Collective Remittances Research Articles

Las organizaciones de migrantes mexicanos en Estados Unidos y su estrategia de desarrollo local con enfoque transnacional: avances y desafíos

El programa “Tres por Uno” de remesas colectivas en México, con sus variantes, conflictos y dificultades, ha sido un gran avance como esfuerzo organizativo transnacional de promoción del desarrollo social en las comunidades de origen. La clave de su éxito radica en la solidaridad de las organizaciones de migrantes hacia sus comunidades de origen en asociación con los tres niveles del gobierno mexicano. Esta filantropía transnacional se inicia desde los años sesenta del siglo anterior de manera espontánea y hasta treinta años después comienza a recibir apoyos paulatinos de los diferentes niveles del gobierno hasta su institucionalización como programa federal en el 2002 dependiendo de la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social. En el 2010, luego de más de tres décadas de experiencia de proyectos solidarios las organizaciones migrantes mexicanas se plantean avanzar hacia una nueva fase de desarrollo local con enfoque transnacional en sus regiones de origen buscando un mayor impacto en la estructura económica y social.

Supply or Demand? Migration and Political Manipulation in Mexico

Collective remittances are the money flows sent by hometown associations (HTAs) of migrants from the USA to their communities of origin. In Mexico, the 3 × 1 Program for Migrants matches by three the amounts that HTAs send back to their localities to invest in public projects. In previous research, we found that municipalities ruled by the party of the federal government were more likely to participate in the Program. The political bias in participation and fund allocation may stem from two possible mechanisms: HTAs’ decisions to invest in some municipalities but not in others may reflect migrants’ political preferences (a demand-driven bias). Alternatively, government officials may use the Program to finance their own political objectives (a supply-driven bias). To determine which of these two mechanisms is at work, we studied a 2 × 2 matrix of statistically selected cases of high-migration municipalities in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. We carried out over 60 semistructured interviews with state and municipal Program administrators, local politicians, and migrant leaders from these municipalities. Our qualitative study indicates that migrant leaders are clearly pragmatic and that the political bias found is driven by elected officials strategically using the Program. The bias in favor of political strongholds is reinforced by the Program’s requirements for cooperation among different levels of government. This study casts doubt about the effectiveness of public–private partnerships as valid formulas to reduce political manipulation. It also questions the ability of matching grant programs to reach the areas where public resources are most needed.

Has the Program 3×1 for Migrants Contributed to Community Development in Mexico? Evidence from Panel Data of 2000 and 2005

AbstractThis paper examines how collective remittances contribute to regional development by using the community‐level two‐year panel data for the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas in Mexico, which have received the higher amounts of the budget of the Program 3×1 for Migrants. The results from empirical analyses show that the communities that received this program became better‐off between 2000 and 2005, according to the marginalization level. Further analyses suggest that specifically investment in roads, water supply, and non‐agricultural productive projects by the 3×1 program improved community welfare. The regression results on access to the program show, however, that neither the marginalization level nor the migration level determined the access to the program. This suggests that the 3×1 program was not necessarily targeted at the communities with higher marginalization and migration levels.

Collective Remittances and Migrant-State Collaboration in Mexico and El Salvador

AbstractAs part of an emerging research agenda on the political impact of remittances in high-migration countries, this article explores the conditions under which organized migrants are likely to engage in transnational public-private partnerships with their home governments through a comparison of Mexico and El Salvador. Both countries have well-organized migrants who have cofinanced community projects back home. But this collaboration has been more sustained, multifaceted, and negotiated in Mexico than in El Salvador. These outcomes are linked to four factors: the density and type of migrant organizations, the territorial distribution of state authority and resources, the extent and nature of diaspora outreach, and legacies of state-society relations. The article discusses how this framework might be applied to other high-migration countries and whether there is room for agency in creating more favorable conditions for migrant-state collaboration.

Saving, Spending, and Future-Making: Time, Discipline, and Money in Development

Money is a distributed technology for the government of futures. Using ethnographically informed accounts of social practices around saving and collective remittances in poor countries this paper examines how the malleability of money enables it to have the potential for formalisation which allows it to be brought into formal relations of future-making and foreclosure, at the same time as its potential for investments and reallocation enables it to be the basis of flexible and adaptive strategies of future-making. We show how individuals engaged in development aspirations strive to achieve futures through the collection, care, and use of money, and how strategies of formalisation, discipline, and framing accord money developmental capacities. The liquidity of money renders it a flexible vehicle for personal and collective aspirations while representing risk of leakage to other persons and ventures. The paper examines the strategies used by low-income savers and hometown associations in their concerns with establishing rules and discipline around the flexibility of money.

Collective Remittances and the State: The 3×1 Program in Mexican Municipalities

The Mexican 3×1 Program for Migrants is a grant scheme whereby the municipal, state, and federal governments match by 3 to 1 the funds that migrant clubs send to their hometowns to finance public projects. Using municipal-level data on Program participation for the period 2002–07, we evaluate both the economic bias and the political bias of the Program. Since migration and poverty have a nonlinear relationship, we find that poorer municipalities are less likely to participate than those with medium poverty levels. We also find that the Program rewards PAN strongholds rather than competitive municipalities.

The Electoral Determinants of Collective Remittances: The Mexican 3x1 Program for Migrants

The 3x1 Program for Migrants is a matching grant scheme that seeks to direct the money sent by migrant organizations abroad to the provision of public and social infrastructure, and to productive projects in migrants’ communities of origin. To do so, the municipal, state, and federal administrations match the amount sent by hometown associations by 3 to 1. This opens the door to the political manipulation of the program. We explore the impact of a particular facet of Mexican political life on the operation of the 3x1: its recent democratization and the increasing political competition at the municipal level. Relying on the literature on redistributive politics, we posit that an increasing number of effective parties in elections may have two different effects. On the one hand, the need to cater to more heterogeneous constituencies may increase the provision of public projects. On the other hand, since smaller coalitions are needed to win elections under tighter competition, fewer public and more private (clientelistic) projects could be awarded. Using a unique dataset on the 3x1 Program for Migrants for over 2,400 municipalities in the period 2002 through 2007, we find a lower provision of public goods in electorally competitive jurisdictions. Thus, we remain sceptical about the program success in promoting public goods in politically competitive locations with high migration levels.

The Impact of International Migration on the Economic Development of Countries in the Mediterranean Basin

November 1995 marked the starting point of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the Barcelona Process), a wide framework of political, economic and cultural cooperation between the Member States of the European Union and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Basin countries. The recent intergovernmental summit celebrating the 10 years anniversary of the Partnership, and the qualified comments that followed, have clearly shown the need of a stronger financial and political commitment of the EU in the region to reduce the existing economic gaps and support the process of economic reform. Asymmetric trade liberalization and the competitive pressure that followed on the fragile production system of the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs)1 coupled with a limited and erratic flow of European foreign direct investments have exacerbated the causes motivating migration. The new political development in the region with the establishment of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and the bilateralisation of aid and cooperation frameworks has both reduced the scope for a regional and multilateral approach to the issue of economic cooperation and introduced a security focus on the migration phenomenon. The relationship between migration and development in the Mediterranean region becomes therefore an issue that must be increasingly dealt in a bilateral approach. When it comes to migration and economic relationships, in the Southern shore of the Mediterranean Basin is possible to draw a demarcation line between those countries that are highly dependent on oil (Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon) in the sense that migration and trade are dependent on the fluctuations of the economies in the Arab Gulf countries and less on Europe; and countries that are more dependent on trade and aid from Europe (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey). Israel is a country of immigration, and migration from Palestinian Occupied Territories is a regional phenomenon, especially because the high number of refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Even if Algeria is an oil producer country, the historical relationships with Europe place her in the second group. Keeping this in mind, this paper will analyze the impact of migration on countries of origin by focusing on the role played by migrant workers' remittances in stimulating local economic development. Adopting a perspective combining the structuralist and developmentalist approaches, and by using the data available, the analysis will attempt to highlight the potential positive and adverse economic effects that migration has on migrant sending countries. From the outset, it is needed to underline that the limited coverage of this phenomenon in the Mediterranean Basin makes the formulation of consistent policy recommendations a thorny tasks and qualified conclusions will be made only when qualified data are available. The large amount of remittances sent home by migrant workers worldwide has spurred an intense debate on their potential effects for poverty reduction, financial stability, and economic development of migrant sending countries (Ratha, 2003; World Bank, 2006; Maimbo and Ratha, 2005; Page and Adams, 2003). Public authorities are interested in attracting hard currency, regulating and taxing money; international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and development aid agencies alike are looking at remittances as a new development mantra. Non governmental organizations realized that immigrants associations can be potential development partners and collective remittances a source of private capital that can help supplementing their funds. In the Euro-Mediterranean region this is not exception. MPCs have received remittances for 15 billion USD in 2004, i.e. a little 10% of the global inflow received by developing countries and about seven times European Union development grants and loans through the European Investment Bank. Even though the surge in workers remittances represents the failure of development and employment policies in migrant sending countries (de Vasconcelos, 2005), their positive effects on poverty reduction have been demonstrated (Page and Adams, 2003) while their effects on development are far from being obvious (Gallina, 2006).

The Impact of the Social Investment of Collective Remittances on the Relationship Between Public and Private: The Case of the "Tres Por Uno Para Migrantes"

Mexican migration to the U.S. has a history of more than 100 years. This flow is characterized by the age of its members, its massiveness and the neighborhood relationship: It is the longest migratory cycle in the history of the United and its origin can be traced back to 1848; in 2000 there were 20.6 million people of Mexican origin in the U.S. (U.S. Census Bureau 2001) and 10.8 million of them were Mexican-born (Consejo Nacional de Poblacion 2000). Even though this flow has prevailed, in the last years its characteristics have changed as a consequence of the transformations in the economic model and migratory policies applied by Mexico and the United States. As a result of the persisting and increasingly large migration flows, the role that migrants and remittances play in the Mexican economy is fundamental to the way that Mexico is shaping its policies and is affecting agency, poverty and community development in the localities of origin.For the purposes of this paper I will concentrate on Zacatecas. It is one of the states with the longest migratory tradition in Mexico, and is inscribed in what Durand calls the traditional region of Mexican migration to the United States along with Aguascalientes, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan and San Luis Potosi (Durand 1998, 104). More than half of the flow of Mexican migrants to the U.S. belongs to this region. This long history of Zacatecan emigration and the interaction of the federal, state and municipal governments with the communities of origin and the Hometown Associations (HTAs) has led to new forms of organization and the implementation of community development projects such as the Tres por uno para migrantes (3x1, Three for One Migrant Program), which was created by Zacatecan migrants in the 1990s.The World Bank and other international development agencies have identified remittances as a potential source of income that can be used to alleviate poverty in the countries that receive them. Mexico's efforts with respect to migrants is reflected in the creation of the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (Institute for Mexicans Abroad, IME) in 2003; different policies, such as the new initiative that allowed Mexican citizens that reside abroad to vote in the federal election in 2006; and government programs, such as the 3x1, instituted at the national level in 2002, that uses remittances for developmental purposes. However, this paper argues that the power relations that come into play and the definition of remittances can affect the use that they are given as well as the final outcome. This is why it is important to analyze how migrants, the federal, state and municipal governments and the community are coming together around remittances.The 3x1 is a community-driven development program that offers a three-to-one matching for collective remittances sent by Mexican migrant clubs in the United for investment in social infrastructure and development projects in their localities of origin. It is an innovative exercise of international management of remittances and public policies oriented towards development that has attracted the attention and collaboration of international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). It was the first program of its kind in the world and has served as a model for other experiences such as that of Unidos por la Solidaridad from El Salvador. It is an example of Mexico's growing interest in harnessing remittances for development. The goals of the program are to target poverty and promote local development, as well as establishing a more solid relationship between the migrants and their communities of origin.In Mexico, the total amount of remittances received in 2005 was $20.35 billion according to the central bank (Banco de Mexico 2006), and in 2006, the total amount was $23.054 billion (Banco de Mexico 2007). Remittances have become the second largest source of foreign exchange after oil, surpassing foreign aid, tourism and foreign investment. …

Migrant Organization and Hometown Impacts in Rural Mexico

The interaction between migration, development and rural democratization is not well understood. Exit is usually understood as an alternative to voice, but the Mexican experience with cross‐border social and civic action led by hometown associations suggests that exit can also be followed by voice. This article explores migrant impacts on hometown civic life, focusing on voice and bargaining over community development investments of collective remittances that are matched by government social funds. The most significant democratizing impacts include expatriate pressures on local governments for accountability and greater voice for outlying villages in municipal decision‐making.

Solidarity projects of Mexican migrants in the United States and their prospects

Collective remittances and impact from the 3x1 ProgramThe remarkable increase in family remittances received in 2004 Mexico, over 16.6 billion dollars according to the Bank of Mexico1, and expected to reach 20 billion dollars in 2005,2 created great expectations. It generated a debate of the impact of these remittances on the economic development of Mexico and its different regions. A valuable point of reference, for the future development of the Mexico, could be based on the long history of Zacatecas residents' emigration to the United States. In addition, it must be considered the silent integration brought by the creation of the binational labor market that has been on the making for the past last fifty years. It must also be taken into account the addiction to remittances on the part of the state economy and the accelerated rate of the region's incorporation into the international migration process. The latter has brought diverse consequences, including dependence to the resources generated by Mexicans working outside the country.Recently, the phenomenon of international migration to the United States has generalized to the entire country -reflecting the precarious state of the Mexican economy, and the growing integration of the two countries. A significant number of studies have been conducted, in Mexico and in other countries, focusing on the causes and consequences of the phenomenon. In particular, what has become clear is the potential of remittances through the transnational transfer of wages. The shift improves the livelihood of the family of the immigrant in food consumption, health, education and housing.3 On one side, this has a positive impact on the population where these resources are received. There is also a negative effect because social inequality is generated between the recipients and those who do not. Nevertheless, significant experience has been gained by Zacatecans who have channeled collective remittances (contributions by members of Zacatecan clubs in the United States) to finance public infrastructure projects in their communities of origin. This practice has been taking place since the 1960s, and more details will be provided later in this article.Zacatecans have a long history of emigration to the United States. It is now more than 100 years old. Recently, this history led to the formation of Zacatecan clubs. At the core of the process is migrants' shared sense of belonging to their places of origin and their linkages to their communities of destination. Both instances motivate Zacatecanos to engage in joint activities for the benefit of their places of origin. There is an antecedent to these clubs, specifically in Southern California during the 1960s. Then, immigrants organized in Los Angeles to provide solidarity assistance to the sick, those injured in accidents, and to help return the dead to their homeland.4 During this stage, initial efforts developed to carry out projects in public infrastructure. These included repairing plazas, churches, sports facilities, and cemeteries. Such activities were financed exclusively by immigrant contributions. Some Zacatecan immigrant leaders refer to this stage as the 0x1 period: immigrants' dollars were the only financial support. In the 1970s, progress was made by combining funds from some local governments with resources from immigrants. In this way, community projects used a 1x1 modality.During the last 15 years, the Zacatecan Clubs that originated in California, and then spring up in different places of the United States: Illinois, Texas, Colorado, and Nevada, among other locations, have moved to a new phase of development. At the beginning of the 21st century, clubs of Zacatecans could be identified as one of the most important developments of Mexican hometown associations in the U.S. This is because of the number of clubs established (more than 230) and the systematic financial assistance for public infrastructure projects they provided to their communities of origin. …

Family and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multi‐dimensional Typology

AbstractThe development potential of remittances has resurfaced as a topic of analysis, based in part on dramatic increases in migration and amounts of money ‘sent home’, and partly in the growing interest and involvement by states and non‐state actors in gaining leverage over remittances. The trend is indicative of an emerging remittance‐based component of development and poverty reduction planning. This article uses the case of Mexico to make two broad arguments, one related to the importance of extra‐economic dimensions of remittances, particularly the social and political meanings of remittances, and the other based on a disaggregation of remittances into family, collective or community‐based, and investment remittances. Key dimensions of this typology include the constellation of remitters, receivers, and mediating institutions; the norms and logic(s) that regulate remittances; the uses of remittances (income versus savings); the social and political meanings of remittances; and the implications of such meanings for various interventions. The author concludes that policy and programme interventions need to recognize the specificity of each remittance type. Existing initiatives to bank the un‐banked and reduce transfer costs, for example, are effective for family remittances, but attempts to expand the share of remittances allocated to savings, or to turn community donations into profitable ventures, or small investments into large businesses, are much more complex and require a range of other interventions.