Money and Blood: Remittances as a Substance of Relatedness in Transnational Families in Nepal

Abstract

ABSTRACTDrawing on research with transnational families in Nepal, this article explores how kinship is reconstituted through transnational mobility and what role material flows play in sustaining and disrupting kinship ties, rethinking remittances as a substance of relatedness. In a situation of unprecedented international mobility in Nepal, money has become a substance through which kinship is produced across time and space, resulting in a profound reconfiguration of the institution of the family, with long‐distance marriages and nuclear families increasingly becoming the norm. Transnational families in Nepal maintain cohesiveness on condition that there is a flow of remittances, pointing toward the role of money in constituting affective relations, delineating the boundaries of transnational families, and reproducing kinship ties across borders. Rather than arguing that money is “thicker than blood,” the article shows that the flow of money illuminates how thick “blood” is: the extent to which affective kinship ties map onto formal kinship structures in the world of today. [transnational families, substance of relatedness, remittances, money, Nepal]