Kimberly Higuera

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2021 - 2022 Academic Year

Migrating Money: The Social Status Implications of US-Mexico Remittances

Remittances, the money that immigrants send to their countries of origin, consistently outstrip American aid dollars. Despite this, compared to American foreign aid, we have limited information on remittances, the people who send them, and the ramifications of these transactions. Understanding how the flow of remittances and other characteristics of contemporary migration affect distributions of power for marginalized people is key to understanding how migration affects social and economic development in migrant-sending, low- and middle-income countries. This project bridges this gap by exploring how contemporary remittance transactions can impact social status inequality within transnational families and communities through the US-Mexico case, one of the most consistent and bountiful remittance corridors in the world. This study asks: How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted remittance actors and transactions? How do actors attach social meaning to remittance transactions? And, how does participating in these transactions impact the social status of women in the US and Mexico? To answer these questions, Higuera will draw on semi-structured interviews with remitters and receivers as well as a transnational affective survey with Mexican remitters in the United States and with remittance receivers in Mexico. Remittance flows have substantial potential to impact the way people value each other within families, Mexico and the United States and even across transnational borders.

Kimberly Higuera, Department of Sociology

Kimberly Higuera is an MPP and PhD candidate in sociology at Stanford University. Her research focuses on contemporary immigrants in the US Higuera grew up in immigrant communities in southern San Diego, along the US-Mexico border, where she observed the ubiquity and constant salience of monetary remittances. Her interest in this social phenomenon as well as the contemporary challenges facing immigrant remitters during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired her dissertation research. In Higuera's dissertation, she explores remittance patterns and behaviors between the US and Mexico, the social meaning Mexican remitters and receivers attach to these transactions, and how these transactions impact the social status of women across borders. She earned her BA in sociology with minors in child research and policy and Latinx Studies from Duke University. Before coming to Stanford, she worked at Duke's Center for Child and Family Policy conducting maternal health research.

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