Remittances and ‘Social Remittances’: Their Impact on Livelihoods of Thai Women in the Netherlands and Non-migrants in Thailand

Abstract

For Thai migrant women in the Netherlands, sending remittances is a crucial way to uphold their relationships with their kin and communities in Thailand. This article makes the case that the impacts of remittances on migrant women’s families and their sending communities are uneven. Apart from the economic and political determinants, underscored in previous studies, this article suggests that the imagination of affl uence in Europe, the cultural idea of saving face and family norms signifi cantly infl uence how remittances are deployed and interpreted by the women and their natal families, and to some extent their Dutch spouses. ‘Social remittances’—ideas, identities and cultural practices—are also transmitted to the receiving country. These social remittances expose non-migrants to global cultural diffusion and cause to a degree a transformation of their social values and their life styles.