From "mud houses" to "wasted houses": remittances and housing in rural highland Ecuador

Abstract

Migration is often aimed to build migrants' own house in their places of origin. In rural highland Ecuador remittances sent from the US are habitually used to build houses which have changed the housing landscape of many villages. This paper describes the housing landscape of a village, Xarbán, and how it has changed over the last fifty years due to migration and remittances. It unpacks the reasons why many of the recently built houses remained empty or inhabited by only one or two people. It particularly explores the impact of migrants' legal status abroad on their housing decisions and behaviour. Finally, the article looks for positive impacts of these so-called "wasted houses" on migrants, their relatives and non-migrant villagers. Remittance houses' do have positive effects which are different for female and male villagers.

The other side of need: Reverse economic flows ensuring migrants' transnational social protection

“…Maintaining a sense of familyhood among transnational families involves exchanging various forms of support and resources. Transnational social protection “from below” consists of commitments sustained by family members living across different countries to alleviate risks and cover needs related to diverse social protection areas, such as income and livelihood, healthcare, care, education, and housing (Amelina, Bilecen, Barglowski, & Faist, ; Mata‐Codesal, ).…”

Expanding transnational care networks: comparing caring for families with caring for homes

“…Mata-Codesal (2014) points to the vital and incalculable importance of migrant-built houses providing a place to live, which would be financially inaccessible to some vulnerable groups. Mata-Codesal (2014) points to the vital and incalculable importance of migrant-built houses providing a place to live, which would be financially inaccessible to some vulnerable groups.…”

“…This description indicates how, alongside care networks for family members, remittance channels might be used to pay for both care services and maintenance costs for the object of care, though the latter may not be identified as remittances themselves. Mata-Codesal (2014) points to the vital and incalculable importance of migrant-built houses providing a place to live, which would be financially inaccessible to some vulnerable groups. In calculating the value that such caretaking arrangements might have for family members in the community of origin, the ability to live rent-free in a house could be valued as 'remittance' received in parallel with rental prices, or it may be considered as a 'social remittance' (Cohen 2011) that maintains strong ties between family members through informal exchange.…”

Gentrifications in the Planetary Elsewhere: tele-urbanization, Schengtrification, colour-splashing, and the mirage of “more-than-adequate” critical theory

“…Tele-urbanization has been taking place in this city for decades, supporting the local small-scale construction industry through what has been described as a "perverse and unstoppable mechanism that has produced an exaggerated quantity of almost entirely illegal new housing, lacking in any quality whatsoever, and remaining largely unused" (ibid., p. 152, author's translation). Indeed, under-occupancy is a recurrent problem of teleurbanization; in Ecuador, the problem is often referred to as one of "wasted housing" (Codesal 2014). Clearly, this type of tele-urbanization does not "gentrify", and no one gets displaced, but it does entail some of the negative effects of gentrification described in the literature, particularly as it erodes the assets of place for the city's de facto residents -what Davidson and Lees (2010) call displacement.…”

“…More importantly, and from a more general perspective, it produces suboptimal "skeleton cityscapes" (Goodfellow 2017) that are not easy to correct once in place. On the other hand, it creates jobs that might not have existed otherwise (Codesal 2014).…”