JUSTREMIT is an ERC-funded project that brings together political theory, ethnography, and security studies in an interdisciplinary study of remittances and global justice. The project is based as the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University (The Hague campus).
Today, 1 billion people are directly involved in the global remittances economy, with migrants potentially remitting upwards of €1 trillion annually. That money directly and efficiently addresses ailments commonly associated with global injustice, such as poverty, malnutrition, and inadequate healthcare. But despite overwhelming evidence that remittances provide essential lifelines for the global poor, remittances are, strikingly, marginalia in the global justice debates. This project confronts what amounts to €1 trillion and 1-billion-person gaps in the literature. In doing so, it aims to reveal and overcome various theoretical and empirical challenges.
The project will unfold in three steps. First, it sets out to critically evaluate contemporary global justice theory from the perspective of remittances and the agency of the global poor. Second, it undertakes an ambitious and pioneering ethnographic study of the remitter/receiver relationship to uncover the ethical, moral, cultural, and religious practices hidden below the economic surface of remittances. Third, it theorizes global justice in a new way, one informed by ethnographic findings and non-liberal moral and political philosophies, including African political philosophy, Mouridism, care ethics, and neorepublicanism. Those studies will informed, and be informed by, simultaneous studies into diaspora politics and west African migration politics.
