Beyond the Dichotomy: Money and the Transnational Family in India and Australia

Material and immaterial remittances shape each other among recent Indian migrants to Australia. A transformation of the nature and flow of material remittances has been accompanied by changes in family structures and norms. I draw on my qualitative research between 2005 and 2014 on Indian migrants to Australia to show that material remittances have increasingly been going two ways since 1996. These two-way material remittances together with greater communication via mobile phones, satellite TV from India, reciprocal visits and policies relating to paid family reunion are bringing the normative structures and practices of the patrilineal joint Indian family to Australia. However, the developmental cycle of the joint family is different. The first generation of migrants who came as professionals between the 1970s and 1990s spoke of the loss of family, the narrowing of the boundaries of the extended family, and tensions relating to the one-way flow of money and communication. Recent migrants who came as student and skilled migrants between 1996 and the present, speak of everyday communication with their families, parents’ contribution to their material and social well being and their own plans for temporary or permanent extended and joint family living in Australia. This focus on how material and immaterial remittances are received and translated in the country of destination complements the study of the sending of remittances to the source country.