Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Remittances, Morality, and Islamic Reform in Guinea, West Africa

博士论文改进补助金：西非几内亚的汇款、道德和伊斯兰改革

• 批准号: 0921486
• 负责人: Michael McGovern
• 金额: $ 0.32万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-15 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921486&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Remittances

Yale University doctoral student Susanna Fioratta, under the supervision of Dr. Michael McGovern, will explore the social and moral contexts in which migrant remittances that provide people with economic security may also become a source of moral insecurity. Increasing rumors of migrants' involvement in illegal or immoral activities have led to escalating moral contestations between villagers and their relatives who are suspected of sending "unclean" money home. Yet, facing ongoing economic hardship and political uncertainty, recipients rely on remittances now more than ever. The researcher will investigate how people linked between generations and across continents negotiate the meanings and morality of a remittance economy. The research will be conducted in Guinea, taking the construction of remittance-funded village mosques as an ethnographic lens for examining transnational monetary disputes. This eighteen-month ethnographic study will take place in three villages in the Fouta Djallon highlands region of Guinea, in Conakry, Guinea's capital, and among Guinean migrants in Dakar, Senegal. Ethnographic data will be collected through a variety of methods (semi-structured interviews, oral histories, migration narratives, genealogical interviews, participant observation and fieldnotes) to test three major hypotheses, concerning: (1) the uses of remittance money, (2) moral and religious debates surrounding migrant remittances, and (3) relations between migrants and their families, as they affect and are affected by the sending and spending of remittances.This research will contribute to social scientific theories of informal economies, religious change, and transnational migration. The project will also yield critical ethnographic insight into economic processes that, though vast, remain largely informal, and thus opaque in the quantitative analyses typically used by international development and migration policy makers.

在迈克尔·麦戈文博士的指导下，耶鲁大学博士生苏珊娜·菲奥拉塔将探讨社会和道德背景，在这种背景下，为人们提供经济安全的移民汇款也可能成为道德不安全的根源。越来越多的关于流动人口参与非法或不道德活动的谣言导致村民和他们的亲戚之间的道德冲突不断升级，这些亲戚被怀疑向家里寄“不干净”的钱。然而，面对持续的经济困难和政治不确定性，收款人现在比以往任何时候都更加依赖汇款。研究人员将调查代际之间和跨大陆的人们如何协商汇款经济的意义和道德。这项研究将在几内亚进行，以汇款资助的乡村清真寺的建造作为研究跨国货币争端的人种学透镜。这项为期18个月的人种学研究将在几内亚富塔贾隆高原地区的三个村庄、几内亚首都科纳克里和塞内加尔达喀尔的几内亚移民中进行。将通过各种方法收集人种学数据（半结构化访谈、口述历史、移徙叙述、家谱访谈、参与者观察和实地考察），以检验三个主要假设，涉及：（1）汇款的用途，（2）围绕移民汇款的道德和宗教辩论，以及（3）移民与其家人之间的关系，因为他们影响和受汇款的发送和支出的影响。这项研究将有助于非正规经济，宗教变革和跨国移民的社会科学理论。该项目还将对经济进程产生重要的人种学见解，这些经济进程虽然庞大，但在很大程度上仍然是非正式的，因此在国际发展和移民政策制定者通常使用的定量分析中是不透明的。