Gendered Decision-Making Power over Remittances: A Micro-Level Analysis

While a large literature has examined whether migrants remit, how much they send and how remittances are used, far less attention has been devoted to who actually decides about remittance transfers. Yet remittance decisions are not merely financial choices: they reflect the distribution of authority, responsibility and agency within transnational family systems. This paper investigates gendered patterns of decision-making autonomy over remittances using original survey data collected among first-generation migrants residing in Italy. Decision-making power is conceptualized through three regimes (dependence, negotiated decision-making and full autonomy) and analysed using ordered and multinomial logit models. The findings reveal significant gender differences in decision-making outcomes. Women are more frequently involved in negotiated arrangements, whereas men are more likely to report full autonomy. Yet these differences do not stem from gender-specific determinants of autonomy. The same relational factors (parenthood, marriage, transnational engagement and local embeddedness) operate similarly across genders. Rather, women are more frequently exposed to family and social configurations associated with negotiated decision-making, while men are more often positioned in contexts favouring individualized autonomy. The paper contributes to the debates on gender, migration and development by showing that economic agency within transnational households cannot be understood solely through individual resources or preferences. More broadly, remittances emerge as arenas through which authority, responsibility and agency are negotiated across borders.