Challenging the financialization of remittances agenda through Indigenous women’s practices in Oaxaca

Abstract

Remittances, money sent by migrants to their communities of origin, are increasingly being linked to global financial inclusion in what is being called the “financialization of remittances.” This is the most recent attempt to divert remittances from “non-productive” money to savings and investments that can be mobilized for economic development. The literature that accompanies this strategy focuses on the responsibility of individuals to use remittances productively and invest wisely, and there is often an implied – and gendered - social component: if women link remittances to financial services, they will become empowered and lift themselves out of poverty. Based on ethnographic research in an Indigenous village in Oaxaca, Mexico, this paper offers empirics on the effects of remittance flows in women's everyday lives. Feminist scholars have long critiqued the universalism and abstractness of global development agendas, particularly those that preclude gender, and emanate from the Global North. Joining these critical voices and mobilizing postcolonial and feminist scholarship, this paper challenges the individualist logics and dichotomies underpinning the financialization of remittances agenda: that remittance spending is either productive or not and that women are empowered or not through linking remittances to finance.