Choosing a Life: Remittances and Youth Aspirations in Bangladeshi Villages

Abstract

Remittances are special forms of economic exchange which can be transformed into or invested in order to build other forms of tangible and intangible resources. The immediate spending of remittances in smoothing household consumption, education, land and other property has longterm economic, social and generational impacts which impact youths’ aspirations and their opportunities to realise their aspirations. In its effort to establish a causal relationship between youth aspirations and remittances based on in-depth qualitative study, the paper considers the complex ways in which remittances help rural Bangladeshi youths to project their future with regard to education, work and migration whilst continuing to experience constraints and opportunities in terms of their class, gender and generation.