Why Remittances Shouldn’t Be Blamed for Rural Underdevelopment in Mexico

Leigh Binford, borrowing from Jones (1995a), suggests two major thematic positions in Mexican–US migration and development research: first, neoMarxist critiques and structural inquiries of the 1970s and 1980s; and second, ‘apologetic’ functional models of the 1980s and 1990s, which come to positive rather than negative conclusions concerning remittance outcomes. Neo-Marxists and structural models are represented in Binford’s article by Mines (1981), Reichert (1981) and Wiest (1984). These researchers approached migration and the conspicuous consumption of remittance investments as distorting forces that perpetuate dependency, intensify social inequalities, and trap rural sending households in cycles of migration. Functionalists (including work by the authors, among others, e.g. Cohen, 2001, 2002; Conway, 2000; Conway and Cohen, 1998, 2002; Durand et al., 1996a; Jones, 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 1998; Massey and Parrado, 1998; Massey et al., 1994) are portrayed as ‘reductionists’ because we focus on the role remittance outcomes can play in the maintenance of migrant households. We are also faulted as apologetic, because we argue that remittances sometimes become the basis for micro-economic investment and small business incubation. Binford argues that migration between Mexico and the US and remittance outcomes will contribute to rural economic development when, and if, it leads to a future marked by local/regional growth of the sort that will Comment