Doctoral Dissertation Research: Remittance Management During Disaster Recovery

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This doctoral dissertation research improvement project analyzes the roles of different community's members in the decision-making about remittance allocations during disaster recovery. Human migration flows across borders is matched by financial (remittances) and communication counter-flows that sustain both the migrant at their destination and their families at their origin. Remittances sent by migrants are commonly used to meet basic consumption needs and for investment in education and housing, but they are also a key resource that communities mobilize in the aftermath of natural disasters. While it is generally understood that remittances constitute an important source of household income and contributor to community development projects, particularly during disaster recovery, what is less understood is the role of women in the decision-making about the use of remittances during such recoveries. This project will inform the understandings of how remittance management is organized at the local level, specifically women's roles in decision-making, and has the potential to inform policy to be more attuned to the significance of the role of women in remittance management, especially in post-disaster recovery situations. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising doctoral student. This project advances knowledge on how global migration and finance flows rely upon and rework family networks and local communities. It will do so by answering two central research questions. First, it assesses how a community manages remittances in the context of other financial and resources inputs, especially when stressed due to a natural disaster. Second, it investigates how negotiations over remittances are transforming the lives of women. Specifically, this research project will analyze (1) the precise ways that remittances are managed after a natural disaster; (2) how women participate in remittance management at the household and community level; and (3) how the process of negotiating the use of remittances is transforming the responsibilities, labor, and social involvement of women in communities. The doctoral student will combine a comprehensive household survey with qualitative methods such as archival research, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews in a case study of the post-earthquake recovery in Oaxaca, Mexico. The research will contribute new theoretical insights on the relationship between gender, labor, and citizenship as well as generate new findings on how global migration and remittance flows are mobilized by family networks and local communities in post-disaster situations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.