Remittances as a Currency of Care: A Focus on ‘Twice Migrants’ among the Indian Diaspora in Australia

Abstract

In this paper we examine remittances as a currency of care from the perspective of migrants among the Indian diaspora in Australia. We focus particularly on seven “twice migrants” from Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya and the United Kingdom, and two cases where direct migration of the parental generation from India has led to multiple migration for their children as they moved from Australia to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. These nine cases of multiple migration enable us to delve into the greater complexity and longer history of migration. The paper thus adds a historical dimension to literature on migration, analyzing changes across generations to remittances and the transnational family. Following Fischer and Tronto (1990) we distinguish between “caring about,” “taking care,” “caregiving” and “care-receiving.” Occasional and regular remittances, together with regular communication, visits home and gifts, express the migrants’ continued “caring about” and “taking care” of the family left behind, usually the parents. The money sent home helps facilitate “caregiving,” usually by the non-migrant siblings. The social value of money as a medium of relationships and belonging has been transmitted across generations, though parents are less likely to want to receive such care in Australia. Moreover, there are tensions inherent in caring. From the migrants’ perspective, these tensions revolve around an inadequate valuing of the money sent home and conflicts around inheritance. Our focus on multiple migrants balances the linear notions of migration implicit in the literature on migration, remittances and the transnational family. Over time, the definition of kin in the transnational family narrows as there is a dilution of family communication. With multiple migrations, there are possible shifts in the geographic centre of the transnational family. As the younger generation migrates further, this dilution is accompanied by a greater diffusion of the transnational family.