1) Bibliographic data
Durand, Jorge; Kandel, William; Parrado, Emilio A. (1996) “International Migration and Development in Mexican Communities.” Demography v. 33 May:249-64.

2) Question(s) addressed by the author and working arguments
i) Clarify the relationship between international migration and economic development by conducting a detailed analysis of migrants’ decisions concerning savings and remittances from the United States. ii) Identify those factors which prompt Mexico-US migrants to send or bring migradollars back to their home communities and then to invest them productively. iii) Understand what variables determine the amounts repatriated and the relative share of funds returned as savings versus remittances.
Decision making is linked to a set of independent variables defined at the individual, household, community, and macroeconomic levels. These variables are drawn primarily from the new economics of migration and are supplemented by others derived from neoclassical economics. Whereas the latter assumes that all markets are complete and well-functioning, the former views market failures as a principal impetus for international migration.

3) Conceptual references to transnational – transnationalism
The analysis of migrants’ decision making produces a picture of conscious economic actors making relatively logical decisions about the disposition of migradollars, shifting attachments to U.S. society and its labor market, and fluctuating economic conditions in the community and the transnational political economy.

4) Conclusions or Final Remarks
This analysis of migrants’ decision making with respect to remittances, savings and spending produces a picture of conscious economic actors making relatively logical decisions about the disposition of migradollars in response to changing individual and household circumstances. U.S. migrants do not engage in unrestrained consumer spending to their own detriment and that of their communities. Rather, they do what they can to improve their own and their families’ well-being given the constraints of their social and economic circumstances.