Remittances are defined as household income from foreign economies resulting primarily from temporary and permanent migration of people to those economies (IMF, 2009), and are an important component of international capital flow. Many academics are interested in the study of remittances, and their research focuses not only on the role of remittances for migrant families, but also on the factors that drive remittances. Lucas and Stark's (1985) seminal paper "Motivations to remit: Evidence from Botswana" is one of the most influential literatures. According to them, remittance motivations are inextricably linked to household migration decisions. They classified remittance motives into three categories: pure altruism, pure self-interest, and tempered altruism (or enlightened self-interest). However, they have not investigated whether the strength of relationships between migrant family members and the social networks that Overseas Chinese face in the host country influence their intention to remit. This paper attempts to bridge a research gap.
In this study, I used a dataset comprised of over 50,000 scanned copies of Teochew Letters (also known as "Qiaopi", a combination of home letters and remittance orders) from the 1915 to the 2000 that was jointly created by Shantou Chaoshan Historical and Cultural Research Center and Sun Yat-sen University's Historical Anthropology Research Center. It can retrieve information from the database such as sender and recipient names, sending and receiving locations, remittance agencies, the exact date, and the relationship between the remitter and the recipient, and so on (Yang, 2013). I dispersed the geographical and temporal distribution of remittance trades. In addition, I plotted the locations of relevant institutions such as Chinese clan associations and township associations. I also quantified the relationship between remitters and recipients. The study found that social networks embedded in Chinese clan associations and township associations in the host countries do influence the motivation for remittances. Furthermore, the research demonstrates that overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia are more likely to send remittances when there are strong family relationships with the recipients.
Boyu Fang is a PhD candidate in Economic History at the Carlos III University of Madrid where his research topic concerns the economic status of ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia: trade, social networks, remittance, and entrepreneurship. Prior to this he completed his Masters studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland and undergraduate studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
