Migration speculation: microfinance and migration in the Global South

Abstract

Across the Global South, microfinance providers have begun offering formalised pre-departure loans as part of their broader efforts to promote migrant financial inclusion. This article critically examines the logic behind these migration loans, drawing on data from Bangladesh to denaturalise the discursive shifts justifying these programs. Advocates of formalised migration loans view them as enabling the ‘worthwhile investment’ of migration, while reducing migration costs and risks. Yet these claims ignore the systemic precarity of migrant labour, the potential for abuse and dispossession via microcredit, and the ways that formal debt can heighten vulnerability for migrants. In making these claims, I draw attention to the infrastructures that have enabled contemporary forms of migration lending, highlighting that migration loans are now possible precisely because financial institutions have found ways to reshape the risks of lending to mobile populations. As such, I make the case for seeing migration loans as a form of migration speculation—in which migrant experiences become a site of investment and profit for microfinance institutions.