Transnational migration, remittances and the financialization of housing in Colombia

Abstract

Recently, various Latin American governments have sought to render migrants as development agents by channelling remittances to specific sectors such as housing and finance. The available literature has yet to articulate how these developments are reconfiguring the political economy of housing in the region. The paper draws on empirical data collected at both ends of the Colombia–UK migration network. It argues that the Colombian Government’s efforts to incorporate migrants into the polity through a renovated housing policy aim to institutionalize migrant households’ transnational practices and their links with global circuits of capital and finance. They are underpinned by the repositioning of housing away from consumption into an investment item and driver of economic growth and the financial sector as the main medium for households’ access to public and private housing, and other basic services. These developments have taken place in the context of a broader process of financialization of the global development agenda in the last three decades.