Migrants bring labour, skills and know-how to the countries where they settle, while instantly contributing to social and economic transformations in their regions of origin by sending monetary remittances to their relatives, investing in businesses, organizing political movements, introducing knowledge, norms and values (Levitt 2001; de Haas 2006). The scales of such transformations range from individuals and families, to organizations, towns, regions and whole countries (SSRC 2008). The transformative powers of monetary transfers of migrants have long been a subject to political and scholarly interest. Thereby, economic remittances have been privileged at the expense of the social.

In order to understand what and how people remit ‘beyond money’ from host to home and the other way round, a concept of social remittances was coined (Levitt 2001; Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011). The body of literature emerged in the US-American context

The concept of social remittances is not yet well established in European context albeit a large number of empirical studies is dedicated to processes of exchange between migrant and non-migrant communities across nation-state borders. These include works on structures and forms of durable economic, political and social ties that link, in particular, Germany and Turkey, Poland, or Italy and are rooted in a long migration tradition between these countries. Also, there is empirical interest in the content of such trans-border exchange, for example in respect to transfer of professional and tacit knowledge and values such as respect for democracy or tolerance. An increasing number of European scholars investigate the dynamics and impacts of migrants’ cross-border transfers, in respect to the emergence of ‘cultures of migration’ (Horvath 2008), transfer of knowledge (Tajeda et al. 2013; Bender et al. 2012), political participation (CoE 2006), or family and friends relations (Mazzucato, multiple publications; Nedelcu, multiple publications; Sandu 2012).

TRANSFORmIG is organising its first international conference on Social Remittances to be held in Berlin on 12 and 13 September 2014. The conference will feature invited lectures on topics related to theory, methodology and practice of social remitting across national borders.
 
Keynote speakers:

• Peggy Levitt (Professor of Sociology, Wellessley College and Harvard University)

Confirmed speakers:

• Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento)
• Margit Fauser (Bielefeld University)
• Aleksandra Galasinska (University of Wolverhampton)
• Deepak Lamba-Nieves (Masssachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Patricia Landolt (University of Toronto Scarborough)
• Gilberto Rescher (Bochum)
• Dumitru Sandu (Bucharest)