Remittances and Relationships: Exchange in Cape Verdean Transnational Families Lisa A ˚ kesson University of Gothenburg, and The Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden abstract This article examines migrant remittances through the lens of anthropolo- gical theories of gift relationships. I explore remittance transactions as perceived and practised by people in Cape Verde, a country in which many households receive money from abroad. The article highlights three key dimensions. The first dimension is the transactors’ (senders and receivers of remittances) relations and obligations to each other, the second is the degree to which remittances are seen as voluntary gifts or, alternatively, as elements in an obligatory reciprocal exchange, and the third is the relation between the transactors and money as an object of exchange. I argue that these dimensions together open up for a holistic understanding of the dynamic inter- play between remittances and relationships. In contrast to mainstream remittance studies, with their conventional focus on economic rationality, this is an approach that illuminates what remittances mean, as social practice, to those involved. keywords Remittances, Cape Verde, exchange, transnational families, migration, gift relationships S cholarly interest in migrant remittances has grown enormously in recent years. Analytically, this research is dominated by a focus on monetary flows, development and policy responses that are designed to make remit- tances ‘work productively’. The emphasis on economic utility obscures the fact that remittances also have important implications for social and cultural dimen- sions of everyday life, such as kinship, exchange and morality. Accordingly, this essay demonstrates how the transfer of remittances is inextricably related to social relationships and to people’s notions of their obligations to one another. When exploring remittances and relationships, the dynamic character of the exchange between migrants and non-migrants is a fundamental point of ethnos, vol. 76:3, september 2011 (pp. 326 – 347) # 2011 Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis issn 0014-1844 print/issn 1469-588x online. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2011.577229