Transnational Family Money: Remittances, Gifts and Inheritance

In this paper we use the case study of professional Indian migrants in Australia to explore how family remittances function as a special kind of transnational family money. We draw on qualitative research to examine how gender significantly shapes remittances and gifts as well as inheritance in the transnational family. Transnational family money is continuous with family money in India in that money flows both ways between parents and children. Remittances and gifts differ from family money in two significant ways. First, geographic distance creates a disjuncture in the perceptions of the value and ease of earning money between remitters and the recipients. Second, money and gifts sent are seen as a medium of caring, but the money and gifts received are seen as less valuable when weighed against the physical care that is being delivered by others in the family in the home country. Our study places remittances, gifts and other forms of transnational financial negotiations within frameworks of the sociology of money and care, contributing to the cross-cultural study of money and care in the transnational family.