"The Case for Open Borders": Remittances

Map showing remittances being sent between countries. Data is from 2010 and 2011. Image source.

Another quote from the book "The Case for Open Borders." From pages 74-75:

Consider, for instance, that over 40 percent of Tajikistan's GDP is based on money sent back to the country from migrants living abroad; the same is true of nearly one-third of Nepal's GDP and over 20 percent of El Salvador's. Families and sometimes entire local economies survive on remittances in many countries. And while self-sufficiency might sound more appealing or sustainable, communities have long relied on distant forays to bring back needed wealth or resources. And, in today's global market, nearly every country already sends out its corporate scouts or corporate migrants to reap riches and ship them home.

Communities establishing themselves across borders is basically the inverse of outsourcing. Companies like Ford, Nike, and Apple migrate their production facilities and send home the profits to their CEOs. If we can accept those transnational corporations, why can't we imagine other such loose and creative figurations of identity and belonging that transcend legal international divides? Perhaps it is because, as Indigenous linguist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil writes, state borders "colonized even our imagination."