Theorizing Risk, Money and Moralities in Migration (TRiMM) will develop social-science theory in areas of particular relevance to the study of international migration. The project will explore the assessment and management of risk, the roles of money and material wealth in interpersonal relationships, and the moralities which inform migration decisions and subsequent transnational relationships. These themes will be examined in relation to three cross-cutting dimensions: gender relations, the mediating roles of geographical space, and the dichotomy between self and others.
The project consists of two parts:
1) A theoretical component, drawing on material from previous research and on a wide range of secondary sources, carried out by senior researchers Jørgen Carling (PRIO) and Cecilie Øien (Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies).
2) An empirical study in the form of a doctoral sub-project, carried out by María Hernández Carretero. This study will address the project's theoretical themes through fieldwork-based analysis of Senegalese migration to Europe.
Key concepts in the project
Risk
Since the 1990s, risk has become a central theme in social theory, and use of risk as an analytic concept has spread to new fields (Adam et al. 2000; Beck 1992; Giddens 1999). In technical analysis, risk is usually defined as a compound measure of the probability and severity of adverse effects (Lowrance 1976). This can be extended beyond quantitative analysis and used to disaggregate the nature of risk. High-risk migration typically involves a spectre of risks with different combinations of probability and severity: the risk of dying represents maximum severity, but perhaps only a small probability, while economic loss, physical abuse, or other forms of hardship are less severe events, but could be much more probable. Perception of risk reflects an assessment of how likely an event is, as well as how adverse it would be if it were to happen. This distinction can refine analysis of decision-making processes in high-risk migration. For instance, migrant sex workers are often aware, upon the initial migration, of the chance that they might work in prostitution, but later experience coercion, humiliation and repression at degrees they had not foreseen (Carling 2006; Skilbrei & Tveit 2008). In addition to the subjective assessment of risk levels, behaviour is conditioned by the social acceptability of risk-taking, and of the range of alternative options. Many Africans are fully aware of the difficulties, dangers and uncertainties of migration, but still see it as a preferable alternative to the predictable hardship of staying put.
A commonly observed pattern is that people more readily accept risks that are familiar to them, and which are perceived to be controllable. Furthermore, people commonly see themselves as being less vulnerable to risks than others (Slovic 1987; Taylor & Armor 1996; Wilkinson 2006). It is possible, therefore, in high-risk migration, that each prospective migrant acknowledges the general danger of what they are about to do, but believes that they have individual characteristics, skills or mentalities that reduce the risk.
European policy in relation to high-risk migration increasingly focuses on risk awareness among prospective migrants. Source countries of trafficking and human smuggling have been targets of information campaigns about the fates of trafficking victims and undocumented migrants. Such campaigns are ineffective not only when individuals believe themselves to be less at risk than others, but also when the information is perceived to represent vested interests. The intrinsic uncertainty of risk assessment makes trust and credibility all the more important. For instance, the widespread—and correct—belief in Senegal that the government and European authorities seek to dissuade unauthorized migration effectively poisons these sources as providers of information on risk.
Money
It has been claimed that Western societies have an ideal of personal relationship as one that does not entail any benefits outside the emotional (Giddens 1991). The link between personal relations and money is therefore often left unexplored in social science, as it is a relation left out in people’s accounts. As stated by Zelizer (2005), money is not a neutral object, but carries meaning from sender to receiver well outside the realm of the economic. Understanding ‘the meaning of money’ thus includes exploring how money constructs, reaffirms or challenges personal relations. In the proposed project, the issue of money will be important both in terms of the importance given to money in the migration decision and process and how the issue of money is managed while in Europe: how it is earned, how it is spent, and how it is used in social relations, locally and transnationally. Money is linked to gendered constructions and practices of intimacy, especially processes whereby the meanings of different forms of relationships are negotiated (Zelizer 2005). Sharing money with kin is ‘natural’ in many contexts, through for example remittances, but what is the significance of this as an act of care and responsibility when the money is earned though risk-taking? Zelizer (2005) asks the important question of how people mix money and intimacy (sexual or emotional) in a society where this is taboo, and in the proposed project, the analysis of this will be made more complex with the challenge migration pose to Western notions. Following post-colonial critique of the Western hegemony on theoretization and conceptualization of personal relations, moving beyond this taken-for-grantedness through taking non-western subjects as a starting point improves the analytical scope (Bulbeck 1998; Falicov 2001). Perspectives on the social meaning of money are increasingly integrated in the burgeoning literature on migrant remittances.
Moralities
The concept of moralities has recently been used in the study of a range of social processes. The focus has often been on how contrasting moralities interact, or on how social change is simultaneously conditioned by moral, material and institutional factors. Moralities link specific positions or behavioural prescriptions to larger issues of identity and worldview (Howell 1997; Redclift 2005).
Attention to moralities can simultaneously challenge and accommodate rationality-based models of behaviour. On the one hand, moralities influence people’s choices in ways that undermine the predictive logic of rational choice. On the other hand, understanding moralities can resolve apparent enigmas by elucidating a moral logic. (e.g Carling 2008, Smith 2007). Moralities are central to the dynamics of migration and subsequent transnational exchanges. Studies of migration from Cape Verde (Carling 2008), Mozambique (Lubkemann 2005; 2008), Suriname (Gowricharn 2004) and other countries have demonstrated how migrants relate to idealized norms, against which their behaviour is assessed. In particular, migrants’ relations with their relatives at the place of origin are subjected to moral scrutiny.
This project will focus on the dominant moralities of migrants’ transnational communities. However, the importance of receiving-country moralities should also be noted. Unauthorized immigration and sex-worker migration are often addressed on the basis of specific, morally loaded understandings of victimhood and blame. The roles of boat migrants, human smugglers, sex worker migrants and traffickers are frequently recast in public narratives in ways that dominant moralities can easily accommodate.
Cross-cutting dimensions
The theoretical themes will be explored with reference to three cross-cutting dimensions. These are lenses through which the themes and processes can be re-examined:
Gender
Gender is a central dimension of social organization which conditions the nature of migration itself as well as the processes behind the three theoretical themes. Individual perception of risk, management of risk, and the social acceptability of risk-taking are all gendered. In traditionally male forms of migration, risk-taking may be part of what makes migration a rite de passage that confirms manhood (Juntunen 2002). In traditionally female forms of migration, risk-taking may be presented as irresponsibility and immorality, or admired as a form of self-denying sacrifice, depending on the context (Carling 2005b, Rafael 1997; Tyner 1997). Discourse on trafficking and human smuggling also has specific gender implications. In the relevant UN protocols and national policies, it is implicated that trafficking is about the unwilling migration and assumed passivity of women, while human smuggling is about the willing migration and assumed activity of men (Ditmore 2005; Skilbrei and Tveit 2008).
The role of money in interpersonal relationships is gendered, not only in extreme forms such as the purchase of sex, but also in other cross-sex and same-sex relations (Falicov 2001; Zelizer 2005). Money is central to the potential capacity of migration to transform gender roles, when gendered migration opportunities create new financial flows from women to men, and to other women (Gamburd 2000; King et al. 2006; Malkin 2002). Finally, the moralities of migration are often gendered. As mentioned above, the social acceptability of migration-related risk may be different for men and women. Well-established gendered moralities in relation to prostitution and sex-worker migration have been challenged by the growth of female-organized trafficking, especially among Nigerians.
Space
The role of geographical space in mediating social relations has long been a central theme in Human Geography, and has more recently received considerable attention in other social sciences. Space is fundamental to the processes related to risk, money and moralities that will be addressed through the proposed project. While the uncertainty behind risk is essentially temporal — not knowing what will happen in the future — the uncertainty of high-risk migration is also spatial. Even in the context of global media and dense transnational networks, limited knowledge about the destination is a fundamental aspect of decision-making for many migrants. Asymmetrical information also affects the subsequent relationship between migrants and their relatives at the place of origin (Carling 2008). While spatial separation increases the uncertainty of high-risk migration, it can also make it more attractive, by representing a transformation of opportunities beyond what is imaginable in a single place.
Space affects the social meaning of money and the roles that money plays in intimate relationships. Remittances acquire many of their social characteristics through the physical separation of earning and spending. This could be even more so in the case of money that is earned through dangerous or degrading work. Part of the motivation to remit can also lie in the different (real and perceived) value of money across space. For instance, money earned in Norway trebles its purchasing power if it is spent in Nigeria.
Space also mediates moralities in several ways. First, moralities may be place-bound. Spatial separation can alleviate moral tensions, as has been observed at the micro level in studies of prostitution (Brevis and Linstead 2000; Day 2007; Skilbrei 2007). The spatial rootedness of moralities can also create tensions in transnational lives. Migrants may have to balance between what is expected of them in the community of origin, and the demands placed on them by the societies in which they reside. Disentangling the spatial from the cultural is a key theoretical challenge in research on transnationalism.
Self and others
In recent scholarship of the self, it is argued that ‘choice’ is a prerequisite to gain status as a subject (Skeggs 2003). Being a victim of crime or circumstance is thus not in accordance with the ideal of the modern individual. The ‘victim’ is not a proper subject, but is rather a passive recipient of other people’s decisions. The ideal is to both master one’s own fate and to take responsibility for others. Becoming both self-reliant and taking care of kin is central to understanding migration (Juntunen 2002, Åkesson 2004). With reference to the proposed project, the relation between self and others is central to the initial risk-taking as well as to subsequent sacrifices in the form of remittances. ‘Others’, in a concrete and symbolic sense, are integral in peoples’ lives, both in terms of responsibility for the other and as an audience to the construction of the self. For migrants, particularly migrants that carry a potential stigma, for example as ‘whores’ or ‘failures’, the relation between self and other becomes complex. This relationship is also strongly linked to gender. Responsibility understood in economic terms has historically been linked to men, while responsibility in terms of care has been linked to women (Heen 1995). The reality is that women’s remittances play an increasingly important part in local economies and families, and remitted money can be seen as replacing care given to kin (Parreñas 2003) or to be a reformulation of care (Singh 2006). This perspective poses a challenge to how social sciences tend to treat money solely as a means for transactions, without taking its symbolic functions and value in personal relations and in the private sphere into account (Zelizer 2005). Migration and transnational family relations thus have the potential to destabilize local and global gender relations and reconfiguring the relationship between self and other.
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