Remittances and the Transnational Family in South-East Asia

Lucy Jordan, University of St Andrews

One of the main precipitating factors for migration is access to earnings that provide for subsistence and investment in left-behind family members. There is a general tendency in the literature to assume that left-behind children are especially vulnerable to negative effects where their mother is migrant. The current study uses recent data from the CHAMPSEA survey collected in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam to investigate gender of migrant parent and remittances in the transnational family. Controlling for individual parent and household characteristics (household and migration characteristics and origin country), findings indicate significant differences between incidence of remittance sending by gender of the migrant parent, and that specific uses of remittances appear sensitive to the gender of the migrant parent. Remittances are less likely to be used for subsistence needs and debt repayment if mother is migrant providing support for negative effects of mother migration on families who are left behind.