Remittance as Belonging: Global Migration, Transnationalism, and the Quest for Home argues that migrants' remittances express their sense of belonging and connectedness to their home country of origin, making an integral part of both migrants’ ethnic identity and sense of what they call home. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork with Bangladeshi migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles, Hasan Mahmud demonstrates that while migrants go abroad for various reasons, they do not travel alone. Although they leave behind their families in Bangladesh, they move abroad essentially as members of their family and community and maintain their belonging to home through transnational practices, including remittance sending. By conceptualizing remittance as an expression of migrants’ belonging, this book presents detailed accounts of the emergence, growth, decline, and revival of remittances as a function of transformations in migrants’ sense of belonging to home.
Introduction: The Migrant, the Family, and Money
1 A Rush to the East: Bangladeshi Migration to Japan
2 Narratives of Remittance from Japan
3 The American Dream
4 Narratives of Remittance from the United States
5 Going Global, Coming Home
Conclusion: Why Do Migrants Send Remittances?
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
