Hybrid Format

Resilient Remittances? Examining Immigrant Remittances from the United States to Latin America During Covid-19

Ilana Ventura
Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography, September 14, 2022

Ilana Ventura from the University of Chicago uses novel survey and interview data to investigate the dynamic familial networks that sustained remittances during the first year of Covid-19.

Abstract

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted projections of economic contraction and a resulting decline in immigrant remittances, which are fundamental to many migrant household survival strategies. However, in the first year of the pandemic, remittances from the United States to Mexico and other Latin American countries remained surprisingly stable. Using novel survey and interview data, she investigates this apparent divergence, and the dynamic familial networks that sustained remittances during the first year of Covid-19.

She identifies patterns masked by the overall macro trend of resilient remittance flows, including heterogeneity across remitters’ responses to the pandemic and household-level strain of remitting during this period. Specifically, she finds evidence of an intensified expanded remittance pool, wherein remittance responsibility spread across household and extended family members—especially US citizens, authorized immigrants, and those who were more financially stable—in response to job loss and income instability within remitting households. During a period of extreme hardship, the continued need for remittances among non-migrant family members contributed to the purposive intensification of these expanded pools. The study of immigrant remittances during Covid-19 demonstrates the utility of examining complexity, change, and oftentimes strain at the micro-household level that undergirds apparent stability at a macro-level of analysis.

About

Ilana Ventura is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Chicago and a research methodologist at NORC. She is interested in immigrant and second-generation transnationalism, remittances, care, and economic outcomes, as well as survey and interview methods. Ilana's dissertation project, titled “Building an Uncertain Future: Understanding Immigrant Financial Behaviors and Investments,” examines how Latino families in the US negotiate property, care, and finances both in the US and across international borders.