Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I think that the topic this paper tries to address is very interesting and worthwhile. It is nicely written and certainly could be a valuable contribution to the field. That said, I have considerable concerns associated with the way the data are handled and presented. I also feel more of the assertions in this paper need to be backed up by citations. My detailed comments are below:

Introduction

The introduction is well written, but much of what is discussed is not backed up by citations. At the very least, I would recommend adding citations to back up the claims made in the first paragraph (lines 28-32), the paragraph in section 1.3 that reads “For these families…” (lines122-128), the paragraph in section 1.3 that reads “Romania is facing this process.. (lines 129-138) and the paragraph in section 1.3 that reads “Migration has reached…” (lines 139-151)

Minor comment: in section 2, line 192, I believe there is a typo – should read “The argument is not…” (currently reads as “the argue is not…”)

Results section

In section 4.1 of the results, the author provides a table of remittance numbers, which I understand to be nominal values (rather than real values based on constant 2021 prices), followed by a figure. It would be valuable for this table to include both the nominal and real values and for this to feature in the discussion that follows in section 4.2. Just focusing on the nominal values in this interpretation can severely skew the results and the conclusions drawn from them. I also do not think the figure adds much to this section, so perhaps should be removed.

The title of table 2 should be changed to better reflect what it presents (data drawn from World bank, any calculations used, etc.)

It is not clear why the author felt the need to calculate remittances as a function of employment. Also, was this calculation used in Table 2? The interpretation does not adequately unpack the relationship between these two variables (employment and remittances).  Moreover, the author highlights the limitations associated with this calculation, which leads me to ask why it was included in the first place?

The second paragraph in section 4.5 (“Let us recall” – lines 639-651) needs to be backed up by citations.

I am unclear on how you calculated the economic attractiveness of Romania’s economy in section 4.7. This is an interesting graph, all the same, but perhaps is more appropriate for the start of the results section, rather than the end?

Major overall comment: The way in which the data are handled for both datasets are very different (used nominal terms, real terms, employment considerations etc.) This takes away from the author’s original intent, in demonstrating how the data infrastructure may obscure results.

 

I would strongly recommend re-organizing this article in order to step back from the dichotomous framing that currently exists of NBR versus World Bank data, and rather frame it in terms of how data are calculated and presented as more meaningful in setting political agendas. You can then talk about the different sources of data and the different considerations that might be included in calculations: Nominal (look at NBR and World Bank), Real (look at NBR and World Bank), Year-by-year (look at NBR and World Bank), floating averages (look at NBR and World Bank), Employment considerations (look at NBR and World Bank). This would make for a much more clearly organized paper and a more comprehensive discussion on implications. This will obviously impact the way the conclusion is structured and presented as well.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for carefully reading the manuscript and for your constructive suggestions. We have revised the article accordingly (please see attached). The main revisions include: adding citations to the Introduction and Section 1.3; correcting the typo in Section 2; revising the Results section so that nominal and real values are treated together; renaming and clarifying Table 2; explaining the limited purpose of the employment-scaled calculation; adding citations to the migration-typology discussion; clarifying and repositioning the economic-attractiveness indicator; and reorganizing the Results and Conclusion around calculation and presentation choices rather than a simple NBR-versus-World Bank opposition.

Point-by-point response

Comment 1

Reviewer comment: Introduction: The introduction is well written, but much of what is discussed is not backed up by citations. At the very least, I would recommend adding citations to back up the claims made in the first paragraph (lines 28-32), the paragraph in section 1.3 that reads “For these families...” (lines 122-128), the paragraph in section 1.3 that reads “Romania is facing this process...” (lines 129-138), and the paragraph in section 1.3 that reads “Migration has reached...” (lines 139-151).

Response: We agree and have added citations to the requested passages. The first paragraph now cites literature and reports on global inequality, labour-market pressures, and human development challenges (Milanovic 2016; International Labour Organization 2024; UNDP 2024). The paragraph beginning “For these families...” now cites Mauss (2002), de Haas, Castles and Miller (2020), and Stark and Bloom (1985) to support the treatment of migration as a multidimensional/household process. The paragraph beginning “Romania is facing this process...” now cites World Bank (2018), OECD (2019), and OECD (2025). The paragraph beginning “Migration has reached...” now cites OECD (2025), World Bank (2018), Stark and Bloom (1985), and Yi, Kaasch and Stetter (2024).

Revision made: Revisions made in Sections 1.1 and 1.3. The relevant claims are now supported by in-text citations and the corresponding entries appear in the reference list.

 

Comment 2

Reviewer comment: Minor comment: in section 2, line 192, I believe there is a typo – should read “The argument is not...” (currently reads as “the argue is not...”).

Response: Thank you for identifying this typo. We corrected the sentence.

Revision made: Section 2 now reads: “The argument is not that remittance statistics are ‘Big Data’ by volume...”

 

Comment 3

Reviewer comment: Results section: In section 4.1, the author provides a table of remittance numbers, which I understand to be nominal values, followed by a figure. It would be valuable for this table to include both nominal and real values, and for this to feature in the discussion that follows in section 4.2. Just focusing on nominal values can severely skew the results and conclusions. I also do not think the figure adds much to this section, so perhaps it should be removed.

Response: We agree. Table 1 has been revised to include both nominal values and real values expressed at constant 2021 prices. The interpretation following the table has also been rewritten so that the analysis does not rely on nominal values alone. We now distinguish between the headline scale of nominal values and the welfare/purchasing-power meaning of real values. The redundant figure following the original Table 1 has been removed, because the revised table communicates the relevant information more clearly.

Revision made: Section 4.2 now contains a revised Table 1: “Observed personal remittances from the United Kingdom to Romania according to NBR data: nominal values and real GBP values at constant 2021 prices.” The accompanying interpretation now states that nominal increases should not be read as proportional welfare gains.

 

Comment 4

Reviewer comment: The title of Table 2 should be changed to better reflect what it presents (data drawn from World Bank, any calculations used, etc.).

Response: We have changed the title of Table 2 to make explicit that it is not a direct observed annual World Bank series, but an employment-scaled scenario based on the World Bank/KNOMAD 2021 bilateral baseline, ONS PAYE/HMRC RTI employment scaling, exchange-rate conversion and CPI deflation.

Revision made: The revised title is: “Employment-scaled UK-to-Romania remittance scenario based on the World Bank/KNOMAD 2021 bilateral baseline, ONS PAYE/HMRC RTI employment scaling, exchange-rate conversion and UK CPI deflation.”

 

Comment 5

Reviewer comment: It is not clear why the author felt the need to calculate remittances as a function of employment. Also, was this calculation used in Table 2? The interpretation does not adequately unpack the relationship between these two variables (employment and remittances). Moreover, the author highlights the limitations associated with this calculation, which leads me to ask why it was included in the first place?

Response: We have clarified the purpose and limits of the employment calculation. The revised manuscript states that employment is not treated as a causal determinant of remittances. It is used only as a limited sensitivity scenario because the World Bank/KNOMAD bilateral matrix provides a 2021 corridor baseline, while more recent corridor-specific values require an extrapolating assumption. ONS PAYE/HMRC RTI employment is used as one plausible proxy for changes in the payrolled Romanian workforce in the UK. The revised text also clarifies that this calculation is used in Table 2 and that the limitations of the proxy are central to the article’s argument: modeled data can become communicatively powerful even when they depend on assumptions that later disappear from public interpretation.

Revision made: Sections 3.1, 3.3, 4.3 and 4.6 now explain that the employment-scaled series is a scenario, not a definitive estimate. The manuscript explicitly notes that remittances also depend on wages, household needs, transfer costs, exchange rates, informal channels, length of stay, return intentions, and family obligations.

 

Comment 6

Reviewer comment: The second paragraph in section 4.5 (“Let us recall” – lines 639-651) needs to be backed up by citations.

Response: We have revised this paragraph substantially and added citations. The discussion no longer presents the distinction between “migration out of necessity” and “migration of status” as an observed classification in the remittance datasets. Instead, it is treated as a theoretical interpretation that must be used cautiously. The revised paragraph cites migration theory and household-strategy literature (Stark and Bloom 1985; Massey et al. 1993; de Haas, Castles and Miller 2020) and refers to Veblen (1899) only for the concept of pecuniary emulation/status display.

Revision made: Section 4.7 now uses a more cautious formulation: observed banking data may include transfers that differ from the labour-remittance pattern assumed by model-based estimates, but the manuscript no longer claims that one source directly maps onto a specific migration type.

 

Comment 7

Reviewer comment: I am unclear on how you calculated the economic attractiveness of Romania’s economy in section 4.7. This is an interesting graph, all the same, but perhaps it is more appropriate for the start of the results section, rather than the end?

Response: We have clarified the calculation and repositioned the indicator. The transfer-balance indicator is now defined explicitly as: TBI_t = Remittances_paid_t - Remittances_received_t, using World Bank World Development Indicators. Because Romania receives more remittances than it pays, the indicator is negative. The interpretation has been narrowed: a more negative value is treated only as an illustrative sign of dependence on external labour markets and diaspora transfers, not as a comprehensive measure of national attractiveness. The figure has also been moved to the start of the Results section as contextual framing.

Revision made: The indicator now appears in Section 4.1 as “Transfer-balance indicator as framing context.” The discussion explicitly states that the indicator excludes wages, investment, productivity, FDI, return migration, labour-market institutions and quality-of-life factors.

 

Comment 8

Reviewer comment: Major overall comment: The way data are handled for both datasets is very different (used nominal terms, real terms, employment considerations, etc.). This takes away from the author’s original intent in demonstrating how the data infrastructure may obscure results.

Response: We agree that the previous organization risked making the comparison appear as a dichotomy between two institutions rather than as a study of how data are calculated, transformed, and presented. We have therefore reorganized the Results section and the methodological framing around presentation choices rather than around a simple NBR-versus-World Bank contrast. The revised version compares how nominal values, real values, year-by-year changes, moving averages, employment-scaled scenarios and index construction each shape interpretation.

Revision made: The revised Results section is now titled: “Results: how calculation and presentation shape remittance narratives.” It includes subsections on the transfer-balance indicator, nominal and real values, World Bank/KNOMAD-based employment-scaled estimates, year-by-year change, moving averages, employment proxy limitations, data-source differences and a synthesis table.

 

Comment 9

Reviewer comment: I would strongly recommend re-organizing this article in order to step back from the dichotomous framing that currently exists of NBR versus World Bank data, and rather frame it in terms of how data are calculated and presented as more meaningful in setting political agendas. You can then talk about the different sources of data and the different considerations that might be included in calculations: Nominal, Real, Year-by-year, floating averages, and employment considerations. This would make for a much more clearly organized paper and a more comprehensive discussion on implications. This will obviously impact the way the conclusion is structured and presented as well.

Response: We have adopted this recommendation as the organizing principle of the revised article. The empirical design now states explicitly that the core question is not which data source provides the single correct number, but how calculation and presentation choices make remittance statistics politically meaningful. The Results section now proceeds through the suggested dimensions: nominal values, real values, year-by-year interpretation, moving averages, and employment considerations. The Conclusion has also been rewritten to reflect this revised structure.

Revision made: Sections 3, 4, and 5 have been reorganized. The conclusion now emphasizes methodological transparency: distinguishing observed and modeled series; reporting both nominal and real values; specifying annual, smoothed or forecasted values; disclosing proxy variables such as employment; and avoiding single-number indices as comprehensive measures of national performance.

 

Summary of manuscript changes

Area revised	Main change	Manuscript location
Introduction and Section 1.3	Added citations to support claims on inequality, migration as a multidimensional family process, Romanian emigration and demographic segmentation.	Sections 1.1 and 1.3
Typo	Corrected “the argue is not” to “The argument is not.”	Section 2
Table 1	Added real GBP values at constant 2021 prices and revised interpretation.	Section 4.2
Table 2	Changed title and clarified employment-scaled World Bank/KNOMAD scenario.	Section 4.3
Employment proxy	Explained why employment scaling is used and why it is limited.	Sections 3.1, 3.3, 4.3 and 4.6
Economic-attractiveness indicator	Moved to start of Results, defined formula and reduced interpretive weight.	Section 4.1
Overall Results structure	Reorganized around calculation and presentation choices instead of a source dichotomy.	Section 4
Conclusion	Rewritten to reflect the revised empirical organization and methodological implications.	Section 5

We are grateful for the comments, which helped us clarify the article's analytical structure and improve the empirical interpretation. We believe the revised manuscript now offers a more transparent and coherent account of how remittance data infrastructures shape political communication and policy interpretation.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors The paper seeks to investigate remittances as a political object shaped by competing measurement infrastructures. The authors use the UK–Romania corridor and compare observed personal remittance receipts published by the National Bank of Romania (NBR) with model-based bilateral estimates widely used in global governance (World Bank/KNOMAD). The main outcome of this comparison is that remittances produce different representations of diaspora contribution and national economic performance. The paper is informative but requires some revisions before publication.

1. The paper integrates a wide range of concepts, such as metric power, algorithmic governmentality, hybrid media systems, connective action, data colonialism, and “emerging social policies”. Yet these are not sufficiently integrated into a clearly structured analytical framework. The authors should engage in a more critical application of them.
2. The concept of “emerging social policies” is central but insufficiently operationalised, oscillating between descriptive metaphor and analytical category without clear empirical anchors. The notion requires additional theorisation. The authors should link it to bottom-up policies. Two papers that are informative are: https://doi.org/10.3390/economies13020023 and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104148
3. While the introduction clearly frames the comparison between observed and modelled data regimes and their communicative implications, later sections drift toward broader claims about migration, welfare substitution, and economic attractiveness without always reconnecting these claims to the core comparative logic.
4. A significant issue concerns the treatment of the “economic attractiveness” index derived from remittance balances. While the manuscript acknowledges that this index is illustrative, it nonetheless assigns it substantial interpretive weight, including claims about declining national attractiveness (p. 20).
5. The sections on political communication are empirically thin. Incorporating even limited empirical illustrations—such as media headlines, policy documents, or political speeches—would significantly strengthen this part of the argument and align it with the paper’s stated focus on political communication.
6. A more consistently analytical and less evaluative tone would enhance the paper’s scholarly credibility. Additionally, grammatical inconsistencies and occasional awkward phrasing suggest the need for careful language editing.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for carefully reading the manuscript and for your constructive assessment that the paper is informative but requires further revision before publication. We have revised the article to strengthen the analytical framework, operationalize the concept of emerging social policies more clearly, reconnect the empirical sections to the core data-infrastructure argument, narrow the interpretation of the transfer-balance/economic-attractiveness indicator, add limited empirical illustrations of political communication, and improve the tone and language throughout.

The revisions were made in the manuscript without treating the comments as external additions. Instead, the article has been reorganized so that the argument now develops more coherently from theory, to operationalization, to data presentation, to implications for political communication and governance.

Point-by-point response

Comment 1

Reviewer comment: The paper seeks to investigate remittances as a political object shaped by competing measurement infrastructures. The authors use the UK–Romania corridor and compare observed personal remittance receipts published by the National Bank of Romania (NBR) with model-based bilateral estimates widely used in global governance (World Bank/KNOMAD). The main outcome of this comparison is that remittances produce different representations of diaspora contribution and national economic performance. The paper is informative but requires some revisions before publication.

Response: We appreciate this summary of the manuscript and the constructive recommendation for revision. We have preserved the central research question—how remittances become a political object through measurement and presentation infrastructures—but we have revised the manuscript so that the comparison is less binary and more analytically grounded. The revised article now focuses on how remittance data become politically meaningful through source selection, nominal versus real presentation, proxy use, smoothing, index construction, and communicative circulation.

Revision made: The abstract, introduction, research design, results, and conclusion were revised to clarify that the article is not simply an NBR-versus-World Bank comparison, but an analysis of how measurement and presentation choices shape public and policy interpretations of diaspora contribution and national performance.

Comment 2

Reviewer comment: The paper integrates a wide range of concepts, such as metric power, algorithmic governmentality, hybrid media systems, connective action, data colonialism, and “emerging social policies”. Yet these are not sufficiently integrated into a clearly structured analytical framework. The authors should engage in a more critical application of them.

Response: We agree that the previous version brought together several relevant concepts without sufficiently integrating them into a single analytical structure. The revised manuscript now organizes the conceptual apparatus as a staged framework. First, quantification and metric power explain how remittances become authoritative numbers. Second, data infrastructures and algorithmic governmentality explain how observed and modeled series embed institutional assumptions. Third, hybrid media systems and connective action explain how such numbers circulate in political and diaspora-facing communication. Fourth, data colonialism and datafication of the Global South are used to discuss asymmetries in the production and use of global indicators. Finally, emerging social policies identify the substantive welfare practices that the remittance metrics represent and translate into public meaning.

Revision made: Section 2 was revised to present the analytical framework more explicitly and critically. The concepts are now connected to specific parts of the empirical analysis rather than appearing as parallel theoretical references. The conclusion was also revised to return to this framework and to explain how remittance numbers operate simultaneously as measurements, communicative resources, and governance signals.

Comment 3

Reviewer comment: The concept of “emerging social policies” is central but insufficiently operationalised, oscillating between descriptive metaphor and analytical category without clear empirical anchors. The notion requires additional theorisation. The authors should link it to bottom-up policies.

Response: We agree and have substantially revised the use of “emerging social policies.” The revised manuscript now defines the concept as bottom-up, community-mediated welfare practices through which non-state actors—especially migrant households and diaspora networks—partially compensate for welfare gaps affecting families in the country of origin. This definition makes the concept operational rather than metaphorical. The empirical anchors are: personal remittance inflows, household support functions, diaspora-to-family transfers, the observed/modelled remittance data used in the article, and the way these metrics enter public narratives about welfare responsibility.

Revision made: Sections 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 were revised to link emerging social policies to bottom-up policy formation and citizen/community participation. We added the two suggested references: Angelakis (2025), on the need to combine top-down macro-policy with bottom-up citizen participation, and Hölscher et al. (2025), on mainstreaming citizen science in policy and changing relations between policymakers, scientists, and citizens. The manuscript now uses these sources to clarify that diaspora remittances are not formal state policy, but may function as bottom-up welfare interventions that become politically visible through data infrastructures.

Comment 4

Reviewer comment: While the introduction clearly frames the comparison between observed and modelled data regimes and their communicative implications, later sections drift toward broader claims about migration, welfare substitution, and economic attractiveness without always reconnecting these claims to the core comparative logic.

Response: We agree that the previous version sometimes moved too far from the central comparative logic. The revised manuscript reconnects each broader claim to the core argument about data infrastructures and presentation. Migration and welfare substitution are now discussed as the substantive social processes that remittance metrics attempt to represent, while the empirical analysis focuses on how those processes look different depending on whether the series is observed, modeled, nominal, real, smoothed, employment-scaled, or converted into an index.

Revision made: Sections 3, 4, and 5 were reorganized. The results section is now structured around calculation and presentation choices rather than around a loose institutional opposition. The conclusion now explicitly returns to the comparative logic and stresses that the political meaning of remittances is produced through a chain of operations: measurement, transformation, presentation, circulation, and interpretation.

Comment 5

Reviewer comment: A significant issue concerns the treatment of the “economic attractiveness” index derived from remittance balances. While the manuscript acknowledges that this index is illustrative, it nonetheless assigns it substantial interpretive weight, including claims about declining national attractiveness (p. 20).

Response: We agree that the earlier version gave the indicator too much interpretive weight. We have revised the manuscript to treat it as a transfer-balance indicator rather than as a direct measure of national economic attractiveness. The calculation is now explicitly defined as remittances paid minus remittances received, using World Bank World Development Indicators. The interpretation has been narrowed: a more negative balance is described as an indication of stronger reliance on external labour markets and diaspora transfers under this specific indicator, not as proof of declining national attractiveness in a comprehensive sense.

Revision made: The discussion of the indicator was moved and reframed. The manuscript now states clearly that the indicator excludes wages, investment, productivity, labour-market institutions, FDI, return migration, quality-of-life factors, and other determinants of attractiveness. Claims about national attractiveness were softened or replaced with more cautious language about dependence, representation, and political readability. The indicator is now used to demonstrate how single-number indices can become politically actionable, rather than to provide a definitive evaluation of the Romanian economy.

Comment 6

Reviewer comment: The sections on political communication are empirically thin. Incorporating even limited empirical illustrations—such as media headlines, policy documents, or political speeches—would significantly strengthen this part of the argument and align it with the paper’s stated focus on political communication.

Response: We agree and have added limited empirical illustrations to strengthen the political-communication component without turning the article into a full discourse analysis. The revised manuscript now includes examples showing how remittance figures circulate through public and policy communication: international organization reporting that frames remittances as development finance and household support; Romanian public/media discussion that treats diaspora transfers as evidence of economic contribution; and diaspora-facing political commentary that links migration, remittances, recognition, and national belonging.

Revision made: Section 2.5 and the discussion in the results/conclusion were revised to include these empirical illustrations. The manuscript now makes clearer how numerical differences between observed and modeled data can become communicative resources in policy agendas, media narratives, and diaspora-facing political claims. The examples are framed as illustrative cases of circulation and narrative uptake, not as a comprehensive media content analysis.

Comment 7

Reviewer comment: A more consistently analytical and less evaluative tone would enhance the paper’s scholarly credibility. Additionally, grammatical inconsistencies and occasional awkward phrasing suggest the need for careful language editing.

Response: We agree. The manuscript has been edited to reduce evaluative or overly emphatic wording and to improve scholarly tone. Expressions that could be read as normative or polemical have been softened, replaced, or contextualized. We also revised grammar, punctuation, paragraph flow, and transitions in the introduction, theoretical framework, methodology, results, and conclusion.

Revision made: Language editing was carried out throughout the manuscript. The revised text now uses more cautious analytical formulations, especially in the discussion of migration, welfare substitution, economic attractiveness, and the relationship between employment and remittances. The conclusion was rewritten to avoid overstatement and to emphasize methodological transparency, assumptions, and limits.

Summary of manuscript changes

• Revised the analytical framework so the theoretical concepts are integrated into a clear sequence: quantification and metric power; data infrastructures and algorithmic governmentality; hybrid media/connective action; data colonialism; and emerging social policies as bottom-up welfare practices.
• Operationalized “emerging social policies” as bottom-up, community-mediated welfare practices, with remittances treated as measurable indicators of diaspora-supported household welfare.
• Added and integrated the suggested bottom-up/citizen-participation policy literature: Angelakis (2025) and Hölscher et al. (2025).
• Reorganized the empirical sections so that migration, welfare support, and economic-attractiveness claims are consistently tied back to the calculation and presentation of remittance data.
• Reframed the economic-attractiveness index as a limited transfer-balance indicator and reduced its interpretive weight.
• Added limited empirical illustrations of political communication to show how remittance metrics circulate in policy, media, and diaspora-facing narratives.
• Edited the article for a more analytical tone and corrected grammatical and stylistic issues.

References added or emphasized in response to this review

• Angelakis, A. 2025. “The Political Economy of Green Transition: The Need for a Two-Pronged Approach to Address Climate Change and the Necessity of ‘Science Citizens’.” Economies 13(2): 23. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies13020023.
• Hölscher, K., Wittmayer, J. M., Notermans, V. I., Cl, M., Passani, A., and Janssen, A. 2025. “Mainstreaming Citizen Science in Policy: Adaptations Needed in Policy and How to Achieve Them in Five European Countries.” Environmental Science & Policy 171: 104148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104148.

We are grateful for the comments, which helped us clarify the manuscript’s analytical architecture, improve the operational definition of emerging social policies, strengthen the political-communication dimension, and reduce overstatement in the interpretation of the transfer-balance indicator. We believe the revised manuscript now offers a more coherent, transparent and analytically balanced account of remittances as data infrastructure in political communication.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

You have clearly done a lot of work to address my original suggestions and I think that the paper is a lot better organized and referenced now. I think it is a good contribution to the literature and I recommend it move forward for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors addressed my comments.