Introduction: The Gender and Morality of Migrant Money

The conceptual framework of this study connects the perspectives of the sociology of money and the sociology of migration. In particular, I build on the literature around the social shaping of money and remittances. The basic tenets are that money shapes and is shaped by social relations and cultural values. Money does not belong solely to the market, but is an important part of personal lives. Money is intersected with morals, emotions, and power. Money is gendered in the way it is managed, controlled, owned, and inherited.

The gender of money can change at migration. This is because of the feminization of migration, when women migrate alone to support their families back home. It is also because of a change in the woman's earnings and the influence of different norms of money management and control in the country of destination. In other ways, as in the continued maleness of remittances in patrilineal families, the gender of money may remain the same.

I draw on two qualitative studies of five decades of Indian migration to Australia covering 199 persons from 108 families to show how the gender of inheritances and remittances has changed over this period. Early Indian women migrants who arrived in Australia between the 1970s and mid-1990s chose not to accept their inheritance of family property. These women, however, intended to divide their property equally among their daughters and sons. Land in India remains sticky, as does accepting money from daughters.