ABSTRACT
This chapter turns attention to the global dimension of underdevelopment and rejects the notion of a mutually beneficial triple-win scenario by drawing attention to the unequal gains arising from the formalisation of temporary labour migration. The chapter first contrasts the immediate economic benefits for migrant-sending and migrant-receiving economies by juxtaposing the impact of remittance capital in Sri Lanka with destination countries’ access to a reserve army of migrant labour. It then extends this analysis by considering how the more indirect consequences of Sri Lanka’s widespread migration – including the unequal costs of migration, reconfiguration of the care economy, foreign employment spillovers, import spillovers and demand volatility – constrains capital accumulation within the economy while encouraging it elsewhere. Finally, it identifies Sri Lanka as archetypal of a modern ‘remittance economy’, where an overdependence on foreign employment has underscored limited capital accumulation and poverty alleviation in lieu of development itself. Ultimately this has been to the disadvantage of the country as a whole, given the relatively much greater returns to foreign economies and the sheer precarity of remittances that are directly tied to demand from West Asia.
