This chapter takes as its point of departure Objective 20 of the UN Global Compact on Migration to promote faster, safer, and cheaper transfer of remittances and foster financial inclusion of migrants. In order to achieve this objective, signatory states are called upon to facilitate remittance infrastructures and see to it that measures to combat illicit financial flows and money laundering do not impede migrant remittances through undue, excessive, or discriminatory policies. The objective also calls for accessing payment system infrastructure, such as bank accounts. While propagating financial inclusion the UN also has a strong impact on financial exclusion of migrants through its instruments against money laundering and terrorist financing. This dichotomy is echoed by the European Union when it comes to the implementation of the right of access to a payment account, also for migrants, acknowledged in Directive 2014/92. At the same time banks are asked to prevent money laundering in Directive 2015/849. The result of this dichotomy is undue, excessive, and discriminatory policies and practices on the ground, discussed in this chapter specifically for the UK and the Netherlands.

This chapter introduces the reader to the book. It first describes the overall purpose of the book that brings together eighteen chapters that use money as a lens to address a wide range of cases from different disciplinary perspectives. Taken together its chapters balance empirical and theoretical work and use multiple methods. While the book does not force an overarching theoretical framework, it aims to facilitate overarching engagement and to encourage new multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research into the role of money and resources on migration. Secondly, the chapter describes how aims, actors, and instruments are three important elements of analysis that return implicitly or explicitly in the individual chapters. It gives examples of how the lens of money can bring new insights to each of these elements in blurring formal distinctions. Thirdly, the chapter introduces the three parts of the book: migration, participation, and citizenship. It explains the choice for these three parts and how and why the distinct chapters connect under each part.