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
eokatigbak@yahoo.com

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 transnational 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
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Global Networks 2015 Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Evangeline O. Katigbak
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 rationalization 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 remittances 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 familyhood made in this article is the examination of negative emotions. That is, beyond the
familiar and more common consideration of sacrificial love as undergirding transnational 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 construct 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.

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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 familys 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 transnational 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 Folbres (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 Folbres 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
Folbres 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

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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 Gowricharns
(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 identifications 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
Gowricharns ideas, Carling (2008: 1459) considers primordial givens as moral
currency, the possessor of which may acceptably claim support or exchange entitlements 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 Carlings arguments, I contend that we mostly observe
the moral economy of transnational families in the unbridled maintenance of transnational 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 Gowricharns theorization, my understanding of transnational
familyhood differs from his conception of primordial givens on the grounds of the
latters 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 structures 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 performance 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 boundaries of each of these values are obfuscated.

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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 Anahaweos) entered Italy illegally through the so-called
patakbuhan (literally, to run) system (see also Basa and de la Rosa 2007; Parreas
2003). The initial migration of Pulong Anahaweos 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 peoples 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 Anahaweos 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 remittances. 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.

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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 Anahaweos 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 nonmigrant), the continuing migration of Pulong Anahaweos 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 Anahaweos] 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 Anahaweos, what one may glean from Nancy and
Paolos 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 understanding 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--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 Anahaweos 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:

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[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 dont have jobs.
The performance of ones 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 Vickys 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 Peters (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 Peters brothers went to Italy and saw his
father. As the village head revealed, the truth is, there are many unemployed [Pulong
Anahaweos] 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.

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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
villages 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 framework 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 Svaek and Skrbis (2007) position that, rather than being implied, an explicit
theorization of emotions is necessary if one is to come up with a more critical investigation of human mobilities. Thus, I interrogate the moral trappings of emotional remittances 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 delineation 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 transnational families. The love shared by transnational family members is thus, a sacred love,
following Hochschilds (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.

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By sacred love, I refer to a surging positive emotion based on a sense of duty that is
paramount and supersedes ones own comfort. Upholding sacred love for ones 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. Accordingly, 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 ones self
(including ones 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.
Pinkys 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?

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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.
Mirasols 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 Parreas 2010;
Parreas 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 likewise 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 Parreas 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 consequences 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 Anahaweos 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! Kims 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

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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. Kims 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

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comparison with the (deemed) heretical ingratitude of their morally nonconformist
family members. In Mirasols narrative above, she hinted at encountering opposition
from her husband over her decision to show love to her parent by covering her fathers
financial needs. She likewise resented what she felt was her siblings uncaring attitude
to their father. According to her, sometimes I cant help but resent the seeming
indifference of my siblings, especially towards my father. I am a bit angry with them.
Its like, what if I cant help my father anymore? In the same way, Pinkys 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 unfairness, they insinuated, might lead to the termination of economic help.
The heretical ingratitude of the nonconformists resembles Osella and Osellas
(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 membership 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.
Romeos thought, which likewise echoed the sentiments of non-migrant Pulong
Anahaweos, 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].

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Kates 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 Kates 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 Jennys migrant mother (in her fifties)
being branded heretical and thus unforgotten provides a helpful illustration. Jennys
father and Juancho (a non-migrant) were siblings. Juancho4 said that they had previously
agreed that Jennys 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 Jennys father.
Blamed for the poverty of Juanchos family, they read the behaviour of Jennys mother
as a rejection of the moral currency that Juancho was exchanging. The transnational
families that comprise the translocal village of Little Italy saw Jennys mothers decision
as transgressing the isang pisa code of familyhood in Pulong Anahao. Hence, her
mothers story has become the refrain of the villages 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

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Evangeline O. Katigbak
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 ingratitude 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; Parreas 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. Guiltinducing 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!

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Emotions underpin the moral categories of emotional remittances. Indeed, oscillations 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 transnational 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.

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Evangeline O. Katigbak
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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