Uomini in equilibrio. Migranti, rimesse e mascolinità tra India e Italia

The article analyses the relation between migrant men, masculinity, and remittances in the context of South Indian im-mobility with respect to Italy as a destination country. The analysis captures the unorthodox positioning of lower-class migrant men with respect to social scripts emphasising the hegemonic role of skilled migrant men as leading remitting subjects. The inversion of dominant and gendered remittance scripts through feminised migration towards Italy is deemed by contemporary upper-middle classes to contaminate a public masculinised history of Kerala transnationalism. Against this backdrop, elder married men actively engage with a model of left-behind husband and caring masculinities, while young husbands more frequently enter into conjugal conflicts. The analysis stresses the need for a relational approach to the study of the gender-remittance nexus, one that considers the public/private divide, men’s experiences as dependent subjects, and the hierarchical stratification across transnational migration contexts of remittance scripts.