Migrant remittances and the web of family obligations: Ongoing support among spatially extended kin in North-east Thailand, 1984–94

Abstract

Exchanges of money, goods, and assistance among family/kin members are influenced by the intertwined lives of individuals and their family/kin. As people pass through the young adulthood years, acquiring obligations as spouses and parents, and migrating in search of economic opportunities, tensions can arise over existing obligations. Using rich longitudinal data from Northeast Thailand, we examined the role of family networks (origin and destination) on migrants’ exchanges with family/kin. Our approach overcame many shortcomings of earlier studies, allowing us to ‘see’ the family social network arrayed in a broader network. We show that intra-family exchanges are influenced by marital status, the presence of children, having parents in the origin household, and having siblings depart from it. The results are stable across sensitivity tests that systematically include or exclude various familial links. In addition, reports provided by origin households on migrant remittances are consistent with reports from migrants themselves.

Keywords:

• migration
• remittances
• extended kin
• social networks
• agricultural help

Notes

1. Ronald R. Rindfuss is at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Population Center, CB# 8120, University Square, 123 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524, USA and at the East–West Center, Hawaii. E-mail: [email protected]. Martin Piotrowski is at the University of Oklahoma; Barbara Entwisle at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jeffery Edmeades at the International Center for Research on Women; and Katherine Faust at the University of California, Irvine.

2. The data collection and analysis reported in this paper were partially supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD25482 and R01-HD37896). The authors are grateful to Rick O'Hara for expert programming assistance; Tom Swasey for help with the graphics; Bridget Riordan and Ann Takayesu for help formatting the tables; and three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions.