The nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo

Möllers, Judith; Arapi-Gjini, Arjola Article — Published Version The nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo Migration Studies Provided in Cooperation with: Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle (Saale) Suggested Citation: Möllers, Judith; Arapi-Gjini, Arjola (2024) : The nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo, Migration Studies, ISSN 2049-5846, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Vol. 12, Iss. 4, pp. 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnae035 , https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/302325 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo Judith M€ ollers 1, �and Arjola Arapi-Gjini 1 1 Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, Halle 06120, Germany �Corresponding author. Department Agricultural Policy, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, Halle 06120, Germany. Email: [email protected] Abstract Remittances play an essential role in the interlinkage of migration and development. While past research has focused mainly on the monetary flows and their determinants, this article offers a deeper understanding of remitting as a social practice. Our research contributes to the emerging literature on remittance transfers in several directions. Using a rich ethnographic dataset of an area described as the quintessential land of migration, Opoja in Kosovo, it offers intriguing insights into the reasons and patterns behind remitting or ‘remittance scripts’. Our work complements the existing literature with a unique empirical analysis of changing remittance scripts over time and a discussion of the implications of such changes in terms of well-being in a rural context. By applying Carling’s concept of scripting remittances, the study makes an important contribution to testing this concept. Our findings exemplify how a conservative rural environment may slow down a shift away from traditional remittance scripts. The analysis revealed how remittances unfold not only positive effects, such as contributing to the village’s monetary well-being, but also various adverse effects. We identify a cautious development towards a new and still fragile script system, in which recipients provide social visibility as the core requital to the remittances they receive. Although remittance scripts are doubtlessly region-specific, we believe that our study not only underlines the usefulness of the remittance script concept but is illustrative of phenomena that might be found in many places strongly affected by outmigration and remittance dependency. Keywords: remittance scripts; migration; well-being; Kosovo 1. Introduction While a large body of literature deals with the economic motives behind remittance transfers, there is a growing interest in understanding the nature of the relationship between the recipient and sender and the meaning of remittances to them (Harper and Zubida 2016). The rationale behind this shift in perspectives is the realization that remittance transfers are more than just monetary flows but constitute a social practice that occurs within a particular cultural environment, following specific cultural patterns and acknowledging the agency of both senders and recipients (Page and Mercer 2012). The New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) provides a widely acknowledged theoretical base in terms of households’ motives for remittance transfers, focusing on altruism versus self-interest motives (Stark 1983, 2009; Lucas and Stark 1985). However, the simplified economic approach comes with limitations (Mahmud 2020). Even Stark (2009) admits that viewed from the purely economic theory point of view, monetary flows in the form of © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Migration Studies, 2024, 12, mnae035 https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnae035 Original Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 remittances remain a puzzle. Hence, a broader conceptual perspective that accounts for the underlying patterns and diverse motivations to remit is needed (see, for instance, Fokkema, Cela, and Ambrosetti 2013; Zhou and Li 2016; Mahmud 2020). Carling (2014) provides such a conceptual perspective in his paper on remittance scripts. Remittances are defined there as social transactions 1 embedded in cultural norms and described comprehensively as scripts. This definition stipulates a shift from the ‘why’ question (confined only to the motives to remit) towards a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the transactions, including their impacts on the senders and recipients and the relationship between them. The concept is aimed at an empirical ethnographic operationalization. However, despite a surge in studies in recent years, field applications are still limited. 2 Applying the concept of remittance scripts, our article adds important empirical context. It offers fascinating insights into the reasons and patterns behind remitting, using a rich ethnographic dataset of an area described as the quintessential land of migration, Opoja in Kosovo. The rural region of Opoja, Kosovo, has a long and ongoing history of outmigration and remittance flows, and hence long-established remittance scripts. Opojans identify their territory as the ‘quintessential land of migration’ as basically every Opojan is a migrant or has a migrant in the family (Reineck 1991: 122). The case is fascinating because we can link our research to the earliest ethnographic study in this field on Kosovo: the research of Janet Reineck (1991), whose book gives rich insights into migration and remittance patterns for the same area in the 1980s. 3 Returning to this region allows us to analyse changes in remittance scripts that have occurred over almost 20 years. We further analyse how they are interlinked with the relations and respective agency of different stakeholders in the extended household 4 within the patriarchal family structure and how they affect the well-being of senders and recipients as well as migration motives. Our research contributes to the emerging literature on remittance transfers in several directions. Among the few applications of the concept of remittance scripts, the article contributes to testing the applicability of the approach in the field. Based on a rich ethnographic dataset, it broadens our understanding of the reasons and patterns behind remitting. Furthermore, this ethnographic research finds application in the countryside. This context has built the ‘starting point’ of migration and mobility but has been largely ignored by migration studies (Leutloff-Grandits 2017). Last but not least, our work complements the existing literature with a unique analysis of changing remittance scripts over time and a discussion of the implications of such changes on the well-being of both senders and recipients. Although remittance scripts are doubtlessly region-specific, we believe that our case study is illustrative of phenomena that might be found in many places strongly affected by outmigration and remittance dependency. 2. A brief overview of the conceptual approach Carling’s (2014) concept of scripting remittances has two main links with existing theories. First, it overlaps with the idea of motives to remit, and hence with what is at the core of economic literature in the field; second, as already pointed out by Ellis (2003), the nature of implicit contracts between a migrant and the receiving household at origin is deeply rooted in culture and society. Acknowledging this, scripting remittances relates to the idea of shared (cultural) norms in which remitting is not simply an economic act but a social practice (Page and Mercer 2012). The NELM (Stark and Bloom 1985) identifies remittances as essential motivations for migration. Compared to the more rigid neo-classical or structuralist approaches, NELM allowed for a more realistic scenario of migration and remittance strategies because it acknowledges agency (de Haas 2010). Like the livelihoods approach (Ellis 2003), the theory focuses on household strategies and decision-making. With this, it emphasizes the riskspreading behaviour of households and the overcoming of market constraints, implying 2 J. M€ ollers and A. Arapi-Gjini Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 that households’ employment strategies encompass more than just one activity, and hence migration and other activities do not exclude each other but are part of the portfolio of household activities and pooled incomes (Stark 1991, 2009; de Haas 2010). The two primary motives for remitting discussed by NELM are altruism (emotional attachment) and self-interest (Stark and Bloom 1985; Stark 2009). Self-interest is assumed to prevail when the bargaining power in the recipient household is high, while less power and wealth in the recipient power points to altruism (Stark and Lucas 1988; Fokkema, Cela, and Ambrosetti 2013). Different sub-motives may trigger self-interest, such as the exchange motive or the wish to secure an expected inheritance and reputation (Stark 2009). Acknowledging culture as a strong force in human behaviour (Spencer-Oatey 2012; Ferraro and Briody 2017), it is evident that the patterns of remitting are not only influenced by considerations of individuals and households but also by cultural norms. Culture is defined as ‘a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioural conventions that are shared by a group of people, 5 and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behaviour and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behaviour’ (Spencer-Oatey 2008: 3). Unlike personality, which is partly inherited, partly learned and specific to the individual, culture is learned, not inherited, and specific to the group (Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov 2010). Nevertheless, it is as much a psychological construct as a social construct: an individual may share culture by sharing its underlying values and behaviours but may also follow cultural norms to a different degree (Matsumoto and Juang 2012). Culture may, therefore, be seen as subject to gradual change resulting from internal and external forces (cultural diffusion) (SpencerOatey 2012; Ferraro and Briody 2017). Carling’s (2014) concept of scripting remittances combines these two important theoretical strands by looking at remitting as a social transaction embedded in cultural norms. While economic motives play a role, remitting is seen as a highly complex process that goes beyond economic considerations but embodies specific expectations, meanings, and functions, which can be described comprehensively as scripts. These scripts are by far not entirely new—there is, for example, overlap with the motives discussed by Stark (2009)—but Carling defines them from an angle that puts the structures of expectations into the centre. In this sense, remittance scripts are cognitive structures that represent approximate and implicit knowledge or ‘a repertoire of generalised representations of remittance transactions that are recognised by a social group but might not be explicitly expressed’ (Carling 2014: 221). They refer to (partly) routinized behaviour in a specific context (defined by the social group). While scripts are sometimes simply followed, Carling (2014) clearly emphasizes that transactors should usually be seen as acting with scripts. That agency is exercised when people conform to or deviate from scripts. Remittance scripts must be seen as twosided (Carling 2008; Meyer, M€ ollers, and Buchenrieder 2012; Harper and Zubida 2016): as they may serve the benefit of the recipient and/or the purpose of the sender, not only the behaviour of the remitting migrants but also the recipients’ agency must be looked at. Carling (2014) suggested twelve non-exhaustive remittance scripts that appear relevant in many settings but are culturally defined and vary between contexts. They are characterized by differences in terms of whether and how the sender gives up ownership of the transferred remittances (relinquishment), what recipients offer or are expected to offer in exchange for remittances (requitals), whether remittances express or invite emotions such as gratitude, and how the remittance transaction affects the proximity and hierarchy between the sender and the recipient. In the following, we briefly introduce the twelve scripts. For a complete description, see Carling (2014). When the migrant acts/remits to compensate or the recipients expect to be compensated for services such as taking care of property or relatives, the (1) ‘compensation’ script is followed. (2) ‘Repayment’ scripts are at play when the migrant sees himself (or is seen) as indebted. When remittances are sent as a repayment, this is often based on an implicit Nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo 3 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 contract and may be an open-ended process (Stark 2009; Carling 2014). Remittances may also be a (3) ‘gift’ in the sense of the theories on gift exchange and, hence, a nonobligatory, irregular transfer for which social value and recognition are important. However, remittances must be seen as ‘non-gift’ in the case of an (4) ‘authorization’ script. Here, their use is determined by the sender, and the benefit for the recipient is only indirect. Typical for this script, the recipient is chosen based on trust considerations. Depending on the context, remitting may be simply (5) ‘income pooling’. In this case, the migrant remains part of the income-pooling household. The (6) ‘allowance’ script implies that regular lump sum payments for daily life expenditures are sent. This script underpins the superior position of the sender but may also overlap with transfers that resemble income pooling. When transfers refer to (7) ‘obligation/entitlement’, they are similar to compensation or repayment scripts, whereby here the respective service or debt is not clearly defined, or to pooling and allowance, when we talk about an obligation to a household that the migrant is still part of. This script might also be linked to transnational identities, implying double loyalties, travelling back and forth, etc. (de Haas 2010). The (8) ‘sacrifice’ script describes the migrant’s acting and remitting by selfless devotion. It hence is linked to the idea of the hardship of migration. If the migrant is motivated by fear of negative percussion, this is called (9) ‘blackmail’ script. It implies that the recipient can trigger reprisals for not remitting. If remittances are triggered by worthy needs that the sender is in a position to alleviate, this is called the (10) ‘help’ script. Help is a moral imperative, but social obligations may also play a role. Usually, help scripts occur based on a request by the recipient. The (11) ‘investment’ script is relevant when remittances are targeted into housing, business, or education investments. Often, houses form the ‘main materialisation of migrants’ remittances’ (Dalakoglou 2010: 766), but remittances may also be invested into social assets and relationships or finance family members’ migration. Stark (2009) stresses that investments may be aimed at diversifying the migrant’s income and/or have an insurance function. However, empirical evidence suggests that investments are sometimes rather consumptive in the sense of ‘capital transfer more than capital creation’, or they flow into ‘second rank propositions in an overcrowded sector’ (Penninx 1982: 803) due to a lack of creativity and innovation leading (de Haas 2010: 236–37). Finally, remittances may be given as (12) ‘donations’. Charitable or religious donations lack a clear sender–recipient dyad. ‘Diaspora investments’ for the commune, such as in building sports facilities, etc., might also be counted under this script. Remittance scripts reflect the significant variation in the nature and logic of remittance transactions in different contexts and single settings. The dimensions that shape remittance scripts include emotional, material, and relational aspects (Carling 2014). This implies that one has to look at the transaction as a whole and usually relate to a repertoire of scripts, not a single script. 3. Study design, methods, and analytical strategy Aiming to study the phenomenon of migration and remittances in-depth and bring forth as rich evidence as possible, we opted for an ethnographic case study approach in one village. This approach helps to surmount shortcomings due to the complexity of the matter (Fokkema, Cela, and Ambrosetti 2013). Our analysis aims at understanding social interaction among real people. It incorporates insights from in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and detailed field notes. We also made extensive use of participatory observation within the village and, in particular, in one migrant household, which allowed us generous and unlimited access to their everyday lives and social interactions while, at the same time, connecting us to other households in the village. Our data includes field notes from two separate visits in 2016 and 2017, as well as seventeen in-depth interviews conducted in 2016 (fifteen interviews) and 2018 (two 4 J. M€ ollers and A. Arapi-Gjini Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 interviews, conducted during a re-visit). The interviews began with a guideline questionnaire, but most extended beyond the guidelines to become life story interviews. Our respondents ranged in age from their 20s to their late 60s. Economic activities for the respondents in the village were limited. We interviewed a teacher, farmers, shopkeepers, and migrants with various professions abroad. Many of the younger interviewees were students or unemployed after completing their university studies. Female interviewees were typically housewives. About two-thirds of the interviewees were men, but some interviews were joined by additional family members, such as spouses or children. In addition to the in-depth interviews, we conducted focus group interviews with both male and female villagers. The male focus group consisted of younger men, while the female focus groups included middle-aged housewives and their young adult daughters. The research was conducted in Kosovo’s Opoja region in the summer of 2016, complemented by insights from revisits in 2017 and 2018. Opoja is situated close to the Sharr mountains in the south of the country, near the borders of Albania and North Macedonia. It was chosen as a suitable ‘laboratory’ for investigative fieldwork as it has a long history of labour migration due to limited local farm and non-farm economy opportunities. The choice of the region and the specific village was motivated by the earliest and most vibrant ethnographic study in this field on Kosovo by Janet Reineck (1991). Her book gives valuable insights into the multi-layered relations established, for instance, through family ties, hierarchies, and remittances. Returning to Opoja meant that we could observe the changes in the meaning and impacts of migration and remittances for the same area since the 1980s. Opoja, back then and still today, is not only identified as the ‘quintessential land of migration’ (Reineck 1991: 122) but is also known as one of Kosovo’s most conservative and traditional areas. This is favourable for studying deep-rooted patterns of remitting. Although we came as ‘intruders’ to the village at first, the fieldwork was very fruitful as we could gain trust very quickly: the curiosity of the villagers in the unexpected guests in the village, but also a high interest in and emotional attachment to the topic of migration helped to make interview partners open up to our questions. The link to our host family, whom we had found through Janet Reineck, was a door opener throughout the village. Our study benefitted from the fact that we were a team of two experienced researchers exchanging and discussing our observations. The exchange with the host family was equally important as it improved awareness of hermeneutic differences arising from language, dialect, or cultural differences—the grey area between foreign and familiar (Kuckartz 2014). The exchange with villagers and visiting migrants further facilitated a contextualization of their relationship and discursive positionings towards each other (Leutloff-Grandits 2017). Remittance scripts proved to be an analytical tool fitting very well with Reineck’s (1991) previous analysis. Both approaches embrace methods involving interaction with research subjects, gathering of qualitative data, and interpretative analysis. Our analytical strategy referred to the twelve remittance scripts based on systematic qualitative text analysis, putting analytical categories at the centre of the analysis (Kuckartz 2014). The method required translation, transcription, and coding of the complete material. Our codes and categories were developed in a rule-guided and multi-step process. Starting from a review of the research goals and questions, we carefully read all transcripts, field notes, and materials while noting down memos. We then briefly summarized our cases, whereby our sampling units were the interviewed or observed individuals. At the heart of the text, work was constructing our thematic categories and codes around the twelve remittance scripts described in Section 2. Further overarching aspects, such as the agency of the recipient and the reciprocity in the exchanges, were added. All coding work was done in a team (consensual coding). Nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo 5 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 4. Results and discussion This section first briefly introduces the specific context of the region of Opoja in Kosovo, where the remittance scripts discussed here are embedded, followed by a systematic analysis of Carling’s (2014) twelve remittance scripts with a view to the patterns found in Opoja. Finally, we discuss how scripts are linked to a shift in means of reciprocity and requitals and how they unfold in their impact on wellbeing and migration motivation. We connect our results to the work of Janet Reineck (1991) to capture a longer-term perspective. 4.1 Migration and remittances then and now: the Opojan context Remittance scripts in Opoja can only be understood against the mentality and culture of its people. Until today, this culture is guided by ancient traditions (Krasniqi 2015). Although we got to know villagers as open-minded and curious, they were deeply rooted and sometimes trapped in their traditions and culture. In the 1980s, one Opojan described this almost poetically and aptly: ‘We are thirsty for enlightenment, but what are we to do, filled as we are with the past?’ (Reineck 1991: 198). Leutloff-Grandits (2017: 52) vividly underlines how powerful this idea of the past is until today by citing a teenager’s description of her life goals, which started with ‘We need to be attentive to our past, because it makes the days still ahead of us more secure’. This ‘past’ to which Opojans regularly refer links to the ancient culture that, above all, emphasizes the importance of submission to the will of the collective of the extended household, observance of behavioural taboos, obedience to strict hierarchies, and a strong attachment to the village (Reineck 1991). Female subordination—a ‘symbolic submission to men, acted out in a myriad of daily rituals’ (Reineck 1991: 94)—and strict age hierarchies are among the outstanding features that describe this culture. In today’s Opojan villages, even in households perceiving themselves as ‘modern’, women still stand ready to serve coffee or light cigarettes for the men in the house, whereby the youngest ‘bride’ (wife of one of the sons of the house) is the one who serves the whole family. While the ancient culture remains visible and robust, we also observed signs of modernization and gradual disintegration. What used to be ‘fanatic conservatism’ (Reineck, 1991: 15) could be described now as continued and deep-rooted awareness of the ‘past’ and a readiness to obey the traditional norms (to individually different degrees). In the 1980s, Reineck (1991) observed a high uncontentedness and, at the same time, defence of the anachronistic lifestyle and social life. We, however, heard many critical voices during our stay. Doubts were raised, for example, that traditions such as overly expensive weddings or certain gender norms should still be followed. The younger generation in particular rejected the idea of a traditional, extended household. Such an extended household, led by the family patriarch, comprises several generations of brothers and their families (as well as unmarried sisters). The family in such a household is a joint economic and social unit, bearing various normative and practical dimensions (Leutloff-Grandits 2017). Extended households were characteristic of rural areas, especially until the 1999 war, but are still common in today’s Opojan villages. The persistent mentality that supports the traditional household was explained to us as follows: ‘We live in big families, we live in communities. [ … ] Life here is collective’. At the same time, there is a dynamic towards splitting up into nuclear families with one couple and their unmarried children (Krasniqi 2015), causing a constant conflict between the wish to serve the own nuclear family and fulfilling one’s obligation towards the extended family. Migration and remittances are closely interwoven with the Opojan culture. Opojans traditionally send out young men as labour migrants. It has shaped the lives of generations of Opojan families. Migrants usually stayed away for years, often for their whole working life. During their absence, no matter how long they were away, the migrants remained members of their Opojan household, where their wives and children lived under the 6 J. M€ ollers and A. Arapi-Gjini Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 protection of the household head. Within this system, migrants not only contributed with their remittances to the pooled household income but held Opoja’s culture and traditions high by supporting the collective. Reineck (1991) found that migration ‘impeded social change in several ways’. (Reineck 1991: 14), notably through absent male family heads forcing households into even stricter conservatism. We similarly observed that change was likely impeded if the person who could authorize it was a migrant who was absent and not interested in change or just unaware of the wish for such change. Through its negative side effects, migration itself has come in for criticism among those who seek a better life in Opoja. 4.2 Opojan remittance scripts Opojan remittance scripts describe the patterns that evolved around the financial and social transactions resulting from migration and embedded in cultural norms in the South of Kosovo. The observations and interviews of our field research link to all but one of the twelve remittance scripts described in Section 2.2, but with different weights in their importance. In Opoja, migrants remain closely linked to the collective of the village and the family with its hierarchical structure. They keep being part of the income-pooling household, and remittances belong to the household, not the migrant. The ‘income-pooling’ script goes along with the idea that migrants devote their lives to the collective interests of the extended family: the sending community remains the locus of emotional and social attention and the place where the migrants and their families see their future (Reineck 1991). The family patriarch manages the pooled income of the extended household. If the patriarch is the migrant himself, the next man in the hierarchy—for example, the younger brother— acts as a deputy in the village household but receives instructions from the patriarch. Although it is the essence of the cultural tradition, income pooling is a dwindling script in today’s Opoja. It is increasingly challenged by the individual interests of the migrant and the choice between the traditional ideal and a better life for the migrant’s wife and children. A vital force that may end the idea of income pooling in the near future is that more and more migrants take their core families with them. However, we observed that the incomepooling narrative was maintained over decades, even after the wife and children followed the migrant. 6 Regular visits and the persisting idea of belonging to one household inhibit the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ effect (Stark 2009), and the script is weakened but upheld. However, it will undoubtedly end with a new generation of children who grew up and live abroad and feel no longer bound to submit to the customs of their parent’s villages. If not gradually and over time, income-pooling ends when a household officially splits. Although the narrative remains that of a pooled income, many migrants have turned quietly towards ‘allowance’ payments. This transition from income pooling to allowance payments happens tacitly and gradually: land and property usually remain pooled, 7 and the narrative of the income-pooling household is not touched. However, migrants abroad keep more and more of their income for themselves. This is justified by the needs of their core family but implies a change of the script: remittances are no longer pooled and accumulated at the origin but are cut down by the migrant to an allowance that covers daily expenditures. This is possible because the remittance-sending migrants are in a superior position, allowing them to rewrite the script this way. The transition from income pooling to allowance payments is often linked to a looming family split up. A separation of the migrants from the traditional household is a farreaching step for both sides because the migrant then has the freedom to significantly (and openly) lower remittances flows. According to Krasniqi (2015), imbalances within the joint household work towards splitting land and property. We similarly observed that a growing dissatisfaction of senders and recipients about their one-sided financial dependency pushes traditional households to split. One migrant household head told us that if the family Nature and effects of remittance scripts in rural Kosovo 7 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024 separated, he could finally invest his money instead of sending allowance payments, while his brother could work for him if he wanted to. Both pooling and allowance scripts respond to the cultural norm to support the extended household. For this reason, they overlap with the ‘obligation/entitlement’ script. Unlike these two scripts, which emphasize the purpose of the transfer, we interpret the obligation/ entitlement script with a focus on whether remitting is seen as a choice or a must. In the 1980s, the narrative was that of a must: ‘We all want to go abroad to work, not for pleasure, but out of obligation to the family’ (Reineck 1991: 125). In today’s Opoja, this narrative is alive, as we also discuss with a view to the sacrifice script further below, but the obligation to remit is not as strong as it probably was in the past. There is still a widespread expectation on the recipients’ side and significant normative pressure to remit on the migrants’ side. However, some interview partners rejected the idea of an obligation as rather offending. They stressed that the migrants act out of their own will even if they feel obligated. This was described then, for example, as: ‘They made it their obligation’. Typically, a differentiation was made between a stronger obligation towards parents than other family members. The stronger obligation to support parents may also be interpreted as the ‘repayment’ script: Migrants see themselves as indebted to their parents who raised and supported them before. Sometimes, they also see themselves as indebted to those family members who supported (through remittances) their own or their children’s education or career. However, repayment is to be seen less as a self-standing script but as a supporting factor of the obligation script in Opoja. The ‘compensation’ script comes into play when the pooling and obligation scripts are weakened or dissolved. It refers to the compensation of family members of the extended household who provide specific services. Typical services would be, for instance, to look after elderly parents (and manage allowance payments for this purpose), but also after the property. In the literature, for migrants and even second-generation migrants, the compensation script has been described as a strategic way to keep the door open for a possible return (Fokkema, Cela, and Ambrosetti 2013). As mentioned earlier, the hope of one migrant that his brother could work for him after the family has split up could also be interpreted in the light of the compensation script. Money transfers may be made outside the above-described scripts as personal gifts or as non-gifts for a determined use. Both scripts are widespread in Opoja and used in parallel to other scripts. ‘Authorization’ describes a non-gift and is particularly relevant for the construction of houses, where the migrant might send a larger amount of money specifically for this purpose. The recipient is then obliged to do what the sender requests. In the broader sense, also allowance payments are tagged by the migrant for a specific use and thus ‘authorised’ for regular expenses: ‘If he [the migrant] sends 1000 Euros and says, ‘Build a house!’, I will build a house. If he gives me 200 Euro for family expenses, then I will spend it for the family’. (village man who regularly receives remittances from his migrant brother). The authorization script links up directly with the ‘investment’ script. It is important to note that most investments undertaken by migrants in Opoja are at least partly ‘soft’ investments. They are targeted towards social assets and relationships and are seldom genuinely business-oriented. For the 1980s, Reineck (1991: 90) stated that migrants ‘put most of their foreign capital into houses and weddings’. Until today, weddings are infamous in Opoja for eating up vast amounts of remittances in the way of significant conspicuous consumption. However, housing investments also have ‘soft’ elements, as we will explain in the following. Over the years, remittance-financed investments have replaced the traditional village houses made of mud and stone with concrete buildings. Although many of these new homes are not used or only temporarily inhabited, 8 new houses are constantly under 8 J. M€ ollers and A. 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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Migration Studies, 2024, 12, 1–15 https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnae035 Original Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/12/4/mnae035/7750023 by guest on 10 September 2024