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and the definition of status in each community that conditioned the typesof activities into which the money was channeled, the range of people whowere the beneficiaries of migrant remittances, the patterns of reciprocityor charity practiced by the migrants, the selection of the trade-off pointbetween community status and economic accumulation, and the groupsof individuals who gained or lost economic control. At the same time, theeconomic resources and prestige gained through international migrationand the sheer numbers of migrants involved gave the latter the opportunityto reformulate their own identity and that of the community.The role of ethnicity in shaping patterns of migration and remittance use andthe substantial variations in these patterns among the major communitiesin Kerala have generally not been recognized by the economists orpolicymakers who have been studying the impact of the migration on thestate. Some studies of the Gulf migration in Kerala have documented a fewof the community differences discussed in this article, but only in passing.For instance Raju Kurian (1978) conducted a comparative study in twovillages – one near Kembu and another near Cherur – and noted significantdifferences in the educational and economic backgrounds and migrationpatterns of the migrants from both regions. But he does not comment orexplain the reasons for these differences. While Kurian does not revealthe religio-ethnic composition of the villages, from their location we caninfer that one was largely Syrian Christian and that the other was largelycomprised of Ezhava Hindu migrants. A statewide study documenteddifferences in the economic and educational backgrounds of migrants fromMuslim, Christian, and Hindu backgrounds (Nair 1986), and another largemigration survey conducted in 1998 noted variations in the proportionof migrants among the different ethnic groups in Kerala (Zachariah etal. 1999). However, none of these studies pursue the implications of thevariations or what it might mean for policy.In general, the studies of the economic impact of Gulf migration onvillages, districts, and Kerala as a whole have largely proceeded on theassumption that there was a “generic” migrant. Most of the studies andthe questionnaires were designed on the assumption that the migrant wenton a legal contract for a particular job and a fixed salary, that he remittedthe entire amount saved to his immediate family on a monthly basis,and that this monthly remittance represented the total monetary benefitgained through the migration. 12 Again, consumption patterns of migrant21112Thus there were questions on the type of job, monthly earnings, as well as the monthly or annualremittances (see Government of Kerala 1987; Commerce Research Bureau 1978; Prakash 1978;Radhakrishnan and Ibrahim 1981). Saith in his paper on the impact of the invasion of Kuwait onremittances to Kerala, calculates: “Assuming that 75 percent of the total of 181,000 Indians in Iraq