A foreign domestic worker looks after her elderly client. Photo: Jerry Wong (flickr)

Developing-world mothers, too poor to feed their families, are increasingly finding work abroad and sending the fruits of their labor to the children they will not raise.

Their payments, called remittances, are a significant part of an unofficial global aid network worth $325 billion last year. That’s three times the size of official foreign development aid spending, according to an article in the New York Times.

The women who choose this life aren't just redefining the foreign aid landscape. They are also redefining motherhood, says the Times.

Across the world, millions of mothers have made this sacrifice for their children — forgoing a life with them in hope of ensuring a better life for them. These women venture far, often into the uncertain world of undocumented domestic work that in effect keeps them hostage in their host countries.

And yet, in spite of the hefty financial contribution and personal toll, remittances — and remitters — remain a relative blind spot on the global development map. But their invisibility may not last long. Remittance flows worldwide keep swelling: The World Bank project they will reach $374 in 2012, or nearly $50 billion more than last year’s total.

India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines are the world’s top four remittance recipients, says the New York Times and in a number of smaller developing countries, remittances make up more than 20 percent of GDP and provide the largest source of foreign exchange.

Striking though these figures may be, it’s clear that remittances alone cannot fuel development. They may funnel developed world-sized wages into the developing world. But most of these micro-transfers are themselves not sufficient and, more importantly, not coordinated enough to support the large-scale projects that aid and development institutions traditionally take on. In short, remittances may enable the children left behind by migrant mothers to get an education or access health care. But unless they are strategically pooled and channelled, they probably won’t create jobs or fund the construction of schools and hospitals.

Nonetheless, "women migrants have become a formidable force for development,” says the New York Times. "When permitted, migration is a major economic equilibrating mechanism" and an important instrument for poverty alleviation, according to the World Bank.

While there is relatively little formal data on remittances, anecdotal accounts abound. Recent analyses of these sources are revealing interesting trends, particularly about the special role and behavior of female remitters. Women, who constitute 51 percent of developed countries’ migrant worker population, generally earn and therefore remit less than men, yet the fraction they send home tends to be higher and more consistent, even during crises, according to the New York Times article. Women usually channel their incomes to necessities such as food, health care and education, while men tend to spend more of their wages on recreation.

There is another reason remittances should be acknowledged as promising contributors to development, emphasizes the New York Times: they work.

By cutting out institutions and (often corrupt) governments, remittances more nimbly [address] needs like raising birthweight or lowering [the] number of school drop-outs. They [are] also a powerful cushion in times of conflict or natural disaster, when remittances tend to increase, driven by an empathetic diaspora.

The world’s remitters care for their own by leaving them for strenuous lives in far-away places. And they are also thinking bigger, forming associations and networks to pool the aid they send home and to create space for solidarity and cultural expression with other women who tell the same story. Their efforts have been unexpectedly effective and significant, if not (yet) widely appreciated as powerful agents of development and aid.

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

On March 1, I entered Libya from Egypt with the Mercy Corps emergency response team. The situation at the border was chaotic. Thousands of foreign migrant workers were trying to cross into Egypt to escape the violence in Libya. Many of them were stranded in the no-man’s land area between the two countries, waiting for transportation and permission to enter Egypt.

The customs house, the duty free shop — literally every building at the border — had become temporary shelter for the thousands of people who were stuck there. More were camped out on the sidewalks and parking lots. Most of them had only the belongings they could carry by hand and very little money or resources to cope. Fortunately, the majority of the people were Egyptians and so they did not have to travel too far to reach home and the Egyptian government was assisting their people in getting back there.

Since the unrest and violence began in Libya there is the refugee crisis as the migrant foreign workers try to flee the violence. More 170,000 people have fled from Libya — thousands are still stuck in the border of Tunisia without adequate financial resources, shelter or food.

The situation on the Tunisia border, where Mercy Corps has another emergency team deployed for this ongoing regional crisis, is much worse than on the Egyptian side. The people fleeing into Tunisia are also largely Egyptian, but they have to get transportation on planes or boats to get home. The numbers are massive and they are forced to wait several days for transport. There are also reports that, as they come through Libya, they being harassed by pro-Gaddafi forces and some have been forced to pay bribes and give away the few possessions they brought as bribes to pass.

The United States and other governments have sent planes and boats to help the people evacuate, and the border situation has improved in the last day — but thousands are still waiting.

There is also concern if there is an increase in airstrikes and violence in the west of Libya that more people will try to cross the borders to escape. If this happens, the crisis could spiral out of control.

The situation here in Libya is changing by the minute as the opposition advances from the East and then is beaten back by Gaddafi forces, and then advances again. Airstrikes are ongoing and we are preparing for the worst, but hoping for a quick end to this terrible violence.

Some of the thousands stuck at the Salloum border between Libya and Egypt. The situation on the Tunisian border is much worse. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Cell phones are touching the lives of Tajikistani women in many ways. Photo: Kate B Dixon (flickr)

Technology, migrant labor, and patriarchy: three world systems that bring benefits to some have become a tragic combination for the Tajik women whose husbands are divorcing them remotely via text message, reports Radio Free Europe.

Tajikistan's struggling economy means that as many as one in seven Tajiks works abroad, often spending most of the year away. The country is also heavily dependent on the remittances that constitute half of its GDP. If migrant men decide to divorce their wives back home, some do so via cell phone by texting the word "talaaq," Arabic for "divorce." In Sunni Islam, saying the word three times is a recognized way for men to end their marriages.

Migrant Tajiks are largely beyond the reach of their country's laws. Neither text messages nor "talaaq" are legal methods of divorce there (unlike in other countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, where courts have sanctioned the combination), but courts can't enforce this or other divorce proceedings — like alimony payments — on an absent husband.

These Tajik women are often left without homes or means of support when their marriages end. Respite may only come when they are fully integrated into the legal system — to match their immersion in the technology that has already deeply touched their lives.

Police in Reykjavik, Iceland after a violent protest turned into a riot on January 20. Photo: finnur.malmquist (flickr)

It’s a lot worse than just about everyone thought. By some estimates, the economic crisis could cost 50 million jobs worldwide. That's a catastrophic number, and even their potential loss is already fueling some discontent and sounding alarms.

Worried about the ripple effects of widespread unemployment, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency recently added the state of the economy to the agency's list of top security threats. Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, warned that "economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period."

On the international stage, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced his concern: "If not handled, today’s financial crisis will become tomorrow’s human crisis. Social unrest and political instability will grow, exacerbating all other problems."

Violent flare-ups over the economic recession and resulting unemployment are already occurring all over the globe.

In Pakistan, chronic power outages have forced many textile factories to close down for hours at a time, triggering thousands of angry protesters to set fire to the state-owned power company's office. Government cuts in Lithuania’s social programs prompted protesters to pelt the parliament building with eggs and rocks ; at least 14 people were injured and 84 detained. Chinese police officers are now undergoing special training to deal with expected social unrest over factory closings that have left millions of migrant workers out of a job.

Iceland and Latvia serve as extreme examples of the devastating consequences from the declining state of the worldwide economy: both countries’ respective governments collapsed under the pressure of the economic crisis.

However, security experts are concerned about other forms of collateral damage that extend beyond protests. Bruno Tertrais, a strategic and security expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris tells Time Magazine that he believes the biggest threat to international security is "the collapse of regimes vital to maintaining international order." Tertrais cites Somalia as an example — a place where, after the collapse of its government, piracy has gained a foothold and severely disrupted shipping routes along the horn of Africa.

Extreme poverty has always posed a threat, especially in the world’s emerging economies. However, the breadth and force of the current global economic crisis poses a threat to all nations, whether rich or poor.