UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Migrants’ Remitting beyond Altruism and Self-Interest: A Study of Remitting Practices among Bangladeshi Migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3xt931bg Author Mahmud, Hasan Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Migrants’ Remitting beyond Altruism and Self-Interest: A Study of Remitting Practices among Bangladeshi Migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Hasan Mahmud 2015 @ Copyright by Hasan Mahmud 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Migrants’ Remitting beyond Altruism and Self-Interest: A Study of Remitting Practices among Bangladeshi Migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles By Hasan Mahmud Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Min Zhou Co-chair Professor Ruben Hernandez-Leon Co-chair Social science discourses on migration and development emphasize migrants' altruism or self- interest as the determinants of their remitting practices, which is countered by alternative explanations focusing on social culture and structure. Due to the dichotomy of structure/agency, the current approaches offer unsatisfactory explanations of migrants' remitting practices. This dissertation aims to proposes a corrective by developing an alternative model of understanding the determinants of migrants' remitting practices. It synthesizes three strands of social science literature and derive the conception of remitting as a collective social act. From a realist approach following Durkheim, it begins at the empirical manifestations of migrants' remitting practices, but looks at deeper levels of social reality (the actual and the real) in identifying the determinants. It focuses on the internal social relations between the individuals involved in the acts in question as well as the external relations between the individuals and their social world to recognize the determinants of acts. Thus, it adopts a mixed-methods ii approach involving ethnographic fieldworks supplemented by small-scale survey with convenient samples. Following the theoretical case selection strategy of global ethnography, it investigates remitting practices among Bangladeshi migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Holding the origin of the migrants constant allows for isolating the role of their different destinations in determining their remitting practices. This dissertation recognizes social norms in origin culture, advances in family life-cycle, legal status and social incorporation and/or marginalization in the destination as the determinants of migrants' remitting practices. While confirming the centrality of migrant family in remitting practices in the NELM perspective, it goes beyond by including how internal family relations and external social relations collectively determine migrants' remitting. It advances our knowledge of migrants' remitting by incorporating both migrants' agency and social structures embedding remitting practices. Besides generating satisfactory explanations of migrants' remitting, this study demonstrates how to combine agency and structure in migration studies in particular and sociology in general. It also offers valuable insights for development policy-making utilizing migrants' remittances in their origin communities. It concludes with a call for extending the scope of the study by extensive and systematic use of quantitative data on the general patterns of remitting and to include familiar destination countries of temporary migration in future studies. iii This dissertation of Hasan Mahmud is approved. Roger Waldinger Leisy Janet Abrego Min Zhou co-chair Ruben Hernandez-Leon co-chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my mother- Ms. Azizunnahar- who is not only the source of my biological being but also my intellectual ambition. v This page is intentionally left blank vi Table of Contents Chapter One: Understanding the Determinants of Migrants’ Remitting Introduction 1 International Migration and Remittances 4 Theories about Migration and Remittances 7 The New Economics of Labor Migration Approach 10 A Sociological Approach towards Understanding Migrants’ Remittances 13 Remitting as Collective Social Act 14 Remittances, Money and Migrants’ Family 18 The state, Migrants and Remittances 23 Recognizing the Determinants of Migrants’ Remitting 28 Analytical Framework 29 Summary and Concluding Remarks 35 Chapter Two: International Migration and Remittances in Bangladesh Introduction 36 International Migration in Bangladesh 38 Historical background 40 Socio-Cultural and Ecological Contexts 41 vii Economic Context 43 Migration History in Bangladesh 45 Migration Patterns 47 Bangladeshi Permanent Migration 47 Bangladeshi Temporary Migration 49 Bangladeshi Undocumented and Irregular Migration 51 Migrants' Remittances in Bangladesh 52 Remittances to Bangladesh from Japan 55 Remittances to Bangladesh from the USA 57 Impacts of Remittances 58 Determinants of Migrants' Remittances 63 Chapter Three: Methodology Introduction 65 Migration Research: From quantitative to ethnographic methodology 66 Current Use of Ethnography in Migration Research 68 Ontology and Epistemology in Migration Research 69 Outlining an Ethnography of Migration 74 Theorizing Migration: A Critical Realist Ethnography 76 viii Methodological Strategies to Follow 79 Methodology of My Dissertation Research 80 Selection of Study Fields 81 Rationale for Field Selection 83 Data Collection 85 Data Analysis 87 Reflection on Fieldwork 88 Entry to the Field 88 Immersing in the Field 92 Chapter Four: Bangladeshi Migrants in Japan Introduction 95 Japan as a Temporary Destination 105 Money as Social Bond: Remitting Practices among Bangladeshis in Japan 113 Conformist Remitting 115 Social Remitting 119 Entrepreneurial Remitting 125 No Remitting 133 Summary of Findings 135 ix Chapter Five: Bangladeshi Migrants in the United States Introduction 138 Chasing the American Dream: Permanently Settling in the US 153 Remitting Practices 160 Conformist Remitting 162 Social Remitting 167 Entrepreneurial Remitting 170 No Relation, No Remitting 177 Summary of Findings 179 Chapter Six: Social Determinants of Migrants’ Remitting Practices Social Relations in Determining Remitting Practices 182 Significance of the Findings 186 Policy Implications of the Findings 188 Limitations and Future Directions 189 Bibliography 190 x List of Tables and Figures List of Tables Table 1.1: Types of Migrants’ Remitting Practices 32 Table 2.1: Bangladeshi Diaspora 48 Table 2.2: Bangladeshi Temporary Migration 50 Table 2.3: Total Amounts of Migrants' Remittances 53 Table 2.4: Major Source Countries of Remittances to Bangladesh 54 Table 2.5: Remittance Utilization as Reported by the Receiving Families 60 Table 2.6: Remittance Utilization in Bangladesh 61 Table 2.7: Impact of Remittances on Migrant Households 63 Table 4.1: Bangladeshi Migrants in Japan 104 Table 5.1: Remitting among Bangladeshi Immigrants in Los Angeles 152 Table 6.1: General Patterns of Remitting 185 List of Figures Figures 4.1: Remitting Practices of Bangladeshi Migrants in Tokyo 137 Figure 5.1: Remitting Practices of Bangladeshi Migrants in Los Angeles 181 Figures: Remitting Practices in Tokyo and Los Angeles 185 xi Acknowledgement I have been indebted to so many people in completing this dissertation that I barely know whom to begin with. I simply cannot believe how fortunate I have been to study under the guidance of the luminaries at UCLA. Foremost among them are Professor Min Zhou and Professor Ruben Hernandez-Leon in the department of Sociology. Any student and academic who worked with Professor Zhou will attest to her erudite mentoring with compassion. She would always surprise me with the extensive feedback on my works and encouragement for taking challenges throughout my fieldworks, data analysis, and dissertation writing. While her support allowed me to survive through the daunting process of completing the dissertation, it was Professor Hernandez-Leon, who would push me to deeper immersion into the project and to continuously upgrading the quality of my data collection, analysis and presentation. Together, Professor Zhou and Professor Hernandez-Leon have enabled me reach to the point of completion of my dissertation, which has opened the door of the academe to me. I, therefore, thank them from the core of my heart. The beginning of my dissertation project took shape in a class with Professor Roger Waldinger. Even before entering the sociology graduate program at UCLA, I would dream of studying transnationalism under Professor Waldinger. His extremely positive and encouraging feedback on my International migration field examinations continued to provide me with much needed enthusiasm, courage and confidence to successful completion of my dissertation. The works and guidance of Professor Leisy Abrego provided me with ideas about the role of migration destination in migrants' remitting practices- a key direction in my dissertation project. I cannot express how much grateful I am to both of them. I idea of studying migrants' remitting practices, however, germinated before I entered UCLA. I studied the perceptions of remittances among Bangladeshi migrants in Tokyo under xii Professor David Wank in Global Studies Program at Sophia University.