Caroline Shenaz Hossein

The Politics of Resistance: Informal banks in the Caribbean

Informal banks are as relevant as they were in slave times because they are creating financial alternatives for marginalized people. I explore this issue with an empirical study of 398 business people in the slums of Jamaica and Guyana. I use intersectionality theorizing to explain that poor women organize local banks as a form of contestation against the threat of violence, partisan and informal politics. Women from poor communities mobilize economic resources through mutual aid to resist dependence on corrupt political systems and exclusionary financial institutions. I argue that the banker ladies reorganize money markets for themselves and others. By organizing inclusive financial programs the banker ladies also build social capital through managing locally-based economic resources.

Haiti'scaisses populaires: home-grown solutions to bring economic democracy

Purpose - – Bad governance and corrupt politics have left millions of people disenfranchised. In spite of an oppressive and undemocratic state, poor Haitians have created their own informal groups, cooperatives and Design/methodology/approach - – A mixed qualitative study using interviews, surveys, focus groups, ethnography techniques and literature review. Findings - – Lenders who run the Originality/value - – These lenders one or two generations removed from the people they serve understand their reality and take careful steps and plan in a way to ensure their loans are structured to be socially inclusive. In fact, black microfinance lenders, as well as whitened local elites and foreigners, have a socially conscious philosophy of using microfinance as a vehicle to ensure economic democracy for the masses. In doing this, they take personal risks. The

Money Pools in the Americas: The African Diaspora’s Legacy in the Social Economy

Abstract Money pools are ancient African traditions that speak to the functionality of getting things done by a historically oppressed group of people. The analysis for this study is based on 583 interviews in five Caribbean countries: Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. African traditions of collectives reveal that Black people have long had money pools that focused on helping people thrive in commerce, including during the hard times of slavery and colonization. This research argues that throughout the Caribbean indigenous banking systems—with localized names such as susu, partner, meeting-turn, box-hand and sol—are long-standing ancient traditions that historically and currently are taking a bold stand against exclusionary financial systems. African-Caribbean people have an important legacy on the social economy through money pools. The ways in which persons of African descent organize in the social economy is vital to unravelling the market fundamentalist view that there is only a singular way to do business in society.

Drawing on the Lived Experience of African Canadians: Using Money Pools to Combat Social and Business Exclusion

Trinidadian-Canadian Ginelle Skerritt was first introduced to susu as a savings device as a child in her homeland of Trinidad and Tobago. Her grandmother and mother were active in this African-Caribbean tradition as a way to pool money in Trinidad for business and livelihood needs. After migrating to Toronto in the 1960s, she watched her mother as a newcomer bring these collective banks to Canada and to find a supportive community. The family’s first home, vacations, and school fees were all made possible through susu. Susu provided her with the money to be the first person in her family to go to university. As a successful professional, Ginelle explores the ways in which susu has helped her, her family, and friends and why she participated in an adapted version of susu for more than a decade. This chapter explores the use of susus—also called money pools—by Caribbean people in the Canadian and the personal account of Ginelle Skerritts family using the susu system shows that diverse financial services exist in major cities around the world.

Building Economic Solidarity: Caribbean ROSCAs in Jamaica, Guyana, and Haiti

Caribbean women create rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) to take care of the need of their communities when commercial banks and formalized financial alternatives fail to do so. Informal banking collectives are important because they are inclusive, locally driven institutions to meet the livelihood needs of people, particularly women. In this chapter, it shows the various ways that the Black women participate in the social economy through self-managed groups, called ROSCAs. This chapter examines five country cases in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Guyana, and Haiti to show how ROSCAs not only build savings, community relations but also enable people to access large lump sums of cash to invest in their businesses. The Banker ladies are upholding ancient African traditions of collectivity to increase savings and to allow for lending opportunities.

Daring to Conceptualize the Black Social Economy

All of the cases under study—from Latin American and the Caribbean, as well as North America—have horrific legacies of enslavement, colonization, and racism, and the cases will be used to discuss how Black people have contributed to the social amelioration of their communities through social-purpose businesses, which strive to reach both social and economic objectives. The Black social economy is taking place all over the Americas and is proving to be a viable alternative to extreme forms of capitalism. Brazil, with one of the largest Black diaspora populations in the world, has the legacy of Quilombos (cooperatives run by Afro-Brazilians) to retain their African cultural heritage and to have sustainable economic livelihoods. Caribbean women in Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago organize economic cooperatives to support businesses and local projects. In Latin America, the experiences of Afro-Argentines and Afro-Colombians are lesser known cases but nonetheless have a rich history of cultivating community economies to preserve their own culture in the face of business and social exclusion. The story would not be complete without the study of the Black diaspora in the USA and Canada who encounter many forms of violence in the society. African-Americans have always had mutual-aid societies as a way to cope in a hostile environment. In Canada, newcomers from Africa and the Caribbean hold onto informal money collectives as a way to preserve their heritage and to deal with business exclusion. As explained, this work contributes to the global conversation on alternative social practices that empower traditionally marginalized social groups.

“Big Man” politics in the social economy: a case study of microfinance in Kingston, Jamaica

Abstract Microfinance and its “reinvention as bankers-for-the-poor” to create financial inclusion has not been effective everywhere. The literature seems to suggest that the social economy and microfinance help marginalized business people; yet no one considers that political bias interferes with the social economy, making it hard for it to be just. The promise of micro-credit was to achieve a double bottom line: first, the financial sustainability of the lending institution itself, and second, the social benefit of providing loans to low-income business people. Yet, alternative pitches of a social economy to “help people” fail to analyze the embedded power dynamics within the social economy. In this case study in downtown Kingston, Jamaica, 233 small-business people who depend on development finance because of social exclusion now find that these targeted programs are intertwined in partisan, sometimes dangerous, politics. As a result, oppressed people opt out of micro-banking programs to resist “Big Man” politics – the politicians or gangsters attempting to control them. In this study of 307 interviews, I analyze the informal politics of Dons and politicians who misuse micro-credit for their own ends. I find that the coupling of class biases and clientelist practices in the social economy discourages eligible business people from taking micro-loans, and argue that the microfinance industry needs to pay close attention to this issue if it is to continue to help marginalized business people.

Going local in downtown Kingston, Jamaica: Doing political ethnography and qualitative research in a volatile urban environment

Purpose Academics examining the global South who engage in informal politics to understand social and political issues should be prepared to diversify their methods toolkit. Informal ties and politics are where one learns about social and economic exclusion. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Mixed qualitative methods – such as individual interviews, surveys, and focus groups – provide an understanding of the people’s perspective, enabling the researcher to truly know what is going on. Findings Fieldwork in the downtown communities of Kingston, Jamaica, has an element of danger because violence and politics are very much a part of the daily reality of the people being interviewed. In this paper, the author argues that studying how financial resources are allocated to low-income people and understanding why some groups purposefully self-exclude themselves from economic development programs require unorthodox field methods. The author thus uses political ethnography to understand the experience of marginalized Jamaican people. Originality/value Mixed qualitative methods and political ethnography assisted the author to understand the actual experience of marginalized people and politicized financial programs.

Government-Owned Micro-Banking and Financial Exclusion: A Case Study of Black Business People in East Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

Microfinance is commonly known as banking upside down because micro-lending institutions make very small loans available to businesspeople excluded from conventional banks. Microfinance has piqued the interest of political elites in many Global South countries because of its support by the poor masses. The case of the Trinidadian microfinance sector shows that the state dominates the micro-lending sector through its agency, the National Entrepreneurship Development Company (NEDCO). The main argument for this paper is that government-owned microfinance is in fact “political microfinance” because of its exclusionary tendency of the small businesspeople in the slums of east Port of Spain. On the ground, the current party politics have fuelled the perception that persons of African descent are the most excluded from accessing a small loan. However, this paper finds that no matter which party is in power, the state has co-opted NEDCO to make loans available to its own party supporters, and this practice goes against the microfinance sector’s goal of inclusive finance.