Remittances, Competition, and Financial Intermediation for Unbanked Migrants
By Manuel Orozco
September 20, 2005
The contemporary global landscape is organized along the lines of an interplay
between micro and macro dynamics that creates what Rosenau calls ‘distant proximities’
(Rosenau, 2003). These are experiences that simultaneously integrate and fragment
relationships within and outside territorial boundaries. Immigrants are key protagonists of
globalization and emblematic of distant proximities: while their lives are fragmented by the
experience of migration which separates them from their families and nations, through their
labor mobility, they integrate their home and host countries into the global economy in order
to keep their own families together. The end result is a transnational lifestyle, characterized
by both opportunities and hardships that feature this paradox of distance and closeness.