从个人动机到社会决定因素——形成一门关于移民汇款的社会学

From individual motivations to social determinants:towards a sociology of migrants’ remittances

移民汇款的动机可能不尽相同。采用"新劳动力迁移经济学"(NELM)观点的相关研究认为,利他或利己是移民汇款的动机。本文首先承认"新劳动力迁移经济学"观点的局限性,因为它对移民的利他概念存在功利性理解,并且也没能够区分利他和利己。经过深入讨论后发现,在不考虑汇款移民的情况下,对原籍社区的汇款利用情况进行定量研究具有优势。这些研究必然会间接推断出移民汇款的动机,从而导致事后不一致的解释。在对现有文献的评述中,本文确定了涉及汇款的移民的动因和将其嵌入其中的社会结构的另类概念,以及此类动因和社会结构的新特性。最后,本文概述提出一种启发式类型学,依据涂尔干的自杀研究方法对移民汇款进行实证研究,再通过引用文献中的例子来证明这种类型学的有用性,体现本文作者的研究成果。

Migrants may send remittances for a variety of reasons. Studies adopting the perspective of the new economics of labour migration(NEML)identify migrants’ altruism or self-interest as the motivation for their remittances. This paper first recognises the limits of the NELM perspective due to its utilitarian conception of migrants’ altruism and inability to distinguish between altruism and self-interest. The discussion also reveals a preponderance of quantitative studies examining remittance utilisation in the origin communities in the absence of the migrants who are sending the funds. These studies must necessarily indirectly deduce migrants’ motivation to send remittances, leading to post hoc and inconsistent interpretations. In a review of the existing literature, this paper identifies alternative conceptualisations of migrants’ agency and structures embedding their remittances as well as emergent properties of both their agency and those structures. Lastly,it outlines a heuristic typology to empirically study migrants’ remittances following Durkheim’s approach to suicide, demonstrating the usefulness of this typology by citing examples from the literature as well as reflecting the author’s dissertation research.