Mobile Inequality

Abstract

Having previously highlighted the shortcomings of traditional inequality measures in Chapter 2, this chapter highlights the efficacy of an alternative perspective. Bringing together evidence from linked rural and urban research sites to explore the role of remittances in replicating rural inequalities in urban areas, it uses a mixed methodology, incorporating social network analysis, household surveys, and qualitative interviews, to highlight the role of rural familial remittance commitments in determining urban migrant livelihoods and vice versa. In doing so, it argues that those migrants who are compelled to remit a higher proportion of their salaries behave differently in their destination from those who remit less or none, changing jobs more frequently, but failing to build productive social networks or advance in terms of income or conditions. In this way, Chapter 3 shows that translocal patterns of mobility—and the economic flows that structure them—are a key means by which inequalities are replicated between rural and urban areas and sustained over time.