katigbak 2015 emotional remittances

Global Networks 15, 4 (2015) 519–535. ISSN 1470–2266 © 2015 The Author(s)

Global Networks © 2015 Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd 519

Moralizing emotional remittances:

transnational familyhood and translocal moral

economy in the Philippines’ ‘Little Italy’

EVANGELINE O. KATIGBAK

National University of Singapore,

21 Lower Kent Ridge Rd, Singapore 119077

[email protected]

Abstract In this article, I explain the intersections of morality and emotions in the

(re)constitution of transnational familyhood and translocal moral economy. I use the

case of the Philippines’ ‘Little Italy’ to explore the translocal emotional geographies

of sustaining transnational families through what I call ‘emotional remittances’, which

indicate how emotions move across translocal social fields through remittances. I first

probe the understandings of transnational familyhood in the Philippines and then move

on to interrogate the translocal moral economy that influences the meanings of, and

attitudes towards, emotional remittances. I first argue that the continuation of trans-

national familyhood implies the subscription to the translocal moral economy

embedded in sending societies. Second, this translocal moral economy is underpinned

by emotional constructs such as love, ingratitude and guilt, that (re)shape and are

(re)shaped by transnational familyhood. The findings and analysis in this article

contribute to further theorizations of the interrelations of emotion, remittances and

transnational family formation.

Keywords TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY, TRANSLOCAL EMOTIONAL GEOGRAPHIES,

TRANSLOCAL MORAL ECONOMY, EMOTIONAL REMITTANCES, OVERSEAS FILIPINO

WORKERS (OFWs)

In this article, I investigate the intersections of morality and emotion in the

(re)constitution of transnational familyhood and translocal moral economy. I argue

that the continuation of transnational familyhood amid the spatiotemporal spaces that

separate families in migration implies the subscription to the translocal moral

economy of the sending community. Underpinning such translocal moral economy,

in turn, are specific emotional constructs that shape and are shaped (or reshaped) by

transnational familyhood. I demonstrate how one may effectively utilize the lens of

emotion to theorize translocal emotional geographies beyond the familiar narratives

Evangeline O. Katigbak

520 © 2015 The Author(s)

of successful stories that characterize a number of scholarly works on transnational

families.

In this article, I address the analytical splintering of the emotional and economic

aspects of transnational familyhood – being and doing family – that is discernible in

many studies on transnational family. I stress the importance of seeing emotions and

economies as interrelated (see also Coe 2011; Ettlinger 2004). Indeed, nowhere is the

mixing of emotions and economies more apparent – and necessary, if it is to be

sustained – than in transnational families, which need constant and conscious rationaliz-

ation to remain together even as (and especially because) spatiotemporal distances

separate their members.

I explore explicit linkages between emotions and economies by interrogating the

morality of what I call ‘emotional remittances’ through a case study of transnational

familyhood in Barangay (village) Pulong Anahao, more popularly known as ‘Little

Italy’ – a community whose social and moral fabric is woven through the ongoing

translocal transactions among transnational family members in the village and in Italy.

Emotional remittances encompass the material objects as well as the sociocultural

values and/or ideas sent from either the sending or receiving localities to their family

members elsewhere. They signify the mutual embeddedness of emotions and remit-

tances that are shared translocally: hence, the term ‘emotional remittances’ indicates

that the true remittance is, in fact, emotional. Being the logical outcome of the

subscription to transnational familyhood, emotional remittances mean that all those

involved often interpret material and social remittances as signs of love and concern.

These are valued as expressions of positive morality.

An important departure from the prevailing understanding of transnational family-

hood made in this article is the examination of negative emotions. That is, beyond the

familiar and more common consideration of sacrificial love as undergirding trans-

national familyhood, I look at emotions that often connote negative feelings and

meanings such as ingratitude and guilt. I argue that such negative emotions, although

often denied and/or ignored theoretically and empirically, are part of the whole con-

struct and practice of transnational familyhood.

In what follows, I build on the existing related literature on, broadly, emotional

geographies, migration and transnational family to examine the intersecting notions of

transnational familyhood, emotional remittances and moral economy. My aim in doing

so is twofold: first, to underline the importance of the mixing of emotions and

economies in understanding transnational familyhood; and, second, to develop an

analysis of emotion as underpinning a moral framework that (re)structures transnational

familyhood. Thereafter, I use the case of transnational familyhood in Pulong Anahao

to discuss moral categories that structure the meanings and attitudes of translocal

subjects toward emotional remittances. In the concluding section, I underline how the

findings and analysis in this article contribute to theorizations of emotions in migration

in general, and how one may conceptualize emotional remittances beyond merely

sustaining remittance-dependent left-behind families, but rather, and in particular, as a

way of differentiating between the embodied moralities of the different members of

transnational families.

Moralizing emotional remittances

© 2015 The Author(s) 521

Emotional remittances, transnational familyhood and moral economy

The motivations behind migration, the maintenance of transnational family across

translocal spaces, as well as the repercussions of spatiotemporal family separation all

reflect various degrees and forms of tensions between emotions and economies. For

instance, the emotional parting of migrants from their families (usually for low-skilled

work) derives from the need to shore up the family’s perennial economic crisis. As

such, in the literature migrants are deemed ‘economic pilgrims’ (Yeoh and Huang 2000:

418) before they become emotional sojourners. Moreover, the ‘for the sake of the

family’ motivations for the transnational sojourn of migrants also intersect with, if not

constitute, the massive literature on (monetary) remittances.

Remittances have been an important subject of enquiry under the rubric of trans-

national migration. They are the most tangible evidence that migrants do not break ties

with their countries or communities of origin even as they migrate (Guarnizo 2003).

Scholars have explored the impact of monetary remittances widely since studies (such

as Basch et al. 1994) noted their positive contribution to national development. At a

household level, many believe that remittances are at the crux of family maintenance

and improved socioeconomic conditions (Asis et al. 2004; Semyonov and Gorodzeisky

2005). Levitt (2001: 11), on the other hand, has advanced the idea that ‘social

remittances’ pertain to ‘ideas, behaviors, identities and social capital that flow from

host to sending communities’. She claims that such transfers keep transnational

communities intact and enduring because of the uninterrupted familial connections that

social remittances foster. I suggest that another way of understanding them is through

the notion of emotional remittances. Emotional remittances indicate the continuity of

emotions and economies, expressing how money, ideas and material things that travel

back and forth between and among family members across translocal spaces are not

devoid of meaning and feelings.

Emotional remittances are among the basic elements in transnational familyhood. I

draw on Folbre’s (2001) theorization of the invisible heart that represents family values

of love, obligation and morality that imply, respectively, feelings, morality and rational

calculations. I sum up Folbre’s conception of family values to mean familyhood,

recognizing that to be and do family requires not only feelings but also the morally

framed production and distribution of (scarce) resources. Folbre asserts that the

economic implications of family values are privileged relative to their emotional

significance. This is evidenced by the separate spheres thesis, which emphasizes the

productive over the reproductive sphere, which is often rendered ‘anomalous’ (Zelizer

2010: 273). In reality, they are co-dependent, although not always in a harmonious

fashion. Their messy interrelations brew in the family where we first form the structures

of our own feelings (Hochschild 2011) and where we are cultured into particular

socially constructed moral codes that configure our behaviour and actions.

Another important aspect of family values is morality, which Folbre (2001) regards

as pertaining simply to the obligations shared among family members. I expand

Folbre’s idea and define morality as the code of mores that stipulates the standards of

right or wrong in a family or community. Moreover, family members constantly



perform and/or exchange moral and reciprocal obligations, thus contributing to the

continuation of the family as a social institution.

I draw a parallel between the concept of transnational familyhood and Gowricharn’s

(2004: 617) notion of ‘primordial loyalties’ or ‘primordial givens’ that ‘take into

account that family support confirms and reconfirms social bonds’. The family, for

Gowricharn, is the ‘primordial relation’ that carries such loyalties and givens. He

explains that, while selfless in nature, primordial loyalties based on similar identifi-

cations and commitments that result from ‘natural affinity’ may contain expectations

of return or ‘exchange elements’. It is in both these elements (primordial givens and

exchange) that morality and economies converge. He posits that primordial givens

constitute moral capital, which he defines as ‘an accepted obligation and commitment

between people who regard themselves as socially close to each other’. Extending

Gowricharn’s ideas, Carling (2008: 1459) considers primordial givens as ‘moral

currency’, the possessor of which may acceptably claim support or exchange entitle-

ments from other members of a moral economy. Thus, Carling (2008: 1459) describes

moral economy as ‘the exchange and accumulation of moral currency’.

Building on Gowricharn and Carling’s arguments, I contend that we mostly observe

the moral economy of transnational families in the unbridled maintenance of trans-

national familyhood through emotional remittances. Expressed differently, emotional

remittances convey morality; they show the faithful subscription to the social contract

that is familyhood. Therefore, more than just sustaining left-behind families and

monetary remittance-dependent sending nations, emotional remittances differentiate

between the embodied moralities of members of transnational families.

While I expand on Gowricharn’s theorization, my understanding of transnational

familyhood differs from his conception of primordial givens on the grounds of the

latter’s assumed singularity. I posit that the strength and expressions of transnational

familyhood differ corporeally and contextually and that, while particular positive

emotional constructs (like love) indeed act to keep the family together, they are not

invariably expressed across time and space. I assert that transnational familyhood is a

social construct that is taught, learned and, in many cases, co-opted. Moreover, those

implicated in a moral economy of obligations and responsibilities are unequally yoked

in the moral constellation of transmigration.

The concept of moral currency is helpful in elucidating the overlaps in family values

that convey morality and rationality. This framework illuminates how morality struc-

tures rational calculations in transnational familyhood. The emphasis on feelings in the

triad of family values identified earlier, however, does not come out strongly in the

moral currency discussion. Thus, I expand the conceptualization by arguing that

emotions underpin morality, which then (re)configures the expectations and perform-

ance of reciprocities in transnational families. In other words, rather than occurring as

predetermined, particular emotions structure morality, and they result in a variety of

moral categories that likewise reshape transnational familyhood. While I present

seemingly simplistic (almost linear) interrelations among emotions, morality and

rationalities, in reality, their associations are much more complex because the bound-

aries of each of these values are obfuscated.



To understand the attitude and behaviour of translocal subjects toward emotional

remittances, throughout the year 2011/12 I carried out field research in Pulong Anahao,

an upland village in Mabini, Batangas about 130 kilometres southeast of Metro Manila.

The majority of migrants from the village are domestic workers in Italy who build large

villas that are uncharacteristic of upland villages in the country, which is what earned

the village the tag ‘Little Italy’. In-depth interviews with 41 of these individuals, all of

whose names I have anonymized to protect their identities, mainly inform this article.

The majority of the interviewees were non-migrant villagers (28 individuals), while the

rest were migrants who were in the village for a short vacation or for an important

family activity (such as a wedding).

Migration from Pulong Anahao to Italy started in the late 1970s and, as in other

accounts of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who went to Italy, migrants from there

(known as Pulong Anahaweños) entered Italy illegally through the so-called

patakbuhan (literally, to run) system (see also Basa and de la Rosa 2007; Parreñas

2003). The initial migration of Pulong Anahaweños to Italy was primarily female-led

and it paved the way to what currently has become a staple part of individual and

familial aspirations in the village.

Apart from capturing the voices of migrants and non-migrants alike, I also

wished to acquire a broader understanding of the wider frameworks that influence

these people’s experiences of transnational familyhood. The reason for this is my

assertion that sending or receiving emotional remittances is not merely a personal

and embodied decision to be moral with respect to their filial obligations. Instead,

the moral framework of emotional remittances that configures the ‘reading’ and

enactment of transnational familyhood also depends on a variety of structural

factors. I analyse two in the succeeding section: these are (a) relevant institutional

constraints and allowances in Italy and (b) existing emotional representations in Pulong

Anahao.

The moral framework of emotional remittances: institutional considerations in

Italy and emotional representations in Pulong Anahao

Why (not) Italy? Social and institutional conditions in Italy

Italy is the most popular destination country among Pulong Anahaweños for two

reasons. First, the presence of familial and social networks provides safety nets and

emotional security for individuals. Second, the positive feedback that migrants have fed

into the communication loop to their home village contributes to the appeal of Italy as

an ideal destination country, which bears on their expectations of emotional remit-

tances. However, whereas others (Voigt-Graf 2004) have looked to kin networks to

explain the continuing connections among transnational families, I interrogate how an

imagined shared religious subjectivity between the sending and receiving areas

configures a morality that bears on the expectations for and giving of emotional

remittances. Subsequently, I look at how the barriers to entry to Italy, as well as the

employment and legal status of migrants, act as sociopolitical impediments that allow

or limit the emotional remittances of migrants.



The familiar touchstones that people tap to hold transnational families together

support an imagined similarity in religious subjectivity between the Philippines and

Italy. Because the Philippines is mainly a Catholic country – in 2010 about 80 per cent

of its population was Catholic (NSO 2012) – and Rome is the seat of power of the

Catholic faith, non-migrant Pulong Anahaweños assume that the moral framework to

which they are accustomed also operates in the destination country. They assume that

it will diffuse the negative emotions normally associated with treading unfamiliar

ground. This is also why a familiar preface to the logic of migration to Italy (and not

elsewhere) among the villagers carries religious insinuations. Nancy (a non-migrant)

opines, ‘[Italians] are also Catholic, right? That is why they understand Pinoys

[Filipinos]. … That is why they are generous and understanding.’ For Paolo (a non-

migrant), the continuing migration of Pulong Anahaweños to Italy is a ‘miracle’; this

is a view that many villagers share. He asserted that ‘it was really God who showed the

way [to Italy] because [Pulong Anahaweños] in Italy are uneducated. Some are even

“no-read-no-write” [illiterate]. … That is why you would really wonder how the

villagers “discovered” Italia.’ In fact, this narrative of a migration miracle is so strong

that emotional remittances often assume religious overtones.

Although religion did not emerge as a major reason for the choice of Italy as the

country of destination for Pulong Anahaweños, what one may glean from Nancy and

Paolo’s claims is that religion produces similar emotional subjectivities across spaces.

Such assumed similarities have bred moral expectations of the continuity of cultural

practices across distances. Non-migrants’ imagined notion of ‘generous and under-

standing’ Italians is also often deemed to mirror the characteristics of Filipinos.

However, this thought occludes the reality of the difficulties of work in Italy in the

minds of the non-migrants. Thus, the mismatch in the perception of ease of finding

work and earning money vis-à-vis the realities of the lived experiences of their migrant

family members becomes a point of tension.

The sociopolitical conditions associated with entry, employment and legal status in

Italy also have a significant bearing on the ability of migrant Pulong Anahaweños to

send emotional remittances. The initial migration to Italy is a perilous gamble that some

who do not volunteer to do so eventually undertake for the sake of their families in

Pulong Anahao, which is congruent with claims that put the family at the heart of

migration decisions. For the migrant villagers who travelled to Italy between the early

2000s and the present, clandestine migration streams have already been overtaken by

safer routes like family reunification and direct-hiring schemes provided by the Italian

state (INSTRAW 2008; Zanfrini and Sarli 2010). While celebrated, these tracks are

tedious and costly. Moreover, migrants and their families often use the direct hiring

procedure as a way of circumventing the stringent policies that prevent them from

reuniting with their families or as a more uncomplicated way of securing a permesso di

soggiorno (residence permit) in Italy. Under the direct-hiring scheme, however, the

would-be applicant cannot process his or her application without a guaranteed employer

in Italy. As such, migrants are often obligated to help their non-migrant relatives

navigate the difficult terrain of finding employment through the direct-hiring scheme.

Vicky1 explained what her siblings did for her:



[My siblings] actually asked their employers, ‘can you hire my sibling? I will

shoulder all the costs that will be incurred in the process.’ Some employers,

however, are reluctant to help. … But some employers are supportive, like those

of my siblings. … When we arrive there, however, we don’t have jobs.

The performance of one’s moral duty to assist a family member demonstrates the

convergence of the emotional and economic aspects of emotional remittances. The

social aspect of emotional remittances includes the moral obligation to help other

members of the family to go to Italy through the very expensive direct hiring process,

as Vicky’s narrative illustrates. Villagers estimate the total cost that will be incurred in

applying for work in Italy, including airfare, at about half a million pesos.2 The presence

of a close relative abroad is hence no longer a sufficient condition for one to be able to

go to Italy. Instead, to help a non-migrant family member, the close relative needs

employment and a secure permesso de soggiorno.

Although (un)employment, the (lack of) legal status of migrants and sociopolitical

conditions in Italy influence emotional remittances, they are rarely factored into the

morality of emotional remittances, and therefore are not always acknowledged by the

non-migrants. Very often, the materialities of the successes of migration conceal the

problematic situations of some migrants, which create tensions in the transnational

family. For example, people described the behaviour of Peter’s (non-migrant) father

who was delinquent in his emotional remittances as falling outside the moral framework

of transnational familyhood in the village. However, part of the reason for his (deemed)

indifference was his deteriorating health, which also caused his unemployment, which

they only found out recently when one of Peter’s brothers went to Italy and saw his

father. As the village head revealed, ‘the truth is, there are many unemployed [Pulong

Anahaweños] in Italy. They just do not tell their families here.’

Seen only through the splintered emotions and economies framework, the moral

economy of transnational families is blind to the contradictions of migration. In other

words, we interpreted non-performance as a moral failure based on the socially

constructed moral framework of familyhood in Pulong Anahao.

Moral frameworks in Pulong Anahao

In the social and legal frameworks of the Philippines, the institution of the family is

honoured as the ‘cornerstone’ of the society. Filipino families are characterized by

widely extended close relations that are also manifested in the contiguity of their

dwellings, especially in the rural areas (Medina 2001). This is true of Pulong Anahao,

where the villagers consider themselves isang pisa (literally hatched from the same

brood). The notion of isang pisa stretches the concept of the family from its immediate

members to the entire community (see also Aguilar 2009b). With the intersection of

transmigration, isang pisa likewise reterritorializes the places inhabited by its members,

thus constituting a translocal village (McKay 2006). According to the villagers, the

isang pisa familyhood of Pulong Anahao held them together during times of extreme

poverty in the village prior to their economic progress through transnational migration.



Amid the ongoing out-migration of the villagers to Italy, it is still through the isang

pisa transnational familyhood that the village persists.

The multifarious experiences of migration complicate the changes that transnational

familyhood undergoes by disturbing the power relations between migrant and non-migrant

members of a transnational family. Despite these avenues for altering uneven spatialities

of power, however, the status quo remains resilient because members of a social

collective do not easily accept a reworking of their customary transnational familyhood.

The resolute desire, especially by the gatekeepers of the collective, to preserve the

village’s isang pisa and its accompanying moral framework sets up a system of rewards

and punishments. Because of the almost equal intensity with which non-migrants very

often meet the feelings that their transmigrant counterparts communicate through their

emotional remittances, particular emotions come to form the basis of various moral

categories in Pulong Anahao.

The members of the transnational family are therefore not entirely free to make

decisions about and form attitudes to emotional remittances. Instead, a moral frame-

work that stretches across the entire translocal village defines the rules associated with

repayments to the transnational family. This moral framework, moreover, defines the

moral boundaries of attitudes and enactments of transnational familyhood, often

differentiating people according to defined moral categories that include those who

subscribe to the framework and those who rebel against it. To deviate from such rules

is to be relegated to a less favoured moral category and to endure the accompanying

deprecatory penalties that are imposed upon those who do not conform. This complex

moral framework operates towards the end of ensuring continuity in transnational

family relations across space and time.

Moralizing emotional remittances in ‘Little Italy’

I share Svašek and Skrbiš’s (2007) position that, rather than being implied, an explicit

theorization of emotions is necessary if one is to come up with a more critical investi-

gation of human mobilities. Thus, I interrogate the moral trappings of emotional remit-

tances by highlighting specific emotions that ground moral categories in translocal Pulong

Anahao. I begin with a caveat that the whole gamut of human emotions is vast and

complex and, although each of these moral categories has stark distinctions, the deline-

ation between and among them is hard to identify because they overlap at their margins.

The orthodox: sacred love

Love and its accompanying caring feelings, the literature on transnational families

implies, are the most common rationale for the unbridled connections between trans-

national families. The love shared by transnational family members is thus, a sacred love,

following Hochschild’s (2000: 203) assertion that every family has a ‘sacred core’ –

‘private rituals and shared meanings’. The sacred love that binds the transnational family

is an ideal for which its members strive. As I discuss later, however, other emotions that

are not necessarily positive, such as ingratitude and guilt, also shape or reshape

transnational familyhood.



By sacred love, I refer to a surging positive emotion based on a sense of duty that is

paramount and supersedes one’s own comfort. Upholding sacred love for one’s family

is the visceral revered core of transnational families and is what preserves traditional

beliefs about the societal hegemony of the family. Those who embody and practice

sacred love are the faithful followers of the customary and religious regard for the

primacy of the collective over the self, hence the orthodox moral category. Accord-

ingly, those who belong to the orthodox moral ground are those who consider the

fulfilment of familial obligations as a categorical imperative.

There is a tie between the notion of sacred love and the gendered discourses of

sacrificial mothers and dutiful daughters. The intersecting senses of self-sacrifice and

familial duty that characterize sacred love are traditionally gendered – indeed often

essentialized – as feminine. The performance of such moral obligations therefore

constitutes gendered morality, where certain expectations, such as sacrificing one’s self

(including one’s desires and aspirations) in the name of familial love, is placed more

heavily on the shoulders of women than men (Silvey 2007). Thus, unpacking sacred

love also contributes to the theorizations on gendered morality, for it examines the

recursive relationship between translocal subjects and the gendered moral framework

that they negotiate.

We hold the love of the orthodox sacred because defying it brings contrition,

whether willing or contrived. As Pinky (migrant), for instance, mused: ‘if not sending

money to my parents is a sin, oh, may I be forgiven!’ Pinky was vocalizing her thoughts

on financially supporting her parents and the failure of her migrant siblings to do so

regularly. She sends money to her parents monthly and occasionally supports some of

her non-migrant siblings and their families. According to Pinky:

The [domestic] work itself is not difficult. What is hard is what you feel in your

heart if there are problems here in the Philippines. For example, if your budget

is not enough and someone here is sick. You want to help but you cannot: that

is a very heavy burden that I carry in my heart.

Pinky’s heaviest burden was her inability to send money to her family in Pulong

Anahao when the need for it arose, especially during her first few years in Italy.

Whenever this happened, her misery, according to her, was unmatched and she would

only be consoled and released from the ‘heavy burden that [she] carr[ied] in [her] heart’

once she was able to send money. She raised money by taking on extra work, limiting

her budget on personal needs like food or she sometimes borrowed from either a relative

or her employer.

Sacred love is secured by offering the self to the family and is pegged to the assumed

precedence of the collective over the individual. ‘I love my family’, said Roel (a return

migrant) when asked why he opted to work even when he already had the ‘good fortune’

of being adopted by a wealthy Italian family whose matriarch he was taking care of

during that time.3 As Roel continued, ‘[not giving me any salary] was the part that

turned me off. Of course, I was already part of their family as the youngest [adopted]

child. But I thought, how about my family in the Philippines?’



For Roel, the unceasing flow of money from abroad for the survival of his family

in the village was a sacred love. Consequently, he sacrificed what would have otherwise

been a comfortable life with his adoptive family to work and be able to continue sending

money to his family in the village. The embodiment of sacred love means that it is not

only ‘sending dollars [that] shows feelings’ (McKay 2007: 175) but also offering the

body that substantiates sacred love. Thus, Roel returned to the village for good in 1997

to take care of his parents when they fell ill (both are now deceased). In the same vein,

Mirasol (a migrant) shared her story in tears:

Even if I am already married, my father is still my priority. That is why I am still

unable to save up to now. … My mother got sick and so we needed money for her

hospitalization; I did everything for her but she eventually died after a few months.

… Just a year ago, my sister also passed away. … I also spent a lot for her medical

bills, almost a million [pesos]. … That is why I told my husband, even if you

hinder me with a spear … whatever you hinder me with, you could never stop

me from helping my parents, especially now that only one of them is living.

Mirasol’s emotional recollection of what her sacred love entailed and what she was

still willing to do to fulfil it shows that those who embody it are inclined sacrificially

to do everything for the salvation of the object of their sacred love. Very often, as in

the cases noted above, the necessary sacrifice of the self is for the continuing infusion

of money that acts as the lifeblood to transnational family relations. Hence, contrary to

scholars who posit the commoditization of the intimate life (Boris and Parreñas 2010;

Parreñas 2005), the framework of emotional economic geographies does not demonize

the monetary when it threads its way into the emotional.

Congruent with Zelizer (2010: 270), who points out that ‘intimate relations regularly

coexist with economic transactions without being corrupted’, my fieldwork findings like-

wise show that money channels emotions without muddling them. In fact, what one might

otherwise derisively label monetized emotion, can be a necessary condition for sustaining

familial relationships. The commoditization of love thesis advances the idea that money

buys love and that we ‘express devotion through goods and depend on services to display

closeness to others’ (Boris and Parreñas 2010: 1). In the intimate setting of a transnational

family, however, one does not always buy sacred love – expressed through the fulfilment

of moral filial obligations – because the morality of fulfilling familial obligations is its

own reward. The above narratives of the villagers suggest that the emotional consequen-

ces that accrue to the self are the high premium of sending emotional remittances, more

than the acquisition of positive emotions from the receivers or the heightened status in the

household that the commoditization of love argument implies.

Non-migrant Pulong Anahaweños are likewise quick to recognize and accordingly

reward the sacred love of their migrant family. Kim (a non-migrant) narrated the travails

of her migrant children who went to Italy illegally in the early 1990s and spoke of how

non-migrant family members should respond: ‘we should really love the earnings of our

children!’ Kim’s admonition to other non-migrant parents to ‘love the earnings of [their]

children’ shows that emotional remittances are the tangible forms of sacred love that their



family members send from Italy. For Kim, the physical and emotional hardships that

migrants endure to earn money to send to their families are acts of sacred love that

deserve the same sacred feelings in return. Similarly, Paolo recognized the sacred love

that binds his family, which is a love seasoned with sacrifices. Diabetic and inflicted

with various diseases for which he needed frequent hospitalization, Paolo relayed:

My wife told me … ‘as long as I can work, you will not fail to have your medicine.’

When I cry, she would tell me, ‘why are you crying again?’ I would reply, ‘I pity

you so much.’ She is really suffering there. She is a part-timer working for three

employers. … I wish I would die instead so she can be free from this burden.

Paolo asserts that one should reciprocate sacred love with equal sacrifice. He also

knows that sacred love is not always happy but is also embroiled in a host of other

emotions that are not necessarily positive. Two issues ensue from here. First, while

recognizing the reality of the sacred love, it is important to acknowledge that it is a

bubble, which a myriad of conditions may cause to expand or burst. Hence, what we

may deem sacred love, in reality comes in different shapes and forms. Second, people

do not always read emotional remittances in the same way across translocal spaces,

which can produce tensions in transnational familyhood. Kim’s call for a loving

response to the earnings that migrants send to their left-behind family tells us that others

might fail to respond with the love expected from them. Therefore, while ideal, the

orthodox moral category is not a blanket morality among transnational families.

The nonconformist: heretical ingratitude

Antithetical to the orthodox moral category is the nonconformist morality. Those who

are in this moral category – the nonconformists – have restricted attitudes and behaviour

towards emotional remittances, which others often frown upon because they believe

they violate the socially prescribed rules of familyhood. The refusal to conform fully to

the patterned sociality across the translocal social field warrants social chastisement

because of the perceived ingratitude of the nonconforming individual to the community

to which he or she professes to belong. Falling outside the moral framework of the

translocal village, such ingratitude is heretical because it is ‘profane’, transgressing the

sacred love that is supposed to hold the transnational family together. Such (perceived)

profanity is the basis for the lack or absence of sacred love. Hence, in contrast to the

spirit of self-sacrifice, which is the substance of sacred love, various shades of

ingratitude underpin the nonconformist moral category and these inflict multigraded

feelings of disappointment and resentment on the members of the collective.

To admit to possessing heretical ingratitude is to confess to rebelling against the

societal moral framework of transnational familyhood. This kind of disclosure requires

a certain level of trust and confidence that my position as an outsider to the tightly knit

isang pisa relations did not afford me. As such, I had to resort to seeing through the

lens of the relatives of the nonconformists who have put them in this moral category.

Consider Mirasol and Pinky, whose sacred love mentioned earlier dampened in



comparison with the (deemed) heretical ingratitude of their morally nonconformist

family members. In Mirasol’s narrative above, she hinted at encountering opposition

from her husband over her decision to show love to her parent by covering her father’s

financial needs. She likewise resented what she felt was her siblings’ uncaring attitude

to their father. According to her, ‘sometimes I can’t help but resent the seeming

indifference of my siblings, especially towards my father. … I am a bit angry with them.

… It’s like, what if I can’t help my father anymore?’ In the same way, Pinky’s voice

trembled as she said, ‘I am not the only child.’ She was protesting about the failure of

her migrant siblings to send money to their parents in the village and felt that the burden

of parental support fell unjustly on her shoulders. Hence, she was tempted to stop

sending regular remittances if only to force her siblings to support their parents too.

Despite her anger, Pinky was mindful of how the moral fabric of the village would

measure such an act. Thus, Pinky continued to send emotional remittances to her

parents. While migrants may find joy in being able to provide for the needs of their

families, the skewed shouldering of such a moral obligation disrupts the positive

feelings that performing them generates, as Mirasol and Pinky implied. Such unfair-

ness, they insinuated, might lead to the termination of economic help.

The heretical ingratitude of the nonconformists resembles Osella and Osella’s

(2000: 126) notion of the Indian kallan or migrants who ‘behave like self-interested,

individualistic, immoral and anti-social kallanmar (thieves) towards their own people’.

In Pulong Anahao, the withholding of assistance is read not only as being anti-social

but also as akin to forsaking social relations at home. This is because lifetime member-

ship of a social collective, such as a transnational family, translates into a lifetime of

repaying obligations and reciprocity, and the society construes the refusal to adhere and

pay moral currency as laden with heretical ingratitude.

Subscription to such rules of repayments is mandatory and expected; to abscond

from them is to channel a breaking of ties from the social group. Referring to the

absconders as ‘rotten eggs’, non-migrant Romeo quoted this Filipino adage, ‘those who

do not know how to look back at where they came from will not reach their destination.’

Romeo’s thought, which likewise echoed the sentiments of non-migrant Pulong

Anahaweños, means that the fruits of migration are not personal harvests. They are

communal and for consumption by all the isang pisa relations. Moreover, such ‘fruits’

have spatial and temporal aspects, for they are sown in past moments of geographical

propinquity, cultivated in fleeting whiles of togetherness and harvested amid absence.

Likewise, one can see heretical ingratitude in its denial to exchange the moral currency

of a primordial relationship on which the non-migrants rely because of their familial

relations with the migrants. Kate (a non-migrant) related how she had previously been

able to secure domestic jobs in Cyprus and Dubai, but because her migrant siblings

refused to give her monetary assistance, she was unable to leave. According to Kate,

her siblings wanted her to remain in the village to look after their parents and their

unoccupied houses. Consequently, Kate struggled to describe how she felt towards her

migrant siblings: ‘my heart is full of bitterness towards my [migrant] siblings. … I am

angry … “Why are my siblings not helping me?” I ask myself that question often. I

envy them so much. … I cannot explain how I feel. … It is hard [wipes her tears away].’



Kate’s husband, Leon (a non-migrant), commented that it was probably because her

sisters ‘did not want to be outdone’ that they were unwilling to help Kate, implying that

even within the family, competition may be present and that family members do not

always work towards the good of each other. In other words, family members share

imagined familial dreams of progress variably and may in fact have inequitable visions

of advancement. During the interview, Kate revealed that she had a secret application

pending for domestic work in Spain. She was worried because she needed money to

pay for the required medical screening. However, because her siblings had been

antagonistic towards her migration plans, she decided to borrow the money from other

people instead; she would not let her siblings know about her application until after she

had left. The unwillingness of Kate’s migrant siblings to help her realize her wish to

work abroad is considered a display of heretical ingratitude that warrants social

exclusion, which may come in the form of social ‘forgetting’.

Aguilar (2009a) contends that migrants maintain connections through sending

(emotional) remittances to their families in the sending village to eliminate the risk that

their families will forget them. Similarly, McKay (2010) asserts that migrants participate

in village traditions and rituals because they know that doing so strengthens their bond

with their kin that transnational migration threatens to weaken. Given such positions,

emotional remittances thus function as tokens of remembrance in preparation for their

eventual return. I extend this argument by asserting that there is a tie between such

politics of memory (namely remembering or forgetting) and the morality of emotional

economies. Transmigrants not only send money because they want to be remembered

but also because they know that to forsake doing so is an amoral deed, punishable not

by legal standards but by sociocultural norms as well as self-imposed notions of morality.

Therefore, people do not forget nonconformist family members, but rather constantly

remember their heretical ingratitude. The story of Jenny’s migrant mother (in her fifties)

being branded heretical and thus ‘unforgotten’ provides a helpful illustration. Jenny’s

father and Juancho (a non-migrant) were siblings. Juancho4 said that they had previously

agreed that Jenny’s parents would help his wife go to Italy. According to Jenny, when her

father passed away in Rome a year after he went there, her mother decided to finance her

travel instead, rather than honouring the agreement between Juancho and Jenny’s father.

Blamed for the poverty of Juancho’s family, they read the behaviour of Jenny’s mother

as a rejection of the moral currency that Juancho was exchanging. The transnational

families that comprise the translocal village of ‘Little Italy’ saw Jenny’s mother’s decision

as transgressing the isang pisa code of familyhood in Pulong Anahao. Hence, her

mother’s story has become the refrain of the village’s tale of breaking away from

transnational familyhood and the embodiment of the deplored nonconformist moral order.

The pragmatic: negotiated guilt

The pragmatics dance at the margins of the orthodox and the nonconformist moral

categories, adjusting their attitudes towards emotional remittances depending on what

they feel is convenient at particular moments. The pragmatism of this moral ground is

often regarded as cooler emotionally than the orthodox, but warmer than that of the



nonconformists, with negotiated guilt as its emotional foundation: in other words, the

pragmatics show love, but not in the sacredness of the orthodox. Their heretical ingrati-

tude is not too great, however, to deny the family the emotional remittances that channel

transnational familyhood. Nonetheless, harping on the customary blend of negotiated

guilty feelings is often necessary to ensure the unabated flows of emotional remittances

from Italy to the village. Wise and Velayutham (2008) note how feelings of guilt

powerfully construct relations among members of a translocal village, whereupon guilt

is capitalized to oblige a person to uphold the core of translocal relations. In this way,

guilt functions as a chain that ties transnational family members to the collective.

Migration is in itself a guilt-laden activity. It connotes absence from a collective

where physical propinquity is primary (Carling 2008). Among transnational mothers,

for example, sending emotional remittances is often seen as a form of penance for

leaving their children behind (Baldassar 2008; Parreñas 2005). For example, Dave (a

non-migrant) illustrates how he negotiates guilt when he asks his mother to send

emotional remittances from Rome, telling her that he is struggling to support his own

family so that, unlike his mother, he would not have to leave his daughter behind. Guilt-

inducing tactics may include, as David suggests, applying moral pressure through

various ‘dramas’ or exaggerated accounts.

Coerced emotional remittances engendered by negotiated guilt may find social

acceptance for as long as they do not border on abuse, for then the negotiated guilt will

be borne by the abuser. Purging the guilt-stricken conscience of non-migrants is

negotiated differently because, while emotional remittances may be two way, they are

often skewed towards the migrants. That is, migrants have more real currency (namely

hard cash) for emotional remittances than the non-migrants who utilize their moral

currency more often.

Yielding to rather than suppressing guilt therefore purges one from nonconformity.

Guilt, however, spoils the sacredness of love so that it does not approach the sacred

love of the orthodox. As Emmy (a migrant) illustrates:

Sometimes I would tell myself, this is really the last time they would be able to

ask money from me. … But soon, you will find out that the ‘last’ is not really

the last. … How would you go about not helping them [family]? … You are

torn. … In the end you will only blame yourself if anything bad happens to them.

Guilt is an affliction that leaves migrants ‘torn’ between their present realities and

the fear of an unknown future. Emotional remittances are the palliative that relieves the

scourge of guilt. In addition, realities that function to ease the torment of their

negotiated guilt suffuse the morality of the pragmatics. Thus, villagers generally prefer

transnational family arrangements to the more traditional one because the lack of

money of the latter to finance their basic needs often breeds emotional hardships that

create disorder in the family. Caridad, a non-migrant, relays her observations: ‘it is

more difficult if we all live here together. It is troublesome, but if we are not together,

we are happier whenever we see each other [laughs] – really! Here [in the village],

those families without members abroad are chaotic!’



Emotions underpin the moral categories of emotional remittances. Indeed, oscil-

lations in the constellation of the moral categories that structure transnational family

relations accompany the process of carrying out the moral obligations that coexist with

transnational familyhood. In addition, individuals are not locked into a specific

emotional shape at particular moments in space. In other words, an individual vacillates

through a range of emotions in negotiating the moral trappings of being and doing

family. Translocal subjects simultaneously feel conflicting emotions of sacred love,

heretical ingratitude, negotiated guilt and everything in between that shapes and

reshapes the moral framework of transnational familyhood in Pulong Anahao.

Conclusion

As this article has shown, transnational familyhood sustained by emotional remittances

holds transnational families together. Moreover, the wider context of the translocal field

frames the meanings of transnational familyhood to ensure that even when transnational

families are embroiled in different forms of difficulties and painful negotiations to stay

together, they remain intact and functioning because they are not stand-alone social

units. To hold them as such, or to study them apart from the larger society, is to succumb

to the danger of viewing a transnational family as a nuclear family unit in a different

guise.

In transnational families, emotions and economies meet at the intersections of love,

obligations and reciprocity. Chiming with feminist assertions, however, this article has

clearly illustrated that a geography of difference also characterizes a transnational

family. Thus, positive emotional attributes are not the only ones at work in shaping or

reshaping transnational family relations. Instead, the negotiations and spatialities of

negative emotions throughout the migration experience substantially affect (and are

affected by) expectations of obligations and reciprocity that also bear on the

subjectivities of the members of a transnational family. To labour the point, the family

may also be a space where inequities come about and where the burden of transnational

migration falls unevenly among its members. The article, however, is also careful not

to fall into the victimization thesis. That is, the narratives of translocal subjects in this

article underline how emotions are consciously negotiated; they are not blindly dictated

by structures but they also have the capacity to reshape structures.

Finally, an important contribution of this article to the current debates on trans-

national family is to hold the attitudes and decisions of translocal subjects concerning

emotional remittances as moral categories, rather than as simply a personal imperative

to provide and/or display unity and love towards their families. Every society creates

its own moral framework, which becomes the measuring rod for the behaviour of its

members. The faithful subscribers are held in high regard while those who violate the

framework are frowned on or even disciplined with a social boycott. The agency of the

members of a social collective happens through their negotiations of their own terms of

doing and being family. The morality of emotional remittances is therefore not value

free and translocal subjects send and receive emotional remittances mindful of the

social and moral fabric of the village.



Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Shirlena Huang, Tim Bunnell and Elaine Ho for their insightful comments and

suggestions on a bigger project from which this article is based. As well, I am thankful to all the

research participants for sharing their translocal lives that informed this article. Many thanks are

also due to Alisdair Rogers and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Vicky was still processing her papers during the interview period.

2. Equivalent to US$ 12,115 based on foreign exchange rate US$ 1 = PhP 41.19.

3. According to Roel, his ward – the matriarch of a wealthy family in Milan – decided to adopt

him. She was already living alone as by then all her children had families of their own. Roel

consented to the adoption because he thought he would not have to work hard for the money

he needed to send his family in the Philippines.

4. Jenny and her uncle Juancho, who worked as a land tiller for his migrant relative, had separate

interviews.

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