Migrant remittances and household development: an anthropological analysis

Over the past decade, influxes of remittances from overseas workers, mostly sent to families back home, have begun to attract policy and scholarly attention for their potential development impacts. This article seeks to answer the question: What is the development impact of these remittances for the households that receive them with reference to field data from remittance-receiving households in the Philippines. Recognising that different ‘development logics’ inform different understandings of development, this article analyses field data on migrant remittances with reference to three common sets of development logics: economic development, social development and sustainable livelihoods. It then dialogues and extends these findings with qualitative data on the way remittance-receiving households themselves understand the role of migrant remittances. An anthropological approach brings these different logics into dialogue, illustrating the complexity of households’ quest for economic, social and livelihood outcomes, and the need to understand the contexts that influence their ability to meet their development goals at home and abroad.