Migration and Remittances Major Projects: Wrapping Up and Ramping Up
- Datum
- vrijdag 6 februari 2026
- Tijd
- Bezoekadres
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP Den Haag - Zaal
- 4.78
Deze conferentie brengt toonaangevende onderzoekers samen om terug te blikken op afgeronde onderzoeksprojecten en vooruit te kijken naar nieuwe initiatieven. Het evenement combineert elementen van een symposium en een workshop en biedt volop ruimte voor gesprek over lopend onderzoek, evenals over de praktische, ethische en methodologische uitdagingen die dit vakgebied kenmerken. In een open en interactieve setting kunnen deelnemers ideeën uitwisselen, inzichten verdiepen en samen nadenken over toekomstige ontwikkelingen binnen het onderzoek naar migratie en geldovermakingen.
Hoofdtaal: Engels
Programme
| 09.30 - 10.00 | Opening remarks and coffee |
|
10.00 - 11.30 |
Migration, Money, and the State
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| 11.45 - 12.45 | Lunch at Burrata (📍Turfmarkt 87, 2511 DP Den Haag) |
| 13.00 - 14.30 |
New Conceptual Approaches to Remittances
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| 15.00 - 16.30 |
Migration, Remittances, and Politics
|
Authors and Abstracts
Migration, Money, and the State
Alternative remittances to Venezuela: ad hoc technological diffusion and monetary pluralism – Daniel Robins (Oxford University - Oxford School of Global and Area Studies)
Abstract
Venezuelan migrants have historically been excluded from formal money transfer systems. Consequently, the diaspora has a strong culture of using alternative remittance methods. This article examines the use of FinTech infrastructure exploring two remittance modalities. First is digital in-kind remittances whereby grocery items can be purchased remotely online in e.g., US dollars. Second, is use of Zelle (a US payments app which was designed for feeless peer-to-peer transfers within the US). The use of Zelle to send remittances to Venezuela has in turn ‘sent back’ Zelle, itself now used as a payments platform there. These new remittance mediums have profound and under-examined effects on the Venezuelan economy. I use the term ‘ad hoc technological diffusion’ to show the improvised ways in which, how through the practice of remitting money, migrants have also ‘sent back’ new FinTech assemblages and, likewise, how, by using FinTech assemblages, new remittance mediums have been enabled. These two remittance modalities capture the complex relationship between novel financial practices and novel forms of remittances. The article explores how these emerging phenomena are structured by socio-economic inequalities, erratic Venezuelan government policy and external pressures from the US.
Biography
Daniel Robins is an economic and migration geographer. He is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. His project is titled, ‘New Strategies of Survival in Venezuela: migration and alternative remittances’. The project explores the causes, impacts and policy implications of the use of alternative channels to send remittances. These channels include cryptocurrencies, ‘in-kind’ remittances, and informal and parallel exchanges. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Remittances. He was previously an Associate Lecturer in the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews and is currently an honorary fellow of the University of St Andrews. He was also an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, in the Department of Geography and a Research Associate at Cambridge Zero, both at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his PhD in Geography at the University of St Andrews. Research interests include human migration, immobility, alternative economies, lifestyle migration, geographical imaginaries, globalisation, national identity, alternative remittances, environmental migration, climate change adaptation, CBDCs and digital currencies. Countries of interest include Venezuela, Brazil, and the UK.
Mobilizing Diaspora Contributions for Public Goods: Evidence from Somali Crowdfunding Platforms – Ana I. López García (Maastricht University - Department of Politics)
Coauthored with Vanessa van den Boogaard (International Centre for Tax and Development)
Abstract
Much is known about what motivates migrants to send (or withhold) remittances to family and friends back home, but far less about what leads them to fund public works in their countries of origin. This question matters in fragile states, where diaspora populations commonly fill gaps left by weak taxation systems and act as alternative sources of financing for schools, clinics, and infrastructure. This paper analyses 163 crowdfunding campaigns hosted on Sokaab and BulshoKaab, two Somali digital platforms that pool diaspora donations with community contributions and matching funds from external donors to finance public works projects in liberated areas of the country. Using computational text analysis, we examine which narrative strategies drive campaign funding success, defined as those achieving their funding goals. We find that campaigns that are based on needs-based appeals (pure altruism) are the least successful. Campaigns that appeal to community obligations or kinship ties perform better, but not as well as those that reference institutional endorsements from government authorities or external donors. The most successful campaigns however are those that foreground three elements: (i) how diaspora funds will be matched or multiplied, (ii) how projects have been identified and will be monitored on the ground, and (iii) how project progress and results will be verified through concrete deliverables and milestones. Evidence suggests that when funding public works back home, diasporas respond more strongly to risk-reducing strategies than to kinship ties or affective appeals.
Keywords: computational text analysis; local public goods; informal taxation; donor matching; diaspora; fragile states
Biography
Ana is an Assistant Professor of Global Migration in the Department of Politics and a member of the Globalization, Transnationalism and Development Research Group and the Centre for Gender and Diversity at FASoS. Her research sits at the intersection of development studies and IPE, focusing on international labour migration, taxation, and the ways remittances and return migration shape state capacity and political behaviour in origin countries. A core theme in her work is “financing development,” including the role of remittances, diaspora contributions, and tax justice in informal and fragile economies. Her research, which primarily uses quantitative methods, has appeared in World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development, Development and Change, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Migration Studies, and other leading journals. Her work has been supported by UNU‑WIDER, the International Centre for Tax and Development, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Zukunftskolleg, FASoS, and CONACYT. Her article “Taxing Higher Incomes in Haiti” received the Best Paper Award at the ISA 2024 Virtual Conference, and her co‑authored piece on remittances and the fiscal contract in Africa and Latin America was featured by SAGE as part of their UNSDG 10 collection.
Greening remittances for migrant food security – Kavita Datta (Queen Mary University of London - School of Society and Environment)
Abstract
In this short presentation, I will focus on two of my current projects, Remitting for Resilience, and When Rainclouds Fail to Gather, which are exploring the gendered intersections of migrant remittances, climate change and food (in)security. Situated in a broader intellectual context, these projects entailing research in Botswana, Zimbabwe and the UK, are interrogating how and why remittances are emerging as ‘green finance’, the ways in which they potentially redress food (in)security among migrant and recipient households and the implications for climate adaptation and mitigation.
Biography
Kavita is a Professor of Development Geography whose research explores the intersections of migration, money, and food. Her work is interdisciplinary and collaborative, spanning Southern Africa and the UK, and has been funded by UKRI, the Leverhulme Trust, the Canadian SSHRC, and the Friends Provident Foundation. She currently serves as Head of the School of Geography and Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Her research examines climate resilience, remittances, food security, and the financial lives of migrants, with recent projects addressing the digitalisation of remittances, the impact of COVID‑19 on migrant well‑being, and gendered migration corridors. She is co‑editor of The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals and leads the international project Remitting for Resilience. Kavita teaches across global development and migration studies, with a commitment to decolonial, experiential, and research‑led learning. She convenes the postgraduate module Migration and Mobilities and co‑leads an undergraduate field class to Malta and Gozo on sustainability transitions.
New Conceptual Approaches to Remittances
Remitting Material Care: The timing of distance in Senegalese transnational families – Chelsie Yount-André (Leiden University – Institute of Security and Global Affairs)
Abstract
Drawing on ethnography to expand and question the notion of ‘remittances,’ as an emic category itself, this paper examines the diverse media by which Senegalese in France send resources to their relatives in Dakar. I show how transnational families grapple with precarious and fluctuating budgets, navigating requests to/from kin and wider social networks. It draws upon fieldwork in Lyon and Dakar (2022-2025), during which I travelled between France and Senegal every three to six months. This “patchwork ethnography” was possible thanks to my ethnographic engagement with families in Dakar (since 2005) who introduced me to their relatives in Lyon in 2022. I trace how a post-Covid surge in the use of digital money transfer apps in Senegal has reconfigured remitting practices: not by replacing material remittances sent via shipping containers or couriers’ suitcases, but by bolstering them. The paper examines how people act on the temporal unfolding of exchanges, using delay as a financial strategy. It explores the ways transnational families cope with financial uncertainty as they collaborate across continents to manage the budgets of households in Senegal. I argue that the rhythms and media through which sending unfolds communicate their own messages, which sometimes reveal ‘unspeakable motives’ like a desire to limit how much or often one sends.
Biography
Chelsie is a postdoctoral ethnographer on the European Research Council JustRemit project at Leiden University. She earned her PhD in anthropology in 2017 through a joint program at Northwestern University and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Her work in linguistic and economic anthropology examines morality in economic life, tracing how value is created across scales—from global markets to African households. Drawing on long‑term ethnographic research in Senegal since 2005, her scholarship contributes to debates on the financialisation of development, the precarisation of transnational middle classes, and the ways children are socialised into moral‑economic relations.
Air conditioners, education and changing life aspirations: The somewhat elusive process of tracing remittances-impacts over the long term – Marta Bivand Erdal (Peace Research Institute Oslo)
Abstract
This presentation draws on research conducted in the research project: Migration rhythms in trajectories of upward social mobility in Asia, funded by the ERC. By interrogating families trajectories into plural Asian urban middle classes, and the roles of migration therein, this research offers new empirical, methodological and conceptual insights about remittances – their meanings and impacts. Plural Asian urban middle classes are defined by combining objective and subjective measures – encompassing local realities where neither occupation, income, nor education levels alone perfectly map onto self-defined lower-to-middle middle class populations. The empirical basis of the presentation is draw from survey data and family history interviews from middle class neighbourhoods within four cities: Hanoi (Vietnam), Karachi (Pakistani), Manila (the Philippines) and Mumbai (India). Considering specific remittances-impacts – things which have been enabled by remittances – and their meanings – the value which they have for remittances-receivers (and variously senders), such as air conditioners, education and changing life aspirations, the presentation will reflect on the somewhat elusive process of tracing remittances-impacts over the long term. Through this limitations, opportunities, and future directions for remittances-research, empirically, methodologically and conceptually will be cautiously approached.
Biography
Marta is a Human Geographer whose research examines the impacts of migration and transnationalism in both emigration and immigration contexts. Her work focuses on migration and development, social and spatial mobility, and migration‑related diversity, including religion, nationhood, and citizenship. She conducts empirical research primarily in Europe and Asia, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. She is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), where she previously served as Research Director of the Social Dynamics Department and held roles as Senior Researcher and Researcher. Marta holds a PhD and MA in Human Geography from the University of Oslo and a BA in Geography (with honours) from University College London.
RAVEN, From JustRemit to NewRemit – Matthew Hoye (Leiden University - Institute of Security and Global Affairs)
Abstract
JustRemit failed to generate a new normative theory of remittances; but it did generate an analytical framework for understanding remittances as a phenomenon in its own right. In this presentation I reflect very briefly on JustRemit, then explicate the analytical framework, then consider the potential for applying that framework to the study of remittance politics. Remittance studies are triply hindered by a reliance on truism (remittances are “money sent back home”), unchecked conceptual stretching (anything that crosses a border is a “remittance,”) and the widespread use of analytical frameworks geared to other phenomena (development). I defend a new analytical framework tailor made to the phenomenon. It comprises five concepts and their dynamic relations: remittance, agency, vulnerability, entitlements, and non-domination (RAVEN). The conceptual explication unfolds through argumentative comparison to alternative concepts. I make two strong arguments. First, internally, I argue that RAVEN picks out the core and necessary attributes of the phenomenon overcoming myriad conceptual shortcomings that pox remittance studies. Second, externally, I argue that RAVEN is comparatively better (describes less, but explains more) than both the aspirations and capabilities framework and the new economics of labor migration approach. RAVEN empowers remittance studies to move beyond descriptive empirics and alien analytics towards robust analyses, understanding, and perhaps explanation. If that is true, it should apply to the politics of remittances too. I conclude with forward looking considerations regarding how RAVEN may advance our understanding of the politics of remittances.
Biography
J. Matthew Hoye is an Associate Professor of Global Justice at ISGA and head of the War, Peace, and Justice Research Group. He is also Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant JustRemit, a member of ISGA’s board of examiners, and foremostly a teacher. His research spans political theory, the history of ideas, and migration politics. He works extensively on Thomas Hobbes, publishing on themes such as war, peace, justice, security, and statecraft. His most recent book is Sovereignty as a Vocation in Hobbes’s Leviathan (Amsterdam University Press, 2024). Hoye also studies migration politics and security, drawing on both early republican thinkers and contemporary debates, including sanctuary cities. These strands feed into his ongoing project Migration and the Republic from Spinoza to Sanctuary. As PI of JustRemit, he leads a team examining remittances and global justice. The project critiques existing liberal approaches and develops new ways of thinking about agency, institutions, and transnational duties. Hoye earned his Ph.D. in Politics from the New School for Social Research, where his dissertation received the Frieda Wunderlich Memorial Award. He has held fellowships at the New School, the European University Institute, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and has previously worked at Maastricht University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Migration, Remittances, and Politics
From Material Leverage to Symbolic Power: Ramping Up a New Framework for Migration Diplomacy – Gerasimos Tsourapas (University of Birmingham & European University Institute)
Biography
In the spirit of ‘wrapping up’, I will reflect on the findings of my ERC Starting Grant (MIGDIPLO), which mapped how states use cross-border mobility as a transactional bargaining chip to secure material gains, including remittances and labour market access. For the ‘ramping up’ component, I will present the core hypothesis of my current ERC Consolidator application (CREDIBLE). Here, I argue for a theoretical shift from material leverage to ‘refugee governance credibility’. I examine how states employ ‘credible fictions’ (such as performative enforcement and inflated statistics) to extract ‘refugee rent’ (a state-level analogue to remittances). I look forward to discussing the methodological challenges of tracing how this symbolic capital is produced and converted into financial and diplomatic return (subject, of course, to the whims of the ERC evaluators).
Biography
Gerasimos Tsourapas FAcSS is 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of International Relations at the University of Birmingham, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, where he served as Professor of International Relations until 2025. He is Editor-in-Chief of Migration Studies (Oxford University Press). He has served as Chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies (ENMISA) Section of the International Studies Association and previously held the role of Treasurer for the Migration & Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association. In 2024–25, Gerasimos was a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Distinguished University Scholar at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, The American University in Cairo. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security, Tufts University, and a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Gerasimos has previously served as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University (2019–20) and the Migration Research Center, Koç University (2023–24), and served as an elected Trustee of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), where he was Acting Honorary Treasurer and a member of the Research Sub-Committee from 2019 to 2022. Gerasimos holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Science from Yale University (2006), an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2007), and a PhD in Politics from SOAS, University of London (2016), under the supervision of Laleh Khalili and Charles Tripp.
The Political Consequences of Remittances: Tracing a Future Research Agenda– Covadonga Meseguer Yebra (Comillas Pontifical University)
Coauthored with Gerasimos Tsourapas (University of Birmingham)
Abstract
This chapter reviews and systematises the growing literature on the political consequences of migrant remittances, advancing an integrated agenda that bridges comparative politics and international relations. At the domestic level, it examines how remittances shape regime dynamics by simultaneously acting as potential stabilisers and destabilisers of political rule. Drawing on evidence from authoritarian regimes and new democracies, the chapter analyses key mechanisms through which remittances affect political outcomes, including the erosion of clientelism, changes in electoral and nonelectoral participation, shifts in accountability and corruption tolerance, and the mobilisation of civil society and protest. It highlights how identical mechanisms may produce divergent effects depending on regime type, socioeconomic context, and scope conditions, underscoring the need for greater theoretical precision and multi-method research. At the international level, the chapter extends the analysis beyond domestic politics to show how remittances structure interstate relations. It conceptualises remittances as instruments of both cooperation and coercion, tracing trajectories from bilateral labour agreements and diaspora engagement to migration diplomacy and forms of migration interdependence. At the same time, it demonstrates how states weaponise remittances through regulatory restriction, fiscal extraction, and strategic displacement, revealing their role in asymmetric power relations and extraterritorial governance. By synthesising these two strands of scholarship, the chapter argues that remittances should be understood not as politically neutral private transfers, but as deeply embedded in domestic political processes and global hierarchies. It concludes by outlining a future research agenda that emphasises scope conditions, non-linear effects, party and policy adaptation in remittance-dependent societies, and the strategic role of remittances in international politics, particularly in underexplored South–South migration corridors.
Biography
Prof. Covadonga Meseguer is a Full Professor of International Politics and Political Economy at ICADE (Comillas Pontifical University) and a member of the Juan March Institute. She holds a PhD in Political Science and has previously held academic positions at NYU, the European University Institute, the Kellogg Institute, IBEI, Nuffield College, CIDE, UC3M, the LSE, and UNED. Her research focuses on comparative and international political economy, the political economy of international migration, and Latin American political economy. Her work has appeared in leading journals including AJPS, International Migration Review, International Studies Quarterly, World Development, and the European Journal of Political Research. She is the author of Learning, Policy Making, and Market Reforms (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and co‑author of Migration and Democracy: How Remittances Undermine Dictatorships (Princeton University Press, 2022), winner of the APSA Migration and Citizenship Best Book Award.
The Politics of Displacement: Wartime Migration and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding – Adam Lichtenheld (Leiden University - Institute of Security and Global Affairs)
Abstract
Civilian displacement is an increasingly massive feature of armed conflict, with widespread security and humanitarian consequences. This presentation discusses the politics of wartime migration and how it shapes the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of displacement both during and after conflict. Examining not just the level of displacement but the different forms that it takes, and how it intersects with broader efforts by armed actors to exert territorial and social control, is essential for understanding how wartime mobility influences patterns of violence. How states respond to and govern internal displacement is also a critically overlooked phenomenon. Together, these dynamics have important but undertheorized implications for return, reconciliation, and peace building after conflict ends.
Biography
Adam Lichtenheld is an Assistant Professor of Peace Studies, Conflict Resolution, and International Relations at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. His research focuses on forced displacement, armed conflict, political violence, peacebuilding, and post‑conflict development, with regional expertise in Africa and the Middle East. He has collaborated with governments, donors, and NGOs to design and evaluate humanitarian and development programs across more than a dozen countries. He is the author of Guilt by Location: Forced Displacement and Population Sorting in Civil Wars (Cambridge University Press), winner of the 2025 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize. His work appears in International Organization, Political Geography, the British Journal of Political Science, Economics & Politics, and outlets such as the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Just Security. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, Innovations for Poverty Action, the King Center on Global Development, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Before joining Leiden University, he served as Executive Director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University, Senior Researcher for Peace & Conflict at Mercy Corps, and a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Yale University. He has consulted for UNHCR, the World Bank, the Danish Refugee Council, Refugees International, and USAID. He holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches courses on forced migration, conflict, peacebuilding, and research methods.
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