Transnational Economic Spaces, Moral Economy, and Remittances

Abstract

When studying remittances, one needs to integrate the micro dynamics of remittances while equally shining a spotlight on the entire macro flow. Both levels can be combined in a spatial perspective on economic spaces that emerge out of the flow of remittances. Processes of deterritorialization as well as of reterritorialization thus nourish, complement, and even conflict with each other in the provision of remittances. Two aspects of this observation are crucial for our project, in order to research emerging transnational economic spatial formats: firstly, on a micro level, moral economies between migrants and their families at home evolve, which combine translocal and transnational scales of social action. These moral economies, as will be discussed in more detail in this paper, are complex fields of negotiation and a particular socioeconomic ensemble. They are dominated by reciprocal patterns of communication, moral obligations, the struggle for social recognition, as well as feelings of guilt and shame. These moral economies are a building block of an emerging transnational economic space, since they evolve out of their underlying contradiction between a tendency towards transnationalization and the maintenance of localized influence. Secondly, and on a macro level, these moral economies form part of an arising transnational economic space, which transgresses traditional modes of institutionalization, control, and governance. This transnational economic space extends from peripheral economies of today’s Global South well into developed economies in the Global North.

Using remittances as a topical background, this project addresses the following questions:

1. how remittances arise out of a translocal relationship — that is, real movements of people, commodities, ideas, and symbols — and cross spatial distances and borders with a certain regularity;
2. how these remittances create arenas in which the processes of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization take place and are negotiated; and
3. whether transnational economic spaces emerge out of these negotiations as a spatial format.

Author

Dr. Hannes Warnecke-Berger (SFB 1199 & Institute of Political Science, Leipzig University, Germany)
Having studied political science, sociology, and law in Leipzig and Bordeaux, Hannes Warnecke-Berger’s PhD research focused on the causes of different forms of violence in El Salvador, Belize and Jamaica (which he recently submitted, with the title: “Forms of Violence between Political Economy and Culture: El Salvador, Belize, and Jamaica in Comparative Perspective”). His research interests are in the fields of political economy, development theory, and research on violence.