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Social Remittances Revisited
Peggy Levitt
a b
& Deepak Lamba-Nieves
c d
a
Sociology, Wellesley College
b
Transnational Studies Initiative, Harvard University
c
Department of Urban Studies and Planning, The Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
d
Center for the New Economy, Puerto Rico
Version of record first published: 05 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Peggy Levitt & Deepak Lamba-Nieves (2011): Social Remittances Revisited,
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37:1, 1-22
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Social Remittances Revisited
Peggy Levitt and Deepak Lamba-Nieves
In this article we revisit the concept of social remittances. First, we show how people’s
experiences before migrating strongly influence what they do in the countries where they
settle; this, in turn, affects what they remit back to their homelands. Second, just as
scholars differentiate between individual and collective economic remittances, we also
distinguish between individual and collective social remittances. While individuals
communicate ideas and practices to each other in their roles as friends, family members
or neighbours, they also communicate in their capacity as organisational actors, which
has implications for organisational management and capacity-building. Finally, we
argue that social remittances can scale up from local-level impacts to affect regional and
national change and scale out to affect other domains of practice.
Keywords: Social Remittances; Transnational Migration; Immigration; Globalisation;
Remittances; Development
Introduction
Despite decades of scholarship, the jury is still out on the relationship between
migration and development (Newland 2007). Migrants from the developing world
bring labour, skills and know-how to the countries where they settle, while
continuing to contribute to development in their countries of origin by sending
remittances, investing in businesses, introducing knowledge and skills and contributing
to charity (de Haas 2006; Ruttan 2008). But not everything is rosy. In some
cases, migration also heightens economic dependency and inequality, creates
unrealistic expectations for a standard of living that is unsustainable on its own,
and exacerbates conflicts between competing and increasingly unequal groups.
Clearly, migration’s impact varies by country and group, over time, and according to
whether remittances are used individually or collectively.
Peggy Levitt is Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College and Co-Director of the Transnational Studies
Initiative, Harvard University. Correspondence to: Prof. P. Levitt, Dept of Sociology, Wellesley College, 106
Central Street, Wellesley MA, 02481, USA. E-mail: plevitt@wellesley.edu. Deepak Lamba-Nieves is Doctoral
Candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
a Non-Resident Senior Scholar at the Center for the New Economy in Puerto Rico. E-mail: deepakln@mit.edu
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Vol. 37, No. 1, January 2011, pp. 1Á22
ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/11/010001-22 # 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2011.521361
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Most debates about migration and development privilege the economic at the
expense of the social. Migrant remittances and philanthropic transfers amount to
US$338 billion a year globally*nearly twice the amount of official development
assistance (World Bank 2009). International aid agencies and governments are hard
at work designing policies to tap into and purposefully channel these resources
(Wilmaladharma et al. 2004). Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that many
scholars and policy-makers hail remittances as the next development panacea
(Orozco 2002; Ratha 2005).
But economics is not the whole story. Culture permeates all aspects of the
development enterprise*as a challenge and an opportunity. Migrants carry ideas,
practices and narratives which enable mobility and different forms of membership
and belonging. Culture also strongly influences how development goals are
established, the policies put in place to achieve them, and how successfully they
are achieved. By privileging the economic, researchers and policy-makers overlook an
important potential aid and/or barrier to project success (Rao and Woolcock 2007).
By treating culture as a residual value, or by suggesting that it cannot be studied
scientifically, we also risk promoting policies that fail to take into account key aspects
of the social worlds we hope to improve (Lamont and Small 2008).
This article is part of recent efforts to bring culture back into migration debates.
Doing so requires not only looking at the ‘migration of culture’ (or religion, ideas,
political attitudes and artistic practices) but also seeing migration as a cultural act.
Because migrants’ identities and actions are rich in cultural and social meaning,
focusing solely on their social networks, positions or activities comes up short. It is
not when or that these practices or identities may be cultural but rather that they are
inherently cultural.
We enter this conversation by revisiting the concept of social remittances. First, we
argue that people’s experiences prior to migration strongly influence what they do in
the countries where they settle; this, in turn, affects what they remit back to their
homelands, which becomes clear when we analyse migration through a transnational
lens. The ideas and practices migrants bring with them actively shape who and what
they encounter in the countries where they move, which then shapes what they send
back. In the case of the Dominican towns of Boca Canasta and Villa Sombrero*the
empirical cases on which we base our argument*migrants arrive with a keen interest
in sport, a long history of active community organisation, a robust track record in
participatory democracy and a strong sense of responsibility to the collective good.
These values and practices affect how they interact with the broader community in
the US, what they are exposed to and adopt there, and what they ultimately export to
their communities in the Dominican Republic.
Second, just as scholars differentiate between individual and collective economic
remittances (Goldring 2004), we also find it useful to distinguish between individual
and collective social remittances, i.e. between social remittances exchanged and
deployed by individuals and those that circulate and are harnessed in collective,
organisational settings. While individuals communicate ideas and practices to each
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other in their roles as friends, family members or neighbours, they also communicate
in their capacity as members of a hometown association (HTA), political party or
church. These collective social remittances not only strongly affect what organisations
do but also how they do it. In particular, they affect ideas about organisational
management, capacity-building, what development and progress mean and how
communities know when they have achieved them.
Finally, we describe the potential for social remittance impact to scale up and scale
out: not only do social remittances affect local-level organisational culture and
practice, they can also influence regional and national changes. Social remittances
which affect politics can also ‘scale out’ to influence other domains of practice such as
religion and economics. Moreover, individual and collective social remittances also
strongly influence the way organised groups relate to state structures and foment
‘stateÁsociety synergies’ (Evans 1996).
Revisiting Social Remittances
In a 1998 paper and subsequently in The Transnational Villagers (2001), Levitt coined
the term social remittances to call attention to the fact that, in addition to money,
migrants export ideas and behaviours back to their sending communities. She
observed four types of social remittance*norms, practices, identities and social
capital*that circulated between the Dominican Republic and Boston in the USA.
Social remittance exchanges occur when migrants return to live in or visit their
communities of origin, when non-migrants visit those in the receiving country, or
through the exchange of letters, videos, cassettes, e-mails, blog posts and telephone
calls. They are distinct from, but often reinforce and are reinforced by, other forms of
global cultural circulation.
While the idea of social remittances has gained some traction in the literature, it is
not without critics. They argue that the ‘social’ should also include the ‘cultural’ and
that social remittances do not just move in one direction. They also caution against
seeing social remittances as always positive. We agree. However, to study how social
remittances travel and to evaluate their impact, researchers have to look in one place
at one point in time. While this methodological imperative can unintentionally
suggest that ideas and practices travel only one way, they do, in fact, circulate
continuously. What migrants bring and continue to receive from their homelands
affects their experiences in the countries where they settle. This, in turn, affects what
they send back to non-migrants who either disregard or adopt these ideas and
behaviours, transforming them in the process, and eventually re-remitting them back
to migrants who adopt and transform them once again.
Understanding how social remittances travel requires a transnational optic
(Khagram and Levitt 2007). This does not mean that everything or everyone actively
crosses borders all the time. It simply means that the analysis needs to take into
account the possibility that migration takes place within a transnational social field.
Looking only at dynamics in the home or host country is necessarily incomplete,
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although the extent to which migrants and non-migrants actually engage in crossborder
activities is an empirical question.
Much research on migration artificially distinguishes between immigrant assimilation
and social mobility in a host country and migrants’ continuing engagement and
mobility vis-a`-vis their homelands (Bean and Stevens 2003; Kasinitz et al. 2008). It
also focuses too much on the economic at the expense of the socio-cultural. When
culture is taken into consideration, it is usually with respect to the socio-cultural
impact of remittance flows. We learn little about what travels, how and why, or about
what determines the impact of these journeys. In the remainder of this section, we
selectively summarise key findings about how culture affects the migrationÁ
development nexus, paying particular attention to work on social remittances.
Social relations clearly affect economic transfers (Cohen 2004; Portes et al. 2002).
Migrants often send remittances as a form of social insurance (Bryceson and Vuorela
2002). They choose strategically which connections to emphasise and which to let
slide, based on what they anticipate their future needs will be. Kurien (2008) observed
striking differences in how remittances were used in the three Indian villages she
studied. Migrants from the Muslim village distributed their money to a large circle of
community members, Hindus spent large sums on life-cycle rituals and, in the
Christian village, remittances supported family expenses, including saving money for
dowries and education.
The lion’s share of the research on migration and development focuses on how
economic remittances affect social outcomes. That knowledge and skills are also
transferred is implicit but not fully explored. Remittances generally increase
investments in human capital in countries of origin, particularly in health and
education, although measuring their impact is difficult and context specific (de Haas
2007; United Nations Development Programme 2009).
The outcomes of these social and economic transfers are mixed. In her study of the
behavioural changes underlying the relationship between remittances and lower
infant mortality, Frank (2005) found that Mexican women with international migrant
partners had significantly lower rates of smoking and higher levels of exercise, and
were more likely to gain enough weight during pregnancy than their counterparts
with partners in Mexico. However, they were also less likely to exclusively breastfeed
their babies. Frank concludes that, while migration influences maternal behaviour in
Mexico, it is not always positive. Lindstrom and Mun˜oz-Franco (2005) found that
rural Guatemalan women with relatives living in urban areas or abroad were more
likely to know more about contraception than women without migrant relatives but
that the relationship was stronger for those with urban rather than international ties.
Visiting and return migrants were also efficient disseminators of information and
influenced behaviour more strongly than traditional public education and media
programmes.
Migration and remittances also influence norms of marriage and fertility. Using
time-series data, Fargues (2006) found that birth rates and migrant remittances in
Morocco, Turkey and Egypt were strongly correlated, but in different ways. In
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Morocco and Turkey, birth rates went down with remittance increases because
migrants went to Europe, where they came into contact with European values about
smaller family size. In contrast, birth rates in Egypt rose because most migrants went
to the Gulf, where family values were more conservative (Social Science Research
Council 2009). Health effects are mediated by a range of factors. Donato’s recent
(2008) comparison of the health status of children in Mexican migrant, non-migrant
and returnee households found that girls who stayed in the US experienced greater
improvements in health than did boys, but the effect reversed if the children returned
to Mexico.
How immigration affects educational outcomes also varies. Remittances generate
more money for education (Durand et al. 1996; Lo´pez-Cordova 2005) so that poor
families can keep their children in school longer. At the same time, children in areas
of high out-migration are more likely to migrate themselves (de Haas 2007; Massey
and Zenteno 1999) and to leave before completing school (Durand et al. 2001).
Because most Mexican migrants to the US are employed in low-skilled jobs, more
schooling does not automatically translate into gains in the workforce. Kandel and
Kao (2001) found, in their study of children in Zacatecas, Mexico, that those living in
homes from which people have migrated are less likely to express a desire to go to
college than children in non-migrant homes. Furthermore, while, in the long run,
migration generates more income for education, in the short term it reduces
resources. Nobles (2008) found that Mexican families with emigrant fathers spent less
money on children’s education in the years right after migration although, eventually,
children in migrant communities performed equally well or better in school.
How migration affects gender and class stratification has also been a major focus of
research. According to de Haas (2007), because migration is itself selective,
remittances generally go to specific social groups within particular communities.
They challenge inequality by changing tastes, values and social norms but, again, the
outcomes are mixed. Migration may reinforce traditional gender norms (Donnan
and Werbner 1991; Gardner 1995) or improve education and autonomy for nonmigrant
women (Banerjee and Jayachandran 2002; Osella and Osella 2000).
Dannecker (2005) found that Bangladeshi labour migrants introduced sexist images
and ideas but also strengthened women’s networks. Both Murphy (2008) and Taborga
(2008) argue that the benefits of migration-driven women’s empowerment are
contingent and often contradictory.
Studies of the political impacts of migration also produce a mixed profile.
Itzigsohn and Villacre´s concluded that Dominican and Salvadoran migrants will
not deepen democracy or economic transformation. ‘Either because their interests
are focused on participating in the politics of the society of reception or because the
resources that they command make immigrants part of local elites, they are not the
force that would challenge the current system that perpetuates exclusion’ (2008: 683).
Context clearly matters, however. Commenting on the influence of non-resident
Indians over Indian economic policy, Kapur writes, ’[t]he structural position and
social embeddedness of the Indian diaspora and returning migrants enhances the
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diffusion of ideas, and it appears likely that even more than financial remittances,
‘‘social remittances’’ (or the flow of ideas) are playing an important role in reshaping
India’s economic policies’ (2004: 367). According to Kapur (2008), migrants reshape
politics through three channels of departure, return and involvement from afar*
changing the balance of power among different social groups, championing or
thwarting policy initiatives, and weakening or strengthening political institutions.
Migration also affects politics by influencing cultural orientations and social
norms. Much work in this vein focuses on professional, high-skilled migrants. These
are the ‘technopols’ studied by Dominguez (1997), who promoted the democratic
transition in Latin America, and the ‘Chicago Boys’, who studied at the University of
Chicago and spearheaded neoliberalism in Chile (Barber 1995). Migration affects
political life by influencing cultural orientations and social norms. In his study of the
political attitudes of migrants returning to the Philippines from six countries of
settlement, Rother (2009) found that migration sometimes leads to a more critical
stance toward homeland politics but also resulted in less support for democratic
principles, depending on where the migrant had settled.
Again, the impact is not always positive. Several studies find that migration affects
development because it gives rise to consumption-oriented strategies of upward
mobility and new aspirations among youth (Charsley 2005; Levitt 2001) Young
people, who can migrate, are less likely to invest in local institutions and more likely
to choose occupations that will help them succeed once they move. As a result, there
is less labour and brainpower with which to build institutions at home and the
country’s human capital base can grow weaker (Kapur and McHale 2005). A recent
study of how migration affects five major sending countries confirms the ambiguous
nature of social remittance impact. In countries like India, Morocco and Turkey,
migration introduced attitudes and skills conducive to change which favourably
affected development. Nevertheless, the very success of migration hindered development
because non-migrants became convinced that migration involved few risks and
high benefits and were, therefore, more likely to leave (Castles and Miller 2009).
When more-educated individuals migrate there is also less pressure for reform,
because the very people who migrate are those the most equipped to speak out and
exercise ‘voice’.
Migration can also strengthen religious identities (Ahmad 2005; Osella and Osella
2007; Rajagopal 1997) or increase violence. Pakistanis and Yemenis*who migrated
to Afghanistan to fight and then returned*are said to bring back new ideas and skills
which encourage violence, while gang members of Central American origin*who get
deported from the United States*are also seen as importing a culture of violence and
crime back to their countries of origin (Kapur 2008).
All in all, argues de Haas (2007), migration and remittances seem to be
transformative rather than disruptive, but it is quite difficult to disentangle their
effects from broader social change processes. The growing body of work on social
remittance impact generally focuses on transfers of ideas and resources between
individuals and their impact on families and households. How social remittances are
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deployed collectively in organisational settings, and their impact on institutionbuilding
and governance, are not well understood. Moreover, much of the research
on idea and skill transfers focuses on professional rather than labour migrants. It
considers countries of origin and settlement as isolated developments rather than as
two sites in an interconnected social field.
Methods and Context
This article is based on nearly 20 years of research in a Dominican community
spanning Boston and the Dominican Republic that Levitt described in The
Transnational Villagers. She continues to do fieldwork with community members
in the US and her most recent visit to the Dominican Republic was in 2004. In
January 2009, Lamba-Nieves began working in the same community of Boca
Canasta1
and the neighbouring village of Villa Sombrero. He is also studying
Dominicans in New York as part of a larger project on migrant associations and
stateÁsociety relations. Lamba-Nieves conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with
residents of these two communities living in the US. Most of his respondents are past
and present members of the Movimiento para el Desarrollo de Boca Canasta
(Modebo) and the Sociedad Progresista de Villa Sombrero (Soprovis), the HTAs in
these two communities. He also interviewed city government officials, consular
representatives and other community leaders, and spent many hours at baseball
games, committee meetings and fundraising events. In June 2009, he spent four
weeks in Boca Canasta and Villa Sombrero, where he completed 20 semi-structured
interviews with community members, elected officials, political leaders and HTA
members and directors. As in the US, he attended meetings, community events and
celebrations, where he could note the similarities, differences and continuous
interactions between community members at home and abroad.
Most of the HTA members interviewed are directly involved in the management of
the associations’ chapters and sit on the Board of Directors. Membership in both
groups is broadly defined, but also varies slightly by chapter. Generally, anyone who
makes a contribution or attends an activity is considered an HTA member, but only a
select group serves actively on the Board. These leaders, both male and female, are
well known and respected in the community and maintain active transnational ties.
They are also likely to be involved in more than one community organisation and to
have political contacts. HTA leaders in the US are almost exclusively first-generation
migrants with varying occupational profiles and migratory statuses.
Boca Canasta and Villa Sombero are neighbouring, semi-urban communities
located in the southern region of the Dominican Republic, in the Province of Peravia.
According to the 2002 Dominican Census of Population and Housing, the total
population of Boca Canasta was 3,020, while 6,251 resided in Villa Sombrero. Census
figures also indicated that over 35 per cent of the households in Boca Canasta had at
least one family member living abroad. The figure for Villa Sombrero is close to
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12 per cent. These same proportions are evidenced when analysing the number of
households that receive money from abroad on a regular basis.2
Social remittances are produced and consumed in a highly developed, fairly stable
transnational social field. According to the 2002 Dominican Census, nearly 10 per
cent of Dominican households have members living abroad. According to the InterAmerican
Development Bank, there were approximately 2 million Dominican adults
residing outside the country in 2004 (IDB 2004). While most settle along the Eastern
seaboard of the US, there are also significant numbers living in Spain, Switzerland,
Italy and Germany. In 2007, Dominican government tallies showed that remittances
totalled over 3 billion dollars*or 8.3 per cent of the country’s GDP*and were the
second-largest source of foreign income after tourism (Banco Central de la Repu´blica
Dominicana 2008)
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Dominican state largely ignored its emigrants
despite their increasing contribution to the national economy. The state’s response
changed dramatically during the 1990s as a more democratic political environment
flourished. Important constitutional amendments were passed during this period,
including the extension of dual citizenship in 1994. Three years later, and after Leonel
Ferna´ndez was elected, the right to vote was extended to Dominicans abroad
(although, due to the high cost, it was not actually implemented until 2004).
Ferna´ndez has been quite responsive to the emigrant community (having spent much
of his childhood in New York), proactively enacting policies and programmes that
support transnational social ties and the involvement of migrant populations in
political affairs at home and abroad.
Recent efforts include the creation of Consultative Councils for Dominicans
Abroad (CCDA) in cities around the world where there is a large presence of
Dominicans. The Councils are designed to integrate emigrants into national policy
discussions. The government also supported the creation of a National Council for
Dominican Communities Abroad (known in Spanish as CONDEX) to serve as the
official platform for dialogue between the Dominican state and the migrant
communities. In October 2009, as part of a constitutional overhaul, the National
Assembly approved the establishment of seven legislative seats for representatives
from the overseas community, who will be elected every four years starting in 2012.
Nevertheless, due to funding constraints, many of these efforts have stalled. The
Dominican state has demonstrated its commitment to include migrants in the policymaking
process but the impact of these policies, nationally and locally, remains to be
seen.
What Migrants Bring
To further refine the concept of social remittances, we trace how the ideas and
practices migrants bring with them are transformed as they are used in the United
States and then remitted back to the Dominican Republic. We find that one of the
principal reasons migrants start or re-activate community development organisations
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in the US is because they bring a healthy dose of prior experience with communitybased
projects with them and because they have been raised to feel a strong sense of
responsibility to their community. In other words, they come to the US with a culture
of participation and conscientiousness that it is natural for them to recreate after they
move. These experiences shape their encounters with other immigrant communities
as well as their interactions with the native-born. They also influence how and when
they come into contact with city and state government actors.
Both Soprovis and Modebo were founded in the Dominican Republic in the 1970s
to address local needs during a period of significant economic and political
instability, and quickly became important engines of development in both
communities. They supported health and vocational training at a time when the
country was recovering from the brutal Trujillo dictatorship but was still under the
thumb of Joaquı´n Balaguer’s only slightly less repressive regime. Because both
communities lacked many services, these groups took on the task of meeting basic
needs and of pressuring the Dominican state to take better care of its residents.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, international migration developed in full force
and large numbers of residents moved to New York and Boston. Many of the people
who migrated already had significant experience working in community organisations.
In Boca Canasta, for example, La Asociacio´n de Agricultores Daniel Ba´ez (the
farmers’ organisation), the Liga Campesina (the baseball league), the Asociacio´n
de Padres y Amigos del Colegio (the parents and friends’ association that supported the
school), the Church Council and the youth clubs were long-standing features of the
community landscape. They provided safe spaces for non-partisan political engagement
and for claims-making. Interestingly, the same youth clubs organised by the
Balaguer regime to keep young people out of radical politics eventually became
politicised entities that denounced its repressive policies.
In Boca Canasta and Villa Sombrero, youth clubs and other civic associations built
parks and recreation centres and organised cultural programmes. These activities
strengthened social ties, instilled in participants a sense of commitment to the
community, and taught them leadership and management skills. When participants
migrated, they took these skills and experiences with them. They also took a tradition
of labour-sharing, a strong sense of gratitude toward their birthplace and its
residents, and the experience of living in communities with rich associational lives.
On more than one occasion, hometown leaders attributed the immigrant community’s
high level of mobilisation to its agricultural roots. In the past, residents
organised convites, or informal self-help networks to help with planting and
harvesting. Participants donated their labour in exchange for food and the promise
that they would get help when their crops were ready to harvest. Although convites
are no longer common, the logic of self-help, volunteering and collaboration is still
alive and well.
As a result, migrants already knew how to organise effective participatory
community organisations, valued strong social ties and were successful fundraisers
when they arrived. While, at first, support for community projects came from
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individuals acting on their own, by the early 1980s, transplanted leaders took steps to
organise their first community organisation chapters. Although they saw themselves
as quasi-independent entities*with their own boards, by-laws and agendas*the
administrative structures of these new groups mirrored those of groups working
in the Dominican Republic with similar missions and goals.3
That US leaders
maintained close ties to leaders back home also contributed to their success. Because
the exchange rate in the early 1980s was so favourable, migrants raised a great deal of
money, which funded important social services and infrastructural improvements.
Dominican migrants also bring a passion for partisan politics (Guarnizo et al.
2003; Itzigsohn and Villacre´s 2008; Portes et al. 2007). One respondent told us that he
had been born with the PRD (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano, one of the
principal political parties) in his genes. Another stated that the next campaign begins
the day after the last Presidential election. Politics is a way of life that is also
transplanted and ensures migrants’ continued involvement and contact with each
other. Because Dominicans enjoy the right to vote from abroad, and make big
financial contributions to political candidates, all major political parties have
headquarters in cities with large numbers of immigrants. Candidates often visit
emigrants to raise funds and garner support. Even candidates for mayor in Banı´ (the
city closest to Boca Canasta and Villa Sombrero) have visited Boston and met with
leaders of the HTAs.
Migrants brought cultural as well as associational practices with them. Baseball is,
and always has been, a major part of community life. Many migrants grew up playing
for their local team or supporting it in some way. This love of sport inspired them to
start their own summer baseball and softball leagues in Boston, which are similar to
the Liga Campesina on the island, and which involve Dominicans from all parts of the
country. Men from Boca Canasta organised the Liga Dominicana in 1986 and the Liga
Jervin Cabral in 1997.4
The Liga Jervin Cabral has four teams, composed primarily of
migrants in their 30s and 40s. Its Board of Directors hosts fundraising events
throughout the season to cover expenses. Migrants from Villa Sombrero also started
chapters of the Liga Soprovis in Boston and New York and have used softball as a way
to strengthen social ties abroad and keep their sporting traditions alive.
During the baseball and softball season, the community regularly remakes the
physical space, not just to practise sports, but to recreate the colmadones, or big,
open-air bodegas that Dominicans go to at the weekends to visit, drink beer and
enjoy music with friends. In the case of Boston’s Jervin Cabral League, for example,
games take place on Saturdays at centrally located public fields. While team members
play, their families socialise with one another. People bring food and beer that adults
consume out of public view. Games provide a welcome escape from the daily routine,
a chance to connect with friends and an opportunity to get out of the house after
the long New England winter. Many community projects are also planned from the
sidelines. The park is a re-staging ground for needed communal interactions that are
so common in the community of origin.
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Baseball fields are also sites where members in the US and on the island hold a
kermesse, a day-long community festival organised to raise money for collective
projects. Planned weeks in advance, the kermesse is like a big street party where
people buy home-cooked food, listen to Dominican and Caribbean music, play
baseball, dominoes or bingo and meet old friends. While kermesses held in the
Dominican Republic and the US involve a similar set of activities, there are important
differences in how they are organised. Carlos Melo, a former president of SoprovisBoston,
explained that a kermesse in Villa Sombrero usually took place on property
collectively owned by the community. They did not need permits to sell alcoholic
beverages or to play loud music. Because a kermesse organised in Boston takes place
on public property, and they have to worry about disturbing their neighbours,
organisers have learned to negotiate the bureaucracy required to organise a large
public event.
In sum, many people spend hours each week helping to keep these community
organisations and baseball leagues alive. Since members belong not only to Modebo
or Soprovis but to church groups, sports leagues and parentÁteacher groups, they see
one another regularly. These encounters are not just occasions for exchanging news
but also for exchanging information and know-how.
Participating in baseball and softball leagues also brings migrants into contact with
other immigrants from the Caribbean and neighbouring communities in the
Dominican Republic. They negotiate with one another over the use of playing fields,
invite one another to their respective celebrations or come together to discuss matters
related to their home country. Because they come into contact with city officials when
they organise public fundraising events, migrants learn how to negotiate their way
through the city bureaucracy and to access its resources.
Dealing with permits, red tape and protocol, several leaders told us, is part of
learning the way the system works in the US, how things are kept in order*a sharp
contrast to the disorder and indifference that characterises most dealings with the
Dominican government. Over time, abiding by legal norms, demanding accountability,
and upholding contractual agreements has become part of their organisational routine
and is also part of what migrants remit back to the Dominican Republic.
Modebo leaders in Boston, for example, upon learning that the community had
agreed to pay for the day-to-day operating costs of a new government-funded
computer centre in Boca Canasta, demanded to see a copy of the official contract.
According to Danny Pen˜a, a long-time leader and current treasurer, Modebo
members reacted skeptically, arguing that if the state builds a school, it pays for the
cost of the Internet and other utilities, so why wouldn’t it pay for the operating costs
of the computer centre as well? They feared that the government was short-changing
the community. Other members expressed surprise that the community would accept
a deal that required Boston members to raise an additional $300 to $400 each month.
Although they eventually arrived at an acceptable solution, the Boston group decided
that all subsequent statutes and contracts would need prior approval. They wanted to
guarantee a level of internal accountability and transparency that would minimise
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future risks and shield them from suspect government practices that might jeopardise
their financial position.
Migrant leaders also export back lessons about managing public and community
spaces. As Carlos Melo explained, during a recent visit home he learned that Haitian
residents were using the community’s softball field to play soccer without permission
from the local authorities. Seeing this as potentially problematic, he suggested to
the Mayor that a committee be organised to draw up a schedule and rules for using
the fields. As a past president of the Liga Jervin Cabral in Boston, Carlos had
experience securing permits for the seasonal use of public baseball fields. He
recognised the benefits of having an official system in place and argued that Villa
Sombrero should adopt similar arrangements. Because he and others had come into
regular contact with what they perceive as a well-regulated system of rules and norms,
their expectations of public officials and offices have changed. As Elvin Soto, vicepresident
of Soprovis-Boston, explained, ‘One establishes more order, one demands
that [level of] order, because one lives in that order’.
Social remittances do not just travel through interpersonal contacts. Technology
easily enables non-migrants to keep abreast of what the community is doing.
Residents from Boca Canasta and Villa Sombrero can tune into a local television
channel (or through the Internet) to watch Uniendo Fronteras (Uniting Borders) and
Aquı´ y Alla´, (Here and There)*two weekly television programmes produced by
migrants in Boston to showcase their activities to people back home. Producers also
travel to the Dominican Republic to capture the sights and sounds of the hometown
community, which they broadcast every Sunday on the local Spanish-language cable
station or via the Internet. These two programmes allow migrants and non-migrants
to simultaneously keep informed of social and cultural activities wherever they take
place. It also allows them to actively witness the transformation of their community
back home and the growth of the immigrant community in Boston.
Both Soprovis and Modebo use these media platforms to spread the word about
their achievements. There are often television cameras at a kermesse or dance party in
Boston or at a Patron Saint Day celebration or the inauguration of a new facility in
the Dominican Republic. Community members celebrate their successes and
encourage migrants and non-migrants to continue to support them. They also
transmit new ideas and skills, denounce politicians and make claims of local
authorities, who are also often watching. Recently, both migrants and non-migrants
have been using the Internet to broadcast news and other information to larger
publics. Two websites*villasombrero.com and bocacanasta.com*have become
forums where people post photographs and videos and write messages, including
their opinions about political and social developments in the US and back home.
Migrants from Boca Canasta and Villa Sombrero, therefore, bring strong traditions
of political and civic activism and a deep sense of continued responsibility to their
communities when they move to the US. They adopt these so that they work within the
social and spatial constraints of the US. In the process, they come into contact with
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other ethnic and native-born neighbours and with the municipal government. These
experiences, along with what they observe and incorporate from their everyday lives,
strongly influence the skills and knowledge they send back to the island as individuals
and as a group. Non-migrants learn easily of these developments, through their
interactions with individuals and through mediated channels that bring new ideas and
practices into their living rooms, recreational spaces and community centres.
Collective Social Remittances
While most studies of social remittances focus on the ideas and practices that
individual migrants export to their relatives and friends, our fieldwork reveals how
these socio-cultural exchanges affect organisational life and community development
more broadly. Goldring (2004) disaggregated three types of economic remittances,
including family, collective or community-based, and investment remittances. The
term ‘collective remittances’ (remesas colectivas) describes monies raised by a group
that are used to benefit that group and are, therefore, distinct from family or worker
remittances. Here, we build on this notion and suggest the idea of collective social
remittances, that are exchanged by individuals in their role as organisational
members and are used in organisational settings such as hometown associations,
church groups or political parties. Modebo’s demands for clear and fair contracts and
for clearer regulation of facility use are two examples of collective social remittances
which we expand upon in this section.
Most of the people we interviewed in the Dominican Republic and the United
States agree that the opportunity to travel and live abroad transforms migrants’
general attitude and ‘vision’ in several ways. One theme raised repeatedly was what
people referred to as ‘outlook’. They felt that the spaces within which people imagined
themselves and their aspirations for those spaces had radically changed. What they
wanted for themselves as a community, and how it was achieved, shifted dramatically.
According to Samuel Sa´nchez, a 42-year-old man who migrated from Boca Canasta
to Boston in 1989, ‘people who have been here [in the US] do not have the same
mentality. One learns many things here . . . we see the world differently, there is a
different culture’. When asked to be more specific, Samuel said that, unlike his father,
he regularly attends parentÁteacher meetings at his child’s school. Since migrating, he
has also learned to wait his turn at public offices and to obey stricter supervisors and
rules at work. While it took him time to adapt, he now considers many of these
differences positive. The fact that people are accountable for their actions in the US is
something he likes and would like to see more of in the Dominican Republic.
This different ‘vision’ our respondents alluded to also shapes collective life and is
reflected in the projects proposed by migrant HTA members. A sports complex*which
includes a softball and Little League field, clubhouse, pool and basketball court*that
Soprovis is building is one example. Carlos Melo explained what drew them to the project:
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We saw that we had not done much to promote sports activities, and that there
weren’t places in the community where we could spend leisure time with our
families . . . when we travelled there (back to Sombrero), we had to go to other
communities [to enjoy family-oriented places] . . . we had to do something related
to sports because they say that sports can discourage the youth from vices . . . there’s
going to be a youth baseball field to teach the children [how to play]. Big league
players can come out of there.
In other words, community members had seen and grown accustomed to these kinds
of facility in Boston. They saw them as keeping families together and kids off the
streets, and as potential breeding grounds for new baseball talent. They also wanted
to be able to use these facilities during their vacations back home.
This project reflects members’ changing notions of the meaning of development
and their aspirations for their community. The sports complex is the biggest project
the HTA has undertaken. Its total cost is estimated at 7 to 8 million pesos
(approximately $200,000). According to 49-year-old Luis Ba´ez, the current president
of Soprovis in Villa Sombrero who has never been to Boston, ‘Because they are in a
developed country, they are looking at other types of constructions and edifices,
other sports complexes, and they want to bring those ideas to their community.
. . . Boston has always thought big’. He reported that Boston leaders also plan to
build an asphalted road linking the community to the sports facility (which is far
from the town’s centre) and to an avenue leading to the nearby beach. It is part of
their plan to increase tourism in the area.
They have a futuristic idea, with a vision that I said: ‘That’s not for now’, but we
have to start thinking about those things. Now we see it as difficult, but we have to
start somewhere, then it gets easier. . . . Because they’re in big countries, they’re
teaching us to think big. Many times we do not share that view, because one thinks
as one is. We think smaller.
Soprovis’ New York chapter also sent a fully equipped ambulance to transport
critical care patients to the nearby hospital in Banı´. Because they have been
unsuccessful at getting municipal funding, committee members charge patients who
can afford to pay, which subsidises the service for others. They also buy medicines
and equipment for the local health clinic and organise health fairs where check-ups,
medicines and educational materials are provided. They take on topics that were
previously taboo*such as teenage pregnancy, reproductive health and AIDS
awareness. While these subjects may be off-limits on the island, current president
William Pimentel explained, they need to be taken on directly and openly.
Committee members also distributed condoms and informational literature during
the recent patron saint festivities; they even gave bar- and bodega-owners condoms to
distribute free of charge to their patrons.
The acquisition of skills and know-how also translates into business ventures.
When founder and former President of Soprovis-New York, Bolivar Dume´, was
getting ready to retire and spend extended periods in Villa Sombrero, he joined a
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group of local investors and purchased land in the town’s centre to build a gated
community. He wants to build a housing project according to strict rules and
building codes so it does not become a ‘slum’. The sales contract, which applies
equally to all buyers, clearly states that there will be no mixed-use commercial
properties, that houses can be no more than two stories high, and that they can
only be constructed from certain materials. He knows that contracts in the US
include riders that specify certain conditions. He hopes that future projects, in and
outside the community, will also be built to code. Sombrero’s rapid growth needs to
be orderly and purposeful so that important projects*like building roads*are not
afterthoughts. Sombrero must live up to its reputation as a modern town and ‘think
about tomorrow’.
Finally, collective social remittances also transformed community institutions like
the town’s youth baseball leagues. Rafael Tejeda, a former member of Modebo who
worked actively to construct Boca Canasta’s baseball field, remembers the patched
baseballs, shoddy equipment and disorganisation of the league during his youth.
Coaching a Little League team in Boston was different. He received a roster of team
members, a bag full of playing and safety equipment, and uniforms for the players.
These experiences inspired him to raise funds to get better equipment for the leagues
in Boca Canasta. When the leagues on the island subsequently reorganised, his
brother, who had also been involved in Boston but had since returned home, helped
to fundraise by sending letters to prospective donors, another practice picked up in
Boston.
When my brother went back everything changed. The league used to play in Banı´
against teams from the nearby towns. But when he arrived, he began to take the
kids to play in the capital and to other towns. He began to send the letters, they
received donations from [local] people and they would purchase the necessary
equipment.
His brother, he says, basically replicated the strategies he had seen in Boston with a
significant positive impact because almost all the young men in the community who
are 25 years or younger participate.
Having ‘big ideas’, however, can cut both ways. Sometimes social remittances get
translated into costly infrastructure projects that, as Don Luis hints, non-migrants do
not agree with. Non-migrants want to meet basic needs first, like schools, housing
and health care, and then support culture and recreation. They want to renovate the
community centre so they can hold computer classes and have an office for the Civil
Defence and the community-run water company. While Bolivar Dume´ may build
stronger, safer buildings, his gated community will undoubtedly increase the social
distance between families who have (and can afford to purchase one of his homes)
and those who have not.
Nor are migrants uncritical, starry-eyed novices. They readily acknowledge that
there is widespread racism and discrimination in the US and that not everything
works as it should. In fact, the US is far from perfect*witness Hurricane Katrina and
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the Virginia Tech shootings. In most cases, though, they concluded that everything is
relative. The level of corruption and ineptitude in the US still seems better than that
in Santo Domingo.
Scaling Up and Scaling Out
Migrants took a strong commitment to work for the collective good through active
social, political and religious organisations with them to the US. They also took
technical and organising skills that aided their efforts in New York and Massachusetts.
Their experiences abroad challenged and expanded how they did things and why they
did them. The types of project they took on and how they implemented them
reflected these changes. As groups in the US matured, assumed the lion’s share of
responsibility for fundraising, and learned how to work transnationally, they took the
lead in proposing ventures that were consonant with their new ‘vision’ of what
hometown development entails.
Projects like the sports complex, the fire station and the ambulance are examples of
the chapters’ growing organisational capacity. They reflect migrants’ heightened
concern with safety and health and their assumption that living in a developed
community means living somewhere where these services are part and parcel of what
good governments do. They foment ‘stateÁsociety synergies’ or collaboration between
social actors and government entities that bridge publicÁprivate divides (Evans
1996). These ideas can scale out, as residents apply them to other domains of practice:
they expect the government not only to share the cost of public safety but also to
partner with them in providing education and health. They can also scale up, as
community members not only change their expectations of local government but of
provincial and national governments as well.
For example, Soprovis’ Boston members pursued projects inspired by the public
services they used in Boston. They sent a fire truck and supported the creation of a
community fire squad to respond quickly to emergencies. After the fire truck was
delivered to Villa Sombrero, residents formed a committee to train volunteer
firefighters and find a place to build a fire station. Because migrants were unwilling to
fund these efforts indefinitely, they pressured the government to assume some of the
burden of support. At the time of (this) writing, the Mayor has stepped up to the
plate, announcing his willingness to pay for some part of the services. Thus, a project
conceived by migrants as a way to modernise the town’s public safety infrastructure
has become a sustainable joint citizenÁstate effort which has rewritten the rules of
state and citizen responsibility. Most residents are very satisfied with the fire squad
and expect that other partnerships can be developed to provide basic services that are
still lacking.
Another example involves social remittances scaling out to other associations in
ways that promote organisational learning. This was the case when the ModeboBoston
chapter decided to create an ambulance service, several months after Villa
Sombrero received their ambulance. Once they had bought a used vehicle from a
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nearby state, leaders began figuring out how to ship it to the Dominican Republic.
They needed lots of money for fees and taxes, since the vehicle was registered under
an individual’s name and was, therefore, not tax-exempt (Soprovis’ vehicle was
registered as a municipal government vehicle so they did not face this problem).
Modebo’s leaders feared that if they entered into a similar agreement with a politician
or a government leader, they would risk losing control of the vehicle.
Once the vehicle arrived, leaders needed to work out how it would be taken care of.
Who would drive the passengers? Where would it be stationed? Who would pay for
the maintenance and insurance? Leaders in Boston had not anticipated these issues
and were frustrated by what they perceived as island-based leaders’ unwillingness to
commit. Finally, Carlos Melo, who headed the Soprovis’ Boston chapter when the
ambulance was purchased, was called in. He explained the legal and administrative
requirements and helped Modebo members to see how they needed to adjust
Soprovis’ strategy to the Boca Canasta reality. They formed a trust or special
committee to draft a series of regulations to govern vehicle use that they modelled
after their neighbours’ but also customised to meet their particular needs.
Another interesting example of scaling out involves Soprovis’ attempt to increase
accountability and transparency in the management of the town’s patron saint
festivities. Usually organised and administered by a special committee, patron saint
festivities are an important community activity that generates substantial economic
activity and revenue for the community. According to Soprovis’ leaders, in recent
years*and before 2008*the festivities were run by a group of residents who were
suspected of cheating because so little money was generated. In 2008, Soprovis took
over and established a series of administrative practices that stressed transparency and
increased accountability. They established stricter reporting guidelines and other
measures*like requiring each kiosk to submit sales figures. The net revenues that
year were well over 200,000 pesos (over $5,000). They also produced a detailed
financial report for community members. The following year, a financial report was
posted on the Internet. According to Carlos Melo, these measures were instituted in
Villa Sombrero because they grew accustomed to reporting financial matters to
members in the US who wanted to know how their money was being used.
Demands for greater transparency and accountability also scale out into the private
sector. According to Ismael Dı´az Melo, people who have lived abroad or who work
closely with migrants make firmer commitments regarding time and money. They
demand project contracts and schedules and expect them to be honoured. But, he
says, these practices carry both benefits and risks. They formalise business
transactions but suggest to participants that, if no signed paper exists, then no one
is responsible. Likewise, when migrants wanted to invest in Bolivar Dume´’s gated
community project and asked a local lawyer to serve as their proxy, hometown
investors interpreted their request as a lack of trust. Their reticence led those from
Boston to pull out of the project.
Social remittances also scale up to other levels of organisation and governance.
When Levitt did her fieldwork in the 1990s, for example, many of the people she
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talked to did not consider the state responsible for providing basic services. They said
that there was too much poverty for the government to also build roads. Now,
residents see these activities and institutional frameworks as part and parcel of what
constitutes good governance. The more people adopt this stance, and the more
people demand contracts and their compliance, the more these social remittances will
scale up to other levels of governance. Similarly, the more people demand
accountability and transparency in community projects, the more likely they are to
demand it of political parties and business as well.
A funeral home renovation project is another example of scaling up. When Soprovis
rebuilt its funeral home, it did so in partnership with Procomunidad, a national
government programme that supports community projects. The government financed
75 per cent of the project and Soprovis raised the rest from migrant contributions.
Because the organisation had a financial stake in the project, they requested that
Ismael Dı´az Melo, a native and well-known architect and developer, be placed in
charge. When the project stalled because funds were held up by Procomunidad, the
community used its contacts in the national government to restart it. The funeral
home was rebuilt in record time and within budget. As Modebo and Soprovis gain
experience developing projects and become more skilled at dealing with politicians
and government agencies, these types of venture are becoming increasingly common.
The expectation of publicÁprivate partnerships brokered locally is replicated
nationally. Residents, who are empowered to actively engage in the public domain,
demand greater accountability from national as well as local government agencies.
Scaling up also occurs when organisations are able to make their demands heard at
the national level and eventually wrest control of important community services. For
years, Soprovis lobbied the central government and INAPA (the National Water
Supply and Sewage Institute) to solve the growing water problem in Villa Sombrero.
After countless efforts, the agency responded favourably, even going a step farther
and delegating to the community the power to run the water system. This move was
part of a government initiative, in conjunction with the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), to expand potable water provision in the
Dominican Republic and develop pilot initiatives where communities participated
actively in the management of the water infrastructure. Soprovis’ willingness to fully
finance the system from the outset (with the help of stateside chapters), their ability
to convince residents that paying the water fees would ensure better services, and
their political savvy and previous successes in partnering with state entities, were
major factors behind the government’s decision to build the system and cede control.
Since 1997 an elected community board runs the service. Their success serves as a
model that the state has tried to replicate in other parts of the country.
Conclusion
Findings from our ongoing fieldwork refine the idea of social remittances in several
ways. First, we stress how migrants’ prior experiences and the ideas and practices they
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bring with them influence the types of remittance they send back. Social remittances
are clearly cultural and social and they circulate, continuously and iteratively, rather
than travel one-way. Second, we explore the collective nature of social remittances,
including how they are exchanged within organisational contexts and how they
transform organisational practice. Finally, we show how social remittances scale up to
regional and national organisations and scale out to other domains of practice.
We stress the positive and negative effects of social remittances on home
communities. Many people fear that the flow of ideas from America devalues family
and deifies consumerism. In small villages throughout the Dominican Republic, a
generation is being raised on remittances. These young people dream of making a
home in the US rather than in their communities of origin. Instead of going to school
or trying to find a job, they spend their days waiting for their monthly cheque or for
the magic day when their visa finally arrives. It is not worth it to them to work in a
factory or on a farm (if such work is available) because their parents send money
anyway. Not only do their skills and discipline waste away while they wait to leave,
but the economic base of their community continues to deteriorate. Constructing
gated communities, while seen as an attempt to achieve more orderly, planned
development, exacerbates the class stratification that has already worsened because of
migration. Migrants and non-migrants also worry about deportees who committed
crimes in the US and get into similar trouble when they return. Residents blamed
them for introducing ‘bad habits’ and increasing crime and insecurity. They felt they
set a bad example for local youth and compromised immigrants’ reputation abroad.
They also held them responsible for introducing new criminal technologies and
contacts with international crime syndicates.
Thinking big is also not enough to make dreams a reality. Ideas have to be realised
and sustained*the biggest challenge facing HTAs. Development is not just about
delivering an ambulance or building a park. These projects require upkeep and
maintenance. They require moving from isolated, discrete projects to ongoing,
integrated long-term development plans.
There is a clear divide between scholars who are concerned with what happens to
immigrants once they arrive in a new place and those concerned with what happens
in the places where they come from. This is a false dichotomy. These processes were
never disconnected and they are certainly not today. Continuing to speak about them
and organise research around them separately is counterproductive. It reifies an
artificial separation that does not reflect migrants’ lives nor allow us to respond
creatively to the challenges they face.
Wherever you fall on the migrationÁdevelopment debate, it is important to factor
social remittances into the equation. They are a potential resource and a potential
constraint. To help policy-makers, researchers need to uncover what determines how
ideas and values travel and under what circumstances ‘idea change’ contributes to
‘behavioural change’. Finally, two questions remain to be answered. When does locallevel
change in something like gender relations, for example, scale up to produce
broader shifts in reproductive behaviour and labour market participation? Under
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what circumstances can local-level democratic capacity-building scale up to produce
stronger provincial and national governance?
Notes
[1] Levitt used the pseudonym ‘Miraflores’ but community members have now given us
permission to use the real name.
[2] Many of the people we interviewed in the US and the Dominican Republic felt that these
numbers were very low. Because population size is used to determine budgetary
appropriations, residents believe that the national government deflates these figures to their
advantage. Regarding the migration figures, past and current residents of Boca Canasta claim
that almost every home in their community has someone living abroad. Residents of Villa
Sombrero also claim that the number of people who have migrated abroad from their
community is higher than that officially indicated.
[3] In the early stages, US chapters defined their role as financial backers and supporters of
projects developed by leaders back home. They saw themselves as supporting whatever
projects the local committee selected, since its members understood the community’s needs
better and continued to struggled with its daily challenges. But, as the US-based groups grew
more experienced at fundraising and organising, they began to propose their own projects
and programmes. Most of the time, leaders on the island went along with their suggestions,
in part, because they feared that disagreements would lead to a decline in financial support.
At times, however, tensions arose over goals and strategies. Today, US chapters still support
activities and efforts outlined by the home community but also craft their own projects,
although these are often developed in conjunction with members back home. In the case of
Soprovis, the director of one chapter will often seek support from other chapter leaders
before proceeding forward.
[4] One of the founders of both softball leagues explained that they chose to play softball because
it requires less practice and physical condition and has a slower rhythm than baseball.
Because migrants have to spend so much time at work, players do not have time to meet
regularly to practise and train. They also saw softball as a more relaxed game in which older
players could also take part.
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