Remittances for marriage : quality of life changes among seasonal worker households in Timor-Leste

The Australian Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) has offered opportunities for Timorese citizens to engage in farm labour and hospitality jobs in rural Australia for periods of six months. Savings and remittance from this work offers a powerful and self-directing development tool that could improve living standards for participating households. In this paper, we argue that remittances invested in social relationships through ceremonies and customary exchange are beneficial for building enhanced social and financial capital in Timorese society. Cash contributions to support household consumption, purchase domestic appliances, education costs of siblings, house construction, ceremony costs and bridewealth (barlake) demands, are all important aspects of contemporary social life in Timor-Leste that are sustained by labour migration remittances. Social networking is thus crucial for enabling access to better resources and opportunities in Timor-Leste and remittances that focus on social relationship maintenance are therefore highly significant. Potentially they provide the ability for some return workers to afford higher bridewealth demands and in the process facilitate social mobility for seasonal workers while advancing a broader quality of life.