An Original Theoretical Investigation of Migration, Remittances, and Social Transformation in Rural Nigeria: Beyond the Economic Reductionism

The sociological significance of remittances in rural Nigerian communities has been dominated by economic analyses that measure financial flows while failing to theorise the social transformations, relational reorganisations, and identity politics that remittance practices embed and produce. This doctoral study develops an original theoretical framework for understanding migration, remittances, and social transformation in rural Nigeria that transcends economic reductionism, grounded in five years of multi-site research in rural communities across Anambra, Kebbi, and Edo States, representing different migration tradition intensities and economic contexts. Research combined longitudinal community observation in three villages over three years each, remittance practice ethnography tracking financial and non-financial remittance flows through twenty-two families, 85 in-depth interviews with migrants and non-migrant community members, and analysis of community social institution changes through documentary methods. The original theoretical framework, termed Remittance Social Assemblage, proposes that remittances constitute social assemblages rather than merely financial flows, bundling together status claims, obligation performances, intimate relationship maintenance, community belonging assertions, and economic transfers in inseparable configurations that reshape rural social hierarchies, gender relations, generational authority structures, and community institution finances simultaneously. Four original theoretical contributions emerge: a typology of remittance social functions that reveals non-economic transfers as sociologically primary; a theory of obligatory generosity as the normative framework governing remittance expectations; an account of remittance failure as a social crisis generating community exclusion rather than mere financial shortfall; and an analysis of how digital money transfer platforms are transforming remittance social assemblages by separating financial from relational transfer. Keywords: remittances, migration, social transformation, rural Nigeria, social assemblage.