"We understand very little about the billions of dollars that flow throughout the world from migrants back to their home countries. In this rigorous and illuminating work, Matt Bakker, an economic sociologist, examines how these migrant remittances--the resources of some of the world's least affluent people--have come to be seen in recent years as a fundamental contributor to development in the migrant-sending states of the global South. This book analyzes how the connection between remittances and development was forged through the concrete political and intellectual practices of policy entrepreneurs within a variety of institutional settings, from national government agencies and international development organizations to nongovernmental policy foundations and think tanks"--Provided by publisher.

Introducing the remittances-to-development agenda : Migration, remittances, and development -- three vignettes -- Facts, figures, and the politics of measurement : the construction and diffusion of remittances as a financial flow -- Forging the remittances-to-development nexus : conceptual linkages and political practices -- Bringing remittances into the North American economic-integration project : a genealogy of Mexican state-led transnationalism -- From promise to practice : towards financial democracy in North America.