Borrowing Across Borders: Migration and Microcredit in Rural Cambodia

This article explores an unexpected and overlooked consequence of the expansion of microcredit: how it interacts with migration patterns. Drawing on qualitative research in northwest Cambodia, this study explores the uses, meanings and implications of ‘migra‐loans’ — microcredit loans that are used in tandem with household strategies of international migration. Using microcredit in combination with migration allows households to immediately meet consumption goals and utilize the credit being actively promoted by microfinance institutions, while also retreating from insecure and less profitable local livelihood strategies. These strategies problematize expectations about the developmental potential of microcredit, and highlight the importance of local context in framing rural livelihood choices.     

The Underside of Microfinance: Performance Indicators and Informal Debt in Cambodia

Microfinance is a dominant strategy used to promote rural development around the world. Rather than directly track its impact on borrowers, however, microfinance institutions rely on indicators of financial performance adopted from commercial banking as proxies for positive social impact. Yet, as critical research has shown, the industry depends on coercive peer pressure, social shaming and various forms of gendered exploitation to achieve its high rates of loan repayment. This article maintains that there is a need to investigate how the microfinance industry's own indicators of impact contribute to the ways microfinance can harm borrowers. Based on qualitative research in Cambodia during 2021 and 2022, the article demonstrates how financial performance indicators, most notably portfolio quality, both hide and exacerbate the ways that borrowers juggle debt between formal and informal lenders. In making this argument, the article advances critical scholarship on microfinance by showing how microfinance repayment structures debt-juggling practices in ways that put borrowers at greater risk of over-indebtedness. As a result, the microfinance industry is able to claim that it successfully helps to alleviate poverty, even as it accumulates profits by appropriating wealth from poor and low-income households across the global South.     

Regulating Over-indebtedness: Local State Power in Cambodia's Microfinance Market

Cambodian microfinance borrowers are suffering from an over-indebtedness crisis. In the past 20 years, the Cambodian government has implemented financial reforms that have commercialized the microfinance sector and promoted industry self-regulation. Echoing long-standing concerns about neoliberal microfinance, critics maintain that these reforms have hollowed out the Cambodian state's ability to regulate a highly competitive market, thereby exacerbating the problem of over-indebtedness. In contrast, based upon 20 months of ethnographic research in southern Cambodia by the author, this article argues that the microfinance market would not function without local authorities performing key regulatory roles of the state. These local authorities include commune councillors — elected representatives of multiple villages — who work closely with village leaders and local police. They are the primary state actors who enforce the property rights and loan contracts upon which Cambodia's microfinance market depends. The author analyses how this local state regulation contributes to household indebtedness by encouraging multiple borrowing, rural out-migration and land repossession. The article advances development studies scholarship on over-indebtedness by demonstrating that the inequitable outcomes of neoliberal microfinance can be better understood, and contested, by interrogating the multi-scalar spaces of state regulatory power.     

The Dynamics of Work and Survival for the Urban Poor: A Gender Analysis of Panel Data from Madras

ABSTRACT This paper examines the functioning of the household economy and family labour supply over a five-year period among a panel sample of poor households in Madras using an event history methodology. The research focused on the key role women play in sustaining poor households despite constrained labour market choices. Women's earnings from daily self-employed work activities provided a substantial and steady component to total household income which tended to fluctuate with the earnings and family pool contribution of casually employed males. As economic stress events hit the family over time, women helped by increasing earnings, adding on secondary jobs, utilizing their earning status to obtain loans from a variety of sources, sacrificing their subsidized business loan for family debt repayment, and foregoing personal expenditures and leisure. At the same time women also managed the increasingly more difficult tasks of fulfilling basic needs of the household such as food, fuel and water collection, sanitation and childcare with less resources of time. Development policies must reflect the fact that women are central to individual family survival and as a whole they are key actors in the adjustment process to the crises in employment occurring in the local and national economy.     

Precarious Debt: Microfinance Subjects and Intergenerational Dependency in Cambodia

This paper tells a story of debt within a rural Cambodian family in order to understand how microfinance produces more‐than‐individual financial subjects that are entangled in changing social relations of dependency. We draw upon 20 months of joint ethnographic research in Cambodia, where the microfinance industry is one of the largest per capita in the world. Informed by Judith Butler's notions of precariousness and precarity, we argue that even in the context of deepening financialisation, people's lives remain dependent upon others, especially within families. We analyse how these family relations of dependency are reworked along generational lines and spatially stretched due to precarious economic conditions of indebtedness, household migration, and distant labour markets. We conclude that reframing financial subjectivity in terms of precariousness helps us to analyse the relationship between households and financial markets, as well as inform a critical politics of finance.     

Understanding Chinese Consumption: The Impact of Hukou

Since the onset of the economic reforms more than three decades ago, the Chinese growth miracle has been based on exports and investment. While strong output growth was maintained even during the financial crisis, imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable development path, recent government policies have aimed to improve the role of private consumption. This article argues that China's institutional framework is an impediment to this strategy, as it weakens the incentives of households to consume. As well as a low level of social security and highly regulated financial markets, the authors stress the relevance of the hukou system as the main driver for modest consumption, especially in recent years. After controlling for different income levels, the average propensity to consume is found to be significantly lower for migrants, as their access to public services is limited. If not accompanied by relevant reforms, the urbanization strategy of the government is likely to raise the number of migrants with limited hukou rights, further increasing the downward pressure on consumption. Therefore, in the absence of reforms in the household registration system, the shift towards consumption‐driven growth is at risk.     

Understanding Social Performance: A ‘Practice Drift’ at the Frontline of Microfinance Institutions in Bangladesh

This article examines the role of microfinance staff and procedures in enabling microfinance's social mission. It does so primarily through studying institutional ruling relations and practices in rural Bangladesh. Attempting to move away from the linear and deterministic approaches of impact studies, it ethnographically scrutinizes the everyday practices of implementers. Findings point to the emergence of systemic practices that jeopardize microfinance institutions’ potential to perform their social mission. These include low client‐selection standards, hard selling of loans and forceful loan renewal, little follow‐up on loan use, and abusive and violent client‐retention and repayment‐collection strategies. This is conceptualized as a ‘practice drift’ as distinct from the commonly reported ‘mission drift’. Rather than stemming from planned, top‐down changes in institutional mission and strategy, practice drift emerges from a displacement of decision‐making processes to the branches. The article argues that observed changes in microfinance practice are enabled by decentralized structures and management systems that leave the choice of tactics used to achieve targets to the discretion of field staff.     

The effects of microfinance programs on women members in traditional societies

One of the stated goals of microfinance programs is to increase the bargaining power of women within the household. However, little is known about other ways women in patriarchal communities may be affected by these programs. This study assessed the effects of the membership in a microfinance joint liability group (MJLG) on the lives and social networks of its women members by focusing on the interplay of MJLG practices and gendered cultural practices such as ‘purdah’ (veiling of the face). Using in-depth interviews of 35 women in Lucknow, a city in northern India, the study found that, overall, respondents who were members of an MJLG reported developing new and stronger relationships with other members of the group. These social interactions were found to be deeper among women who were using the microloans for self-employment than among women who were redirecting their loan funds to other family members. The study also found that the adaptability of microfinance organizations to the local culture appeared to enable women to join MJLGs with ease and to contribute economically to their families.     

Securing the Return: How Enhanced US Border Enforcement Fuels Cycles of Debt Migration

Expanded border enforcement has made unauthorised migration to the US more risky, costly, and prone to failure. Research on the material consequences of border enforcement for migrant‐sending households in Central America reveals that the economic hardships enforcement exacts on migrants at times diminishes enforcement's desired deterrent power. Heightened risks have driven up the cost of migration and pushed many to fund their trips through loans. Consequently, migrant detention, deportation, or death can result in poverty and privation for indebted households and the seizure of loan collateral, typically homes and land, in turn prompting crises in household reproduction. With a US wage the most viable means to ameliorate economic hardships, enforcement outcomes push some to return migration. Our findings suggest that US border enforcement efforts at times perpetuate the very unauthorised migration they seek to impede, while also helping to reproduce the border itself by deepening the marginalisation that drives migration decisions.     

晚明商人借贷的利息率与商业性借贷的发展

商人借贷利息率的高低对商业性借贷的发展有直接的影响。晚明商人借贷的利息率总体上以低于年息36％为多,这一利率既大大低于消费性借贷的利息率,又低于市场平均利息率,一般均在法定利息率的范围之内。虽然商人借贷的利息率相对较低,但在风险机制的作用下,放贷者向商人放贷的积极性不会受到减损。又由于利率较低,商人借贷通常有利可图,因而商业性借贷能够得到发展。     

After the Nicaraguan Non‐Payment Crisis: Alternatives to Microfinance Narcissism

This article argues against ‘microfinance narcissism’ and calls for a re‐politicization of the microfinance paradigm. The dominant verdict on microcredit has undergone a damning transformation, from ‘magic bullet for poverty reduction’ to ‘cause of suicide’. Nowadays, both radical critics and mainstream voices deplore microcredit's negative impact on micro‐entrepreneurs. They argue for a reorientation where credit is targeted at established small and medium‐sized enterprises, particularly in rural areas. The crisis in microfinance worldwide, including burgeoning protests, are viewed as proof of the commercial derailment and/or misplaced faith in microfinance's positive social and economic impact on the poor. This article engages with this debate through a study of the Nicaraguan micro‐finance crisis. It challenges existing analyses that pin the crisis on agricultural over‐indebtedness, lack of due diligence, or Sandinista populist politics. Illustrating the dangers of neglecting the diverse nature of microfinance, it reveals the paradoxical outcomes of the crisis: a refocus on the urban at the expense of agricultural credit for small and medium enterprises and a consolidation of the power of national processing elites. Nicaragua's Non‐Payment Movement is also shown to be both a product of elite manipulation and an expression of legitimate resistance to an industry that turns a blind eye to the manner in which markets and politics constrain clients’ potential.     

Financialisation through Microfinance: Civil Society and Market-Building in India

Abstract

Microfinance does not reduce poverty, but it does successfully construct economic relations between owners of capital and borrowers of capital, allowing surpluses to accumulate through finance. It does so by drawing on the agency of financialised civil society actors who facilitate financialisation by working around the state to build new markets in finance and other goods. This article understands financialisation as the expansion of the frontier of financial accumulation. Microfinance is shown to achieve this expansion by establishing credit-based linkages between owners and borrowers of capital, allowing surplus accumulation to take place via the credit relation. Underlying this material relationship, there is also a level at which financialisation motivates and pressures civil society actors to bring microfinance to the poor. By becoming financialised agents themselves, civil society organisations act as conduits for an expansion of financial markets and the construction of new market relations for other goods. A case study of microfinance for water and sanitation in India shows in detail how this construction of markets via civil society works in practice, highlighting the pressures and opportunities presented by microfinance as a vehicle for building markets.     

Women Beneficiaries or Women Bearing the Cost? A Gendered Analysis of the Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua

Conditional Cash Transfer programmes aim to alleviate short‐term poverty through cash transfers to poor households, and to reduce longer‐term poverty through making these transfers conditional on household investment in the health and education of children. These programmes have become increasingly popular with institutions such as the World Bank. However, the need for conditionalities has been questioned on a number of levels, including its necessity: it has been suggested that the cash transfer in itself may be sufficient to secure most of the programme's wider aims. The example of Nicaragua supports this contention, demonstrating that only a small incentive is needed to bring the desired changes in the uptake of education, since this is something prized by the poor themselves. In health, the Nicaraguan case suggests that demand‐side initiatives might not be as important as supply‐side changes that improve the affordability and accessibility of services. The Nicaragua case also highlights the long‐term limitations of applying such programmes in countries with high levels of poverty and low economic growth. A gendered analysis of the programme highlights the fact that women ‘beneficiaries’ bear the economic and social cost of the programme without apparent benefit to themselves or even necessarily to the household in the short or longer term.     

Income Inequality and Wealth Concentration in the Recent Crisis

This article shows that the increase of income inequality and global wealth concentration was an important driver for the financial and Eurozone crisis. The high levels of income inequality resulted in balance of payment imbalances and growing debt levels. Rising wealth concentration contributed to the crisis because the increasing asset demand from the rich played a key role in the growth of the structured credit market and enabled poor and middle‐income households to accumulate increasing amounts of debt. This analysis thereby puts both income and wealth inequality at the epicentre of the recent crisis, and as crucial for social scientists analysing the causes of the crisis. The authors’ findings suggest that the policy response to the crisis should not be limited to financial regulation but must involve policies to address inequality by increasing the bargaining power of labour as well as redistributive tax policies.     

Grafts: Feminist cultural criticism

This article provides information about Berne's financial situation at the time the Economic Society was founded. The canton was in an exceptionally fortunate position, having accumulated a sizeable cash reserve that was in part used for loans and investments on the London capital market. Throughout the century, the Bernese government followed a very cautious investment strategy. The main reason for purchasing overseas securities was that they helped the patricians to become independent from tax-paying subjects. Economic imperatives ruled out increases of the cash reserve or further involvement in the overcrowded domestic capital market. However, by investing abroad Berne became increasingly dependent on the goodwill of its debtors, for which it was criticised by the Economic Patriots amongst others.     

Household Archaeology in the Southeastern United States: History,Trends, and Challenges

This review highlights archaeological investigations of prehistoric and historic households in southeastern North America. There are a number of inherent challenges to the archaeology of households in the region, including generally poor preservation and a long history of relatively insubstantial domestic architecture. An appraisal of the historical development of household archaeology developed slowly in the Southeast, largely in reaction to trends in other areas of the world. Over the last decade, however, southeastern archaeologists have been at the vanguard of the application of new approaches to households. From an early focus on generalizable patterns of domestic activities and behavior, researchers increasingly view households as historical constructs situated within larger landscapes. Prominent areas of concern include enduring issues such as status variation, production, and consumption but also newer themes such as gender, identity and ethnicity, agency and power, and ritual and symbolism. Some of the most innovative studies explore the intersections of these topics. Conceptual and methodological challenges remain, but the household endures as a practical and productive focus of analysis and interpretation for southeastern archaeologists more than 30 years after household research in the area began.     

Struggling to Save Cash: Seasonal Migration and Vulnerability in West Bengal,India

This article concerns an important but overlooked means by which able‐bodied poor people get hold of lump sums of cash in rural West Bengal: seasonal migration for agricultural wage work. Drawing on a regional study of four migration streams, our main focus here is on the struggle to secure this cash by landless households in just one of those streams, originating in Murshidabad District. Case studies are used to illustrate the importance for women in nuclear families of maintaining supportive networks of kin for periods when men are absent. A parallel analysis is made of the negotiations between male migrant workers and their employers, at labour markets, during the period of work, and afterwards. The article then briefly discusses some of the contrasting ways in which remittances are used by landless households and owners of very small plots of land, in the context of rapid ecological change, demographic pressure and growing inequality.     

Disaster Financialization: Earthquakes,Cashflows and Shifting Household Economies in Nepal

The political economy literature on post-disaster reconstruction tends to contrast ‘disaster capitalism’ narratives denouncing the predatory character of neoliberal rebuilding, and ‘building back better’ policies supporting market-driven reconstruction. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced account, developing the concept of ‘disaster financialization’ through a case study of household-level changes experienced through processes of post-earthquake reconstruction in Nepal. The concept of disaster financialization describes not only the integration of disaster-affected households into the cash-based logic of reconstruction instituted by donors and government authorities, but also the financialization of their lives, social relations and subjectivities. It is a transitive process involving a shift into financialized mechanisms of disaster prevention, adaptation and recovery. Analysing contrasting experiences across three earthquake-affected districts in Nepal, this study proposes disaster financialization as an integrative term through which to understand the simultaneous acceleration of monetization, the leveraging of cash incentives by donors and government to ‘build back better’, and the flurry of financial transactions associated with reconstruction processes. While some aspects of disaster financialization have had negative social impacts, such as debt-related anxieties and a breakdown of voluntary labour exchanges hurting the most vulnerable, the process has taken on variegated forms, with equally variegated effects, reflecting household characteristics and interactions with financial institutions.     

Representing financial inclusion: The CGAP microfinance photo contest (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article examines representations of financial inclusion through the lens of the CGAP microfinance photo contest. It situates the contest's winning images within current contestations surrounding global financial inclusion strategies, to show how these photos construct particular representations of microfinance that legitimize CGAP's minimalist, commercially‐driven model. The production of the need for large‐scale financial inclusion is key to this model, which is depicted through gendered representations of microfinance beneficiaries. On the one hand, the CGAP photos present a shift from stereotypical images of female micro‐entrepreneurs in traditional contexts to more complex images that disrupt such stereotypes while at the same time reinforcing other assumptions about microfinance. On the other, they bring men back into the picture as worthy microfinance recipients. While contributing to pluralist representations that valorize photography in developing countries, the CGAP microfinance photo contest is ultimately unable to portray the complexities and contradictions of financial inclusion interventions.     

Simple Transfers,Complex Outcomes: The Impacts of Pensions on Poor Households in Brazil

Drawing on quantitative survey data and in‐depth interviews, this article seeks to map out the potential direct and indirect effects of simple cash transfers on households in impoverished rural and urban settings. Brazil is shown to have an extensive system of old age pensions, which affords almost universal coverage to households containing older people. These benefits have a significant impact on levels of poverty and vulnerability in recipient households. They also facilitate access to essential healthcare items, such as drugs, which are seldom freely available through the state health system. The in‐depth interviews reveal that pensions can have important effects on intra‐household relations, but these effects were not generalizable nor easily captured by quantitative survey tools. There was clear evidence that pensions reduced the propensity of older people to remain economically active, but this must be understood in a context of limited employment opportunities for all age groups and a high prevalence of disability. Overall, the article demonstrates the complex effects of a relatively simple cash transfer, which policy makers need to take into account.