Do remittances contribute to local development and the reduction of poverty? What are the consequences of the dollars sent by the migrants to the people, families, and organizations that receive them in the cities of origin? These are the key questions that recent studies have raised. According to some authors "migration is inevitable and has the potential to be quite positive in terms of development and reduction of poverty. The policies that have their origins in this principle will be more successful than those that attempt to oppose, intransigently, both globalization and the migration of people in space". Do current international migrations produce positive local development effects? The main objective of this article is to contribute to this discussion through an empirical study of the Brazilian case, which takes remittances as its focus. Thus, we identify who the immigrants are who send remittances from the United States to Brazil, to what ends the remittances are directed, who the beneficiaries are, and how the remittances affect the lives of the people who benefit from them. The research is based on a non-representative but in-depth sample (Boston and Governador Valadares). © 2006 Instituto de Estudos Avançados da Universidade de São Paulo.

Local development international migration Brazilian migration remittances

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