Economic Effects of Remittances on Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Households

Maliha Safri

Chapter 8 in Class Struggle on the Home Front, 2009, pp 176-196 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract An approximate $297 US billion in officially recorded remittances was sent by immigrants or migrants to family members in countries of origin according to World Bank data in 2005.1 Recently, such institutions, alongside nation-states, are paying attention to various “poverty-reducing” aspects of remittances: characteristics (e.g. educational attainment) of senders and receivers, positive changes in the living standards of receiving households, etc.2 Individual countries (such as the Philippines) carefully track sending/ receiving habits of im/migrants and are particularly interested to compare official and unofficial (i.e. “illegal”) methods of sending money in order to direct more unofficial remittances through legal channels. Some researchers note that remittances have been the crucial source of foreign exchange allowing the Philippines to avert a balance of payments crisis despite a persistent trade deficit.3 Central American countries are also eager to coordinate remittances with state spending on local infrastructural projects, with Mexico designing extensive federal, state, and local programs. Competition between services used to send and receive remittances has also intensified since the mid-90s, resulting in a significant decline in remittance fees (Orozco 2006). This competition is noteworthy in that the US government (in the form of the US Post Office) has emerged as a cheap competitor of remittance services for both documented and undocumented im/migrants, beating out private capitalism in the forms of Western Union and Moneygram.

Keywords: Domestic Worker; Household Labor; Gross National Income; Class Position; Surplus Labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-24699-7_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230246997

DOI: 10.1057/9780230246997_8

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().