Séminaire avec Maria Gabriela Palácio : "Dollarisation and the transnational financing of social reproduction"

Peripheral accumulation can sustain access to labour while leaving much of the cost of its reproduction to workers and their households. In dollarised Ecuador, these arrangements also depend on resources generated abroad. This article connects debates on labour incorporation and social reproduction to the external constraint and international financial subordination. I argue that remittances participate in the financing of reproduction across borders while contributing to the economy’s external payment capa city. Their aggregate importance does not establish who receives them, how they are allocated or whether they secure adequate livelihoods. A historical case study uses descriptive statistics to examine patterns in external accounts, earnings, selected social insurance coverage, and household transfers, comparing Ecuador with El Salvador and Argentina. Public cash assistance reaches a substantial share of workers in poorly remunerated occupations, while declared remittances can constitute an important income source among recipients. A large discrepancy between survey remittances and central bank receipts limits national inference. This finding, together with the distinction between migrant and recipient households, motivates research combining employment biographies, connected household ethnography and the study of transfer infrastructures. Ecuador provides a starting point for examining how these relations differ across monetary regimes in El Salvador and Argentina.