Your Boss Doesn’t Understand Why You Send Money Home (And How to Explain It)
It is 12:43pm on a Tuesday. You are hunched over your phone in the office kitchen, transferring money through an app you have memorised down to the fingerprint scan, when your manager walks in. “Everything okay?” she asks, glancing at your screen. You mumble something about a bill. You do not say: I am sending money to my family in Eritrea, which is a monthly obligation that I have been managing since I was twenty-two, and no, my salary does not actually cover all of this comfortably.
You do not say that because you learned, somewhere along the way, that explaining diaspora economics to a Western workplace feels like translating a poem into a spreadsheet. The categories do not fit.
The questions they actually ask (and what they really mean)
“But is it really your responsibility?” Translation: I do not understand why an adult with their own life and bills is funding another household on a different continent. The answer: Yes, it is. Not because someone assigned it to you at a family meeting, but because the infrastructure of care in a migrant family runs through its most economically mobile members. You are not a bank. You are a bridge. The distinction matters.
“Can’t they just, you know, get a job?” This one stings because it assumes a level playing field. Your uncle in Asmara is not unemployed because he is lazy. The economy he is operating in does not operate the way your manager assumes economies operate. Explain this once, calmly, and then decide whether the person is worth explaining it to again.
“You must be sending quite a bit, then?” This is not curiosity. This is a subtle probe that sometimes leads to assumptions about your financial stability or your commitment to the job. Your answer: “I manage my finances carefully, same as everyone else.” Full stop. Your remittance amount is nobody’s business at work.
A script for the conversation (if you choose to have it)
Not every colleague deserves this conversation. But if your manager is genuinely well-meaning and the dynamic is affecting how your workload or flexibility is perceived, here is a version you can adapt:
“In my culture, it is normal and expected to support extended family financially, especially when you are the first generation earning in a Western economy. It is not a hardship I am looking to escape — it is something I am proud to do. I manage it within my budget and it does not affect my ability to do my job. I just wanted you to understand that when I am handling something on my phone during a break, it is usually that.”
You do not owe anyone an explanation. But when you choose to give one, you are not just making life easier for yourself — you are educating a workplace that has probably never had this conversation before. And the next diaspora professional who joins your team might just find the ground a little softer because of it.
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