamentally, the interpretations of what social remittances are have multiplied, posing the risk of reducing the term to little more than a catchphrase. To address this issue, this paper undertakes a systematic review of various conceptualisations of social remittances. We identify four primary areas of divergence within the existing literature on social remittances: the scope of the concept, i.e. the delineation of its boundaries, the underlying process of how social remittances are acquired and transferred, the spatial dimension of these transfers, particularly their direction, and the classification of subtypes of social remittances. Taking this as our starting point, we propose advancing Levitt’s original concept towards what we will term intangible remittances. Our advanced concept accounts for the multidimensionality of intangible remittances and provides essential clarifications in terms of delineation and terminology. Additionally, we put forward a fine-grained typology of different subtypes of intangible remittances, categorising them based on their content (that might be economic, environmental, political, or socio-cultural) and form (knowledge, normative structures, or practices). In summary, we provide a comprehensive framework of intangible remittances that not only integrates other emerging concepts, such as political remittances but also seamlessly aligns with the broader superordinate concept of remittances.

Keywords: intangible remittances; social remittances; theory; conceptual framework; typology; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/325314/1/P ... ible_remittances.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:325314

DOI: 10.1186/s40878-025-00484-6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().