Editorial: The social dynamics of remittances and the pandemic

Abstract

Migration is typically portrayed as an effective response to socio-economic hardship. Pushed by a lack of work at home and pulled by the promise of higher wages abroad, people relocate. When those moves succeed, migrants transfer money home (Yang, 2015). A logical, predictable system that is confirmed by evidence as well as World Bank figures noting migrants returned a record $689 billion globally in 2018; and while researchers expected the pandemic to push down wages, the decline to this point has been modest. Remittances continued apace and serve to cushion the impacts of the pandemic (Ratha et al., 2021). Nevertheless, the assumption that the decision to migrate is straight-forward misses how socially complex the processes can be, particularly during the pandemic (Pintor Sandoval and Bojorquez Luque, 2021, Marwah and Ramanayake 2021, Gupta et al., 2021).