Western Union is a financial service and communication company from the US which is mostly known for transferring money. In the 19th Century Western Union dominated the telegraph industry in the United States. Nowadays it is the biggest player in transferring the remittances of migrant workers all over the world.
Consequently, Western Union is an interesting and significant player in the border-money-complex. By focusing on this company and its role in today’s global capitalism we hope to show how money and border are connected to social and moral forces. We combine this analysis with stories of being stopped, pushed back and exploited at the border in an allegedly „free“ world, and one where money transfers become a deciding economic and social factor.
Why focusing on Western Union?
- This company is one example of how money crosses borders and how borders cross money.
- The Western Union’s business model fundamentally depends on the existence of legal restrictions of borders and the practical problems of distance. There is a close relation to precarity, immobility, anonymity and participation.
- Also, by understanding how Western Union operates we hope to show how money functions today: The very fact that Western Union is primarily a communications company points to the role of money as a form of information and the movement of money as data flows. Money might be said to be an abstraction machine, turning action (workforce) into data.
- Western Union is interesting form a historical and postcolonial standpoint as well: In the 19th Century, Western Union was part of the colonization of North America, enabling the communication between the first settlers and their famillies and later helping to finance their settlement on Indigenous lands. Nowadays, Western Union does a similar job on a more globalize scale. Yet the directions money travels are revered (and thereby create an even more powerful system of (neo-)colonial power).
Facts&Effects
- Western Union pitches itself as reaching into 200 countries worldwide and moving $150-billion USD per year. They counted 31 transactions per second in 2015. And all that has an impact: According to the NGO Tigra, countries as Haiti and El Salvador highly depend on the remittances sent via Western Union, which represent up to 25% of their GDP.
- One typical transaction-story:
- A family or a village has to collect money in order to pay a human trafficker to usher one of their young people over the border.
- The journey begins, it is full of dangers (deserts, mountains, oceans, borders and border patrols). It is likely that the voyager might be injured, imprisoned, deported or even killed at one of these borders, natural, political or financial.
- Arriving in the destined country or city, the voyager will have to contend with questions of residence, legal status and accommodation.
- After finding a job (perhaps in the informal sector, often highly exploitative) and covering his or her own expenses, the voyager will send money back to their family or community, and they will likely have to depend on Western Union to do so.
- But due to the dangers of the voyage, only a few of those who started the journey will reach its end and remit money.
- This has the potential to increase inequality in the community or a divide between those who have and does who do not. Those who receive money from their family members will be able to build or renovate their houses, start a business, cover health expenses, etc.
- Another effect might be that the local economy can stagnate due to the dependency on the remittances coming from other countries.
Click on an area in this interactive graphic to see a more detailed view:
[drawattention]
picture screenshot from the arte documentary Money in Minutes
- Western Union is also often used to pay traffickers.
- Many people question whether Western Union should be imagined as a governmental or public institution of the United States. They certainly enjoy widespread trust as an American corporation.
- The practices of Western Union are ambivalent: On one hand, they exploit the precarious situations and social bonds of migrant workers; on the other, they enable people to send money to their relatives in a safe, fast and unbureaucratic way. By the way: Western Union relies on this benevolent dimension, using it to promote their business and demonstrate the security of their financial management.
- Can the remittances system also be described as a wealth redistribution machine. The role of Western Union in this sense is interesting: Since they profit from the redistribution to the poorer segments of global society.
A possible tacit future
Some tech evangelists claim that in terms of money, money transfer and even creating a currency of its own, the blockchain technology might be the next big thing. Or already is. There are already some powerful institutions delivering a chain core testnet – backed up by corporates like Microsoft. The main inititative for cryptocurrency and contracts (IC3) is run by mainly American Universities such as Cornell, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois.
But beside this very American centrered development of the core technologies, protocols and software it is interesting to see how the blockchain technology is used for business reasons. Beside many others in the context of the internet of things / Industry 4.0 it is the banking business using this technology for money transfers, clearings etc. One of the biggest player in this field is Ripple. This might guide to a future, where banks will also step into the business of Western Union. Maybe. If the costs are reduced and it seems like a new business opportunity for the struggling banks.
Another application of blockchain is the direction in which crowdfunding and microcredits guide: the people themselves become the creditors and/or trust system. Therefore stands the example of cashaa which claims itself the Uber of cash transfer. Well. Which means: everyone can become his or her own Western Union. With all the effects we described above. Happening faster, even more distributed. A tacit future that is maybe closer than we expect…
Morals&Affect
A quick look on the Facebook page and website reveal one of the main business methods of Western Union: emotional engineering. It’s not just the Western Union Foundation and its charity projects – from the way Western Union writes about its customers and adresses them in social media we can also learn about the connection of affect, morals and money.
Western Union describes itself as „providing critical financial services“ and by this helping „to transform lives, create jobs & drive economic growth worldwide.“ In fact, what they do, is basically profiting out of the world’s growing remittances which today adds upto 75% of the global GDP.
So, there is „Dan“,the Vice President of Product Management, stating:
“It’s very easy for me to be passionate about our customers. They sacrifice and work hard to support their families and make their lives better. We honor them daily with the products and services that we offer.”
This honoring of course is not for free. Western Union charges fees and and gets profits from interest rates when transfering money from one currency to another.
Western Union has 6.5 Mio Likes on Facebook. We find there, next to dog pictures and requests on sharing „best moments“, slogans like:
„Nothing shines brighter than a good heart“.
During the days of setting up this project, Western Union was also extensively posting on the Indian Lights Festival Diwali. Their message:
„Help us light up a village by sending money to your loved ones“.
Western Union is using the social bonds and responsibilities for its PR, and thus producing certain affects and emotions based on these social bonds and responsibilities via social media. By this, one could say, they also reproduce the company’s reputation and find moral legitimation for their business model.