1 - The Life Course and Hidden Labour of Migrant Remittances

Migrant remittances are generally conceptualized as money, material, skills, or ideas that are transmitted from migrants to recipients in their home countries. Drawing from our multi-method, multi-sited research with Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong, I challenge this reductive definition by highlighting the physical, emotional, and mental labour that sustain the generation of remittances in all its forms from their inception prior to departure to their disbursement in migrant households and their aftereffects.

Exposing the hidden labour of migrant remittances compels us to broaden our gaze hitherto focused on the transmission of remittances from between individuals to an understanding that networks of friends, neighbours, and kin are inveigled in these transactions in host and home countries. Furthermore, migrant workers are still involved in this work as they send and disburse remittances and plan for future contributions that are, according to the migration and development nexus, capable of lifting households out of poverty.
Including temporal, structural, and spatial dimensions implicated in their hidden labour allows us to capture the life trajectory of migrant remittances from their conception in migrants’ home countries, their journeys to host countries where they are brought to maturity, and their return to homelands for dispersal. Consideration of the life course of the hidden labour of migrant remittances in the context of the promise of migration as a pathway to prosperity is critical to weighing the personal, social, and economic costs of the migration and development nexus for individual migrants, their families, communities, and nation.