International Migrants’ Remittances and Kinship Networks in Nigeria: The Flip-Side Consequences

International migrants’ remittances are among the most researched subjects in contemporary globalization scholarship and policy studies. Most studies have examined the impacts of remittances on households in developing countries, and the findings are often positive and optimistic. Many of the existing studies have, however, presented only the positive economic impacts of remittances on households, with very little attention being paid to the equally important social impacts of remittances within the broad kinship networks that drive Africans’ lives and livelihoods. Remittances affect migrants’ kinship networks, patterns of family interactions, obligations, and expectations in the households left behind as kin attach meaning to remittances and construct values from them in ways that ultimately make remittances more intertwined and complex. Using primary and secondary data gathered in 2015 and 2016, this article discusses what we still need to know in terms of the relationship between international migrants’ remittances and their kinship networks at home beyond near-linear economic impacts. That is, although positive relationships may exist between remittances and household well-being in developing countries, can other narratives of kinship be used to understand the impacts of remittances and how they can be sustainably used for development?