cliggett: Lize-Anne

What first struck me about this article were the questions posed at the outset, asking why immigrants make such a hefty sacrifice of themselves in order to send remmitances back home. Coming from a background where this practice is a given, I have never questioned why it happens, because has been made fairly obvious to me. Firstly, the community you come from played a large part in getting you into this new community, where you have more of an opportunity to be upwardly mobile. It is therefore a means of thanking them and showing that their contribution was not in vain and that you, as the immigrant worker, are taking advantage of the opportunity given to you. Also, I found it interesting that Cliggett says the remittances are often meager and unsubstantial to the family, however in an environment where even food is not guaranteed, sending anything that is even of small value is in fact substantial. However the situation in Zambia is quite different, as Cliggett notes.
These are questions I would have made assumptions for, however asking them is important because it enables one to question how remittances foster and maintain kinship ties and are important to ask.
I found Cliggetts methodology interesting, in that she focused on particular event and studied it in-depth. I found this to be particularly enlightening. Through this kind of study we see the temporality that is central to this remittance-giving for the function of maintaining homeland ties. Cliggett's example of the man who tried to return to his community after years without contacting them and was not easily invited back in despite his return with an abundance of gifts highlights this temporality. Perhaps there is value in sending these gifts over time, so that the reciever understands that they have not been forgotten and that the person who has moved away is still very much part of a network that they can depend on. In the years that this man lost contact with community members, they could not ask him for anything and thus he essentially became dead-weight within this network. Perhaps it is a matter not only of establishing that you are part of the persons network and should they need you, you will be willing to provide but also establishing that you are a dependable point within that network that will not disappear over time.