About the project
Migrants, whether refugees, diaspora communities, or (temporary) expats, play a crucial and rising role in modern market economies. They are connected to both their home and host state – not only through political, economic, and socio-cultural ties but also through legal rules. This inherently transnational character of migrants and their participation in economic affairs extends over multiple levels of regulation, from domestic to regional and international regulatory frameworks. In line with the growing law and political economy approach, this project investigates how law structures the participation of migrants in economic affairs by examining the legal infrastructure of remittances.
This project aims at consolidating the law of remittances through three steps. First, it applies a legal-doctrinal approach to identify and analyze regulations of remittances in migration, anti-terrorism, financial services, and tax law on the domestic, regional, and international level. Secondly, it investigates how those regulatory interact and whether regulatory gaps exist through a legal-anthropological case study and interviews with core stakeholders. Thirdly, it establishes a theory of transnational economic democracy that links the economic contribution of migrants to their political representativeness.