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development, and the role of government development policies. Inexamining the effect of international remittances on three Kerala villages,Prema Kurien offers two cautionary ethnographic insights to policymakerswho have expected international earnings would take Kerala on “anunconventional path to development.” First, in contrast to locally earnedwages, earnings obtained in relatively well-paying jobs overseas are morelikely to be seen as a “windfall income” and thus more likely to be spenton “conspicuous consumption and lavish generosity” than in productiveinvestment. Second, “there is no generic migrant.” Instead, migrant familiesspend remittances in various ways for different purposes depending ontheir distinctive ethnic and community contexts. Policymakers may preferthat migrant families channel remittances into investment rather thanconsumption, but Kurien stresses that socio-cultural context will affect theways in which migrant families actually choose to spend their money.In assessing the role of international remittances in the development ofsending communities of Fujian Province, Zai Liang and Hideki Morookafound that families who receive remittances allocate by far the largestportion to consumption and a smaller, but not insignificant, amountto investment in village projects and infrastructure. However, theychallenge the assumption that consumption makes less of a contribution todevelopment than productive investments and point to the indirect impactof local expenditures, particularly for housing construction, that have amultiplier effect. Given the large amount and positive impact of internationalremittances coming to the region, their policy recommendations are fornational and local governments to enhance public infrastructure, assurethe availability of finance to entrepreneurs, and then, basically, to get outof the way and let the flow of remittances have their effect. They expectthat the combination of government infrastructure and private remittanceswill perpetuate a development process that began in the nineteenth centuryemigration and was advanced twenty-five years ago by the governmentpolicies to attract foreign investment for Fujian’s industrialization.362Manuel Orozco points to the importance that national economic context canalso have in determining whether remittances can promote development. Incomparing Latin America and the Caribbean countries where remittancesappear to have strong, medium, or low impacts on development,Orozco suggests that debates over whether remittances should used forconsumption or investment may obscure the more fundamental issue ofthe extent to which a local economy can provide substantive opportunitiesfor investment or respond to increased demands for commodities andfinancial services. Without prescribing particular policies, he argues, the