Remitting through crisis: Looking beyond resilience in UK migrant and diaspora communities

Abstract

Abstract Migrants’ remittances have often been understood to operate as a form of insurance for families, communities and countries of origin, increasing in times of downturn and disaster. But what happens when the same crisis hits both destination and origin countries simultaneously? During the Covid-19 pandemic, despite early expectations of a dramatic contraction, official recorded remittances were characterized as remarkably a ‘resilient’ financial flow. This article investigates the people and processes behind remittances through the crisis. Drawing on micro-level mixed-methods primary research in the UK, we investigate indications of community-level resilience in migrants’ remittance practices, highlighting that perceptions of rising needs abroad added fuel to people’s desire to remit, while diverse economic capacities also mediated remittance sending. Both a strong sense of meaning and connection, and the stresses of managing multiple needs at home and abroad, were apparent in diaspora accounts of sending remittances. While money ultimately continued to flow, through this as through many other crises, the discourse of remittance resilience risks eclipsing the major challenges navigated by migrant communities. The relevance to research and policy in the context of the contemporary cost-of-living crisis is explored.