Project information
The International Economic Law of Migrants (Dr. Silvia Steininger)

Nearly one in seven people worldwide either receives or sends on money transfers from abroad to family and friends – so-called remittances. In 2024, global remittances surpassed USD 904 billion, exceeding foreign direct investment and development assistance combined. Yet, despite their scale and importance, legal scholarship has largely overlooked how remittances are regulated and how law shapes migrants’ ability to support families and communities.

This project pioneers the first comprehensive socio-legal study of remittances. It examines the fragmented and rapidly evolving regulatory landscape across international, regional, and domestic levels. Since the early 2000s, anti–money laundering and counter-terrorism financing rules have tightened controls on remittance providers, contributing to persistently high transfer fees, averaging 6.4 percent despite global commitments to reduce costs to 3 percent. New measures, such as remittance taxes and the rise of digital and cryptocurrency-based services, further complicate legal regulations.

Using an interdisciplinary approach that integrates doctrinal legal analysis with methods from sociology and anthropology, the project pursues three aims: (1) to map the legal regime governing remittances across human rights, migration, financial services, labor, trade, and tax law; (2) to assess practical regulatory challenges through comparative case studies; and (3) to develop a normative framework conceptualizing migrant remittances as a form of global economic democracy.