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Giving from the heart or from the ego?
Motives behind remittances of the second generation in Europe
Tineke Fokkema
1*
Eralba Cela
2
Elena Ambrosetti
3
1
Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
P.O Box 11650
2502 AR The Hague
fokkema@nidi.nl
2
Faculty of Economics
Department of Economics and Social Sciences
Piazzale Martelli 8, 60121, Ancona, Italy
e.cela@univpm.it
3
Sapienza University of Rome
Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory and Finance,
Via del Castro Laurenziano, 9-00161, Rome, Italy
elena.ambrosetti@uniroma1.it
*Correspondence address
2
Abstract
The aim of this article is to investigate the remittance behavior of host country-born children of
migrants — the second generation — in various European cities. We address the following
question: Are second-generation remitters driven more by altruism or by self-interest? Data from
“The Integration of the European Second Generation” (TIES) survey are utilized and encompass
individuals with at least one migrant parent from Morocco, Turkey or former Yugoslavia. Using
logistic models we test different classical theories on microeconomic determinants of remittances
and add some additional expectations for the second generation. The results show that those second-
generation Moroccans, Turks and former Yugoslavs who send money are motivated by two main
reasons: emotional attachment to their parents’ home country (altruism motive) or to pay people
who look after their investments or other material assets that are likely to be part of their
preparation for “returning” (self-interest – exchange motive). These two motives are not necessarily
exclusive: as part of a well-prepared return, to integrate easily once back “home” it is not only
relevant to ensure that people take care of one’s investments and other material assets, but also to
strengthen social ties and be well-informed about the situation in the country of origin. This
interpretation fits closely with the return model, which deserves more attention in the theoretical
literature on remittances.
Key words: second generation, remittances, altruism, self-interest, European countries
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Giving from the heart or from the ego?
Motives behind remittances of the second generation in Europe
1. Introduction
The connections between first-generation migrants and their households in the country of origin
have been broadly studied by the scholars worldwide. Many of these studies have focused on the
analysis of remittances, explaining migrants’ transfers behavior — an interpretation that is closely
related with the evolution of the theory of migration. The neo-classical migration theory (Harris and
Todaro 1970; Sjaastad 1962; Todaro 1969) considers migration as an individual choice in that
income-maximizing individuals act in response to geographical differences in the supply and
demand for labor, and tends to “disregard other migration motives as well as migrants’ belonging to
social groups such as households, families and communities” (De Haas 2010, 231). In such a
context, remittances do not find a justification. In the 1980s and 1990s, the “New Economics of
Labor Migration” (NELM) theory (Stark and Bloom 1985; Taylor 1999) moved beyond the neo-
classical model, considering it as too rigid to explain the determinants of migration. The NELM
theory no longer views migration as an individual income-maximizing strategy but as a project
developed within the family context to spread income risks and overcome local market constraints.
In the NELM, remittances represent the household strategy, and in contrast with neo-classical
migration theory they are considered as the primary objective of the decision to migrate.
The relationships with family in the home country represent the core element of migratory projects
of first-generation migrants (Levitt 2001), but the same cannot automatically be affirmed for second
generations: they do not have members of the nuclear family in the parental homeland, unless their
parents and/or siblings returned home. This makes it difficult to carry out a one-on-one comparison
of remittances behavior across generations. Nevertheless, the transnational lives of the second
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generation and their frequent ongoing visits to the parental homeland allow them to have frequent
contacts with relatives or friends back “home”.
Over the years, a number of “remittance motives theories” have been developed for first-generation
migrants, but there are no specific theories for the second generations. Although some important
studies (Leichtman 2005; Levitt 2001; Levitt and Waters 2002) find that transnationalism applies
also to subsequent generations, for example in the form of family visits, elder care and remittances
(Baldassar et al. 2007; Zontini 2007), the literature on their remittance behavior is still scarce and
primarily qualitative in nature. Only a few quantitative studies, mainly North American, have
attempted to analyze the main predictors of the remitting behavior of second generations (Bautista
2009; Kasinitz et al. 2008; Lee 2007; Rumbaut 2002). In Europe, several researchers have taken
important steps forward in analyzing migrants’ children’s behavior and identity toward birth and
ancestral countries within the broader framework of the transnationalism studies (Beauchemin,
Lagrange and Safi 2011; Crul and Schneider 2010; Crul, Schneider and Lelie 2012; Fokkema et al.
2012; King and Christou 2010; Schneider et al. 2012; Thomson and Crul 2007), but thorough
research is lacking on the remittance behavior of second generations.
The present article fills this gap in the literature by studying quantitatively and for the first time in
the European context the main driving forces behind remittances of second-generation Moroccans,
Turks and former Yugoslavs. More particularly, building on the “remittances motives theories”
developed for first-generation migrants and proposing additional possible motives for the second
generation, we address the following research question: What are the main reasons behind the
second generation’s remitting behavior, are they driven more by altruism or by self-interest? The
article is organized as follows: in the next section we provide a brief overview of the empirical
studies on remittances among the second generation, followed by theoretical remittances models in
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Section 3. Section 4 describes the data and methods, and Section 5 reports the results of the
regression analyses. Conclusions and discussion are presented in the last section of the article.
2. Linking second generations to remittances
The question of whether transnationalism is only a phenomenon among first-generation migrants or
also applies to the second generation is controversial. Gans (1997) predicts that transnational ties
decrease because of an increasing assimilation process over generations, assuming a negative
association between transnationalism and integration in the “host” society; this means that the
stronger the integration, the lesser the maintenance of transnational ties. By contrast, Levitt and
Glick Schiller (2004) show that integration and transnational practices are simultaneous processes,
and Foner (2002) writes that the second generation will be more engaged in transnational practices
than the first. Other researchers (Portes et al. 1999; Portes et al. 2002; Guarnizo et al. 2003; Van
Dalen et al. 2005; Tamaki 2011; Fokkema et al. 2012) find evidence that transnational ties and
integration are complementary and not mutually exclusive, particularly in the case of economic
integration: economically integrated individuals have increased cognitive and financial capacity to
maintain transnational ties.
Living in transnational social space does not necessarily mean that the second generation maintain
strong ties to their ancestral homes (Vickerman 2002). Hence many scholars of the second
generation try to identify more accurately the actual involvement in transnational relations,
compared to processes of ethnic identification that could be purely symbolic (for example
“emotional transnationalism” – Wolf 2002), without reference to specific forms of transnational
activities (Kasinitz et al. 2002; Louie 2006). Levitt et al. (2003) differentiate a “comprehensive”
transnationalism from a “selective” one, in order to distinguish individuals who retain intensive
transnational activities from those who have periodic or occasional ties with the country of origin.
