Mona Atia

American home: Predatory mortgage capital and neighbourhood spaces of race and class exploitation in the United States

Abstract Predatory home mortgage lending has become a central concern for housing research, public policy and community activism in US cities. Regulatory attempts to stop abuses, however, are undermined by claims that ‘predatory’ cannot be defined or distinguished from legitimate subprime lending, and claims that the industry performs a public service by meeting the needs of low‐income, high‐risk consumers (many of them racially marginalized) who would have been denied credit in previous years. We evaluate these claims in historical‐geographical context, drawing on David Harveys theory of class‐monopoly rent to analyse what is new (and what is not) in contemporary financial exploitation. We use a mixed‐methods approach to (1) provide econometric measures of subprime racial targeting and disparate impact that cannot be blamed on the supposed deficiencies of borrowers, (2) qualitatively assess the rationale for judging particular subprime practices and lenders as predatory, and (3) trace the connections between local practices and transnational investment networks. The fight against predatory lending cannot succeed, we argue, without a renewed analytical and strategic emphasis on the class dimensions of financial exploitation and racial‐geographical discrimination.

Has mortgage capital found an inner‐city spatial fix?

Abstract For two generations, urbanists have analyzed how residential mortgage lending reflects and reinforces inner‐city inequality. Yet the basic dichotomies of this literature have been eroded by parallel developments in community organizing, public policy, and restructuring of financial services. Securitization, institutional structure, and increasingly sophisticated market segmentation have altered the relationship between mortgage capital and the inner city, redrawing patterns of exclusionary redlining into more complicated, stratified inclusion into prime and subprime reinvestment flows. In this article, we analyze lending dynamics in neighborhoods at the nexus between gentrified reinvestment and enduring poverty in 23 large U.S. cities. A strong, sustained resurgence of capital investment is woven together with enduring racial‐ethnic exclusion that cannot be blamed on borrower deficiencies. Institutional restructuring and secondary‐market linkages reinforce newer class and racial‐ethnic inequalities through subprime segmentation: Lenders’ willingness to serve black borrowers, for instance, is becoming closely associated with subprime specialization.

“A Way to Paradise”: Pious Neoliberalism, Islam, and Faith-Based Development

Three faith-based development organizations (FBDOs) in Cairo and the popular religious star, Amr Khaled, illustrate the melding of Islamic piety and neoliberal development. Together they produce a “pious neoliberalism” that transforms both Islamic charity and neoliberalism as they narrate an Islamic solution to social problems. Their narration links volunteerism, self-help rhetoric, and management science to piety. Focusing on three Islamic development organizations, this study demonstrates how they promote financial investment, entrepreneurship, and business skills as important components of religiosity. The combination of piety and neoliberal values illustrates a new space of compatibility between neoliberalism and Islamism that changes both the spaces for and impact of Islamic da’wa (preaching) in Cairo. FBDOs alter socioeconomic space in Cairo as they insert religiosity into spaces previously seen as un-Islamic. The research contributes to our understanding of the compatibility between religious and neoliberal values through an introduction to the concept of pious neoliberalism. It contributes to our understanding of the changing role of FBDOs in the Middle East and the spatiality of such transformations.

Race, gender, and statistical representation: predatory mortgage lending and the US community reinvestment movement

American mortgage markets, once arenas of discrimination by exclusion, now operate as venues of segmentation and discrimination by inclusion: credit is widely available, but its terms vary enormously. One market segment involves sophisticated predatory practices in which certain groups of borrowers are targeted for high-cost credit that strips out home equity and worsens the risks of delinquency, default, and foreclosure. Unfortunately, it has become more difficult to measure inequalities of predatory lending: race–ethnicity and gender are ‘disappearing’ from the main public data source used to study, organize, and mobilize on issues of lending inequalities. In this paper, we present a mixed-methods case study of statistical representation of homeowners and homebuyers marginalized by race, ethnicity, and gender. A theoretical examination of official data-collection practices is followed by a discussion of alternative meanings of racial–ethnic and gender nondisclosure. Interviews with a sample of homeowners and homebuyers in the Washington, DC, area reveal some respondent ambivalence about the details of data-collection practices, but provide no consistent support for the idea that nonreporting is solely a matter of individual choice. Econometric analyses indicate that nondisclosure is driven primarily by lending-industry practices, with the strongest disparate impacts in African-American suburbs. Predatory lending is producing ambivalent spaces of racial-ethnic and gender invisibility, requiring new strategies in the reinvestment movement.

In Whose Interest? Financial Surveillance and the Circuits of Exception in the War on Terror

In this paper I argue that discourses of terrorism financing that emerged in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks encourage the practice of ethnic/religious profiling while categorically delegitimizing and criminalizing Muslim financial networks. In partnership with these discourses are legal and regulatory frameworks that alter accountability parameters for certain classifications of money. Surveillance and monitoring have become sufficiently nuanced, granting the everyday bureaucrat powers of differentiation so as to allow certain money to remain fully mobile while other money is subject to increased tracking and suspicion. The war on terrorism finance is queried as an appropriate tactic in the effort to combat terrorism. I discuss the various facets of the discursive associations forged between terrorism finance hawala wire-transfer services and Islamic charities. Drawing upon Judith Butlers notion of ‘deeming’, I make linkages between discursive associations, sovereignty, and contemporary terrorism prevention practices. Finally, I extend David Harveys theory of accumulation by dispossession to argue that the frameworks of accountability broadened by the PATRIOT Act and related provisions can be and are being mobilized to seize control of undesirable financial flows and to further US economic interests.

Livestock movement and emerging zoonotic disease outbreaks: applying ecological, network, and sociocultural theories to assess the risk of Middle East respiratory syndrome from camel trade in Ethiopia and Egypt

Abstract Background Emerging infectious diseases are associated with complex linkages within the broader ecosystem. Studying infectious disease among hosts (animals and humans), outside of the context of their environment, ignores the complexity in which hosts interact. We aimed to formulate a framework to study the effect of large livestock movement on the ecology of emerging zoonotic infectious disease in low-income and middle-income countries. Ultimately such a framework could identify points of intervention in livestock movement chains to reduce the risk of emerging diseases. As a test case, we use camel movement and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Methods We reviewed grey and peer-reviewed literature on camel husbandry and interviewed key stakeholders in Egypt and Ethiopia involved in public health research, animal husbandry, the camel trade, veterinary services for camels, and physicians. A multidisciplinary team consisting of wildlife biologists, anthropologists, epidemiologists, veterinarians, geographers, modellers, virologists, and health-care professionals from the USA, Egypt, and Ethiopia was assembled to propose the framework. Findings A framework has been developed which highlights the associations between the complex linkages within the broader ecosystem: environment (flora, climate, pollution), animals (distribution and density of animals, interaction between humans, domesticated and wildlife animals), and human behavioural systems (socio-cultural and economic structures around animal husbandry and hunting, connectivity including market trade systems). Interpretation While there is an emphasis on interdisciplinary cooperation in the area of one health, this type of work has several challenges. A history of interdisciplinary work in zoonotic infectious disease is limited, in part, because of the lack of undergraduate and graduate curricula that provide training. Additionally the large teams required to conduct truly interdisciplinary work require sustained funding and such opportunities are rare. Funding None.