‘Remittances’ in question: Circulating money and non-circulating words among multi-generational Palestinians in Italy

Abstract

Migrant remittances play a pivotal role in sustaining the livelihoods of many families and the economies of emigration countries. Most of the scholarship, however, tends to take this notion as self-evident. In fact, people who send money home do not necessarily use it. They may even be unfamiliar with the term. We investigate this apparent contradiction, drawing from a qualitative study on people belonging to the Palestinian diaspora in Italy. As our fieldwork suggests, migrants and their descendants represent their money-transfer practices under different frames, articulating distinct expectations and obligations, as parts of implicit regimes of reciprocity. By focusing on the interplay between etic and emic categorizations, and between marked and unmarked practices, we illustrate that the category of remittances fails to capture the range of meanings underlying these money transfers. This invites a more socially embedded and less ‘exceptionalizing’ view of money circulation across transnational networks.