Talking Remittances

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 examines the regular communicative practices that families develop for managing remittances, tracing the gendered and generational distribution of this linguistic labor. The analysis focuses on remittance requests and responses, moments in which relatives must directly confront the sustained economic asymmetry of transnational family life. The chapter demonstrates that conversational temporalities—interactional turn-taking routines and interdiscursive genre norms—structure remittance negotiations. The communicative management of time becomes a key resource through which families navigate shifting intergenerational care needs while also grappling with the effects of gendered hierarchies and global inequities. Conversational temporalities are thus central to how transnational families sustain life together through cross-border care in the face of both political-economic and discursive forces that work to sever their ties.