Contact: Dr Tugba Basaran, Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement
Mentor: Lesley-Ann Vaughan
Dr. Basaran is currently researching how new financial technologies are used for money transfers between the UK, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Ghana. She inquires into the aspirations and desires of the households to understand their preferences, customs and impediments when sending/receiving remittances.
For instance, an approach used is for one person to aggregate many small monetary transactions into a single larger amount, which is transferred from London to a country in Africa via the MPESA system in a single transaction, and then separated out between the individual recipients in the receiving country.
The question for the i-Team is to investigate the needs of migrants using cross-border financial transactions, ascertain the systems that they are currently using, identify gaps and propose mechanisms to enable their needs to be better served. There may be an opportunity for the team members to join some of the field research that is being carried out in London with migrant communities.