![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
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.
Acknowledgements
I thank Kim Cameron-Dominguez, Jennifer Hubbert, Sidra Kamran and Sarah Warren for comments on an early version of this article. I am also grateful to Richard Black for his feedback on and engagement with an early version of this project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Key informants suggested that they have now given more than 500,000 migration loans.
2 As a point of note, throughout this article I intentionally discuss only the issue of microcredit, rather than the broader financial services microfinance institutions are interested in offering to migrant households.
3 These include, BRAC, PKB, Agrani, Pubali, Mercantile, and the Sajida Foundation.
4 This discourse also justified engaging with migrant workers in ways that were practical for credit providers, since it was increasingly clear that both migrants and remittance-receiving households were already borrowing. In some cases, migrants were already borrowing from microcredit providers for pre-departure financing, or repaying loans through remittances (Alam Citation2012). Moreover, research in Bangladesh noted that migration was a common reason that microfinance borrowers dropped out of their lending groups (Shankar Citation2013).
5 See Bakker (Citation2015, 214), who phrases this as “The basic formulation is” migration leads to development, which leads to the end of migration; that remittance-led development can (and should) lead to a postmigration future.”
6 Hossein (Citation2013) suggests that BRACs migration loans can be as high as 4,000 USD. Notably, BRAC loans are far higher than the official maximum recruitment fee set by the Bangladeshi government for migrants going to the Gulf countries, which is 1,230 USD.
7 Indicator 10.7, under the goal of facilitating safe, regular, and orderly migration, measures success via reduced recruitment/migration costs borne by employees, as a percentage of annual income in destination.
8 Similar early-lending programs in the Philippines were also shuddered due to repayment issues.
9 Key informants suggested BRAC does not require collateral for migration loans, however in published discussions of the program, the former Executive Director of BRAC states that collateral is collected for migration loans (Hossain Citation2013).
10 See Martin (Citation2009).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Maryann Bylander
Maryann Bylander is Associate Professor of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College. She has been conducting research in Southeast Asia since 2009, investigating questions related to migration, development, gender, financial institutions, debt, and rural livelihoods. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Association of University Women. In addition, she has been part of consulting projects with a range of local and international organisations, including the IOM, the World Bank, and Oxfam. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.