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This is an analysis of the potential of community-based financial services to reduce poverty and combat social exclusion in Britain. From this base, the authors move to a critical review of the outcomes of microfinance interventions around the world. They consider innovative economic responses to poverty in countries such as Bangladesh and Bolivia. Then drawing on their own research, they set out ways to counter financial exclusion in Britain; how to enable people to build assets and acquire capital, and provide mechanisms for the wealth retention in communities deserted by conventional banks.
There is little doubt that in recent years, enterprise has been considered an essential approach in the alleviation of deprivation existing in the developed world. The assumption is that area-based initiatives provide a means by which enterprise can include all members of society in mainstream social and economic activities. The rationale behind Enterprise, Deprivation and Social Exclusion is to critically challenge the notion that enterprise can address the complexity behind deprivation and social exclusion by demonstrating UK and North American examples. We see how enterprise has come to be regarded as a means by which poverty can be reduced and new opportunities can be opened up to support individuals. However, the authors here seek to give a greater appreciation to the structural roots of deprivation and pose questions about whether or not enterprise might actually exacerbate structures of social and economic exclusion. What if enterprise actually maintains differences between types of community and keeps individuals entrenched in certain ways of thinking? The contributions in this edited collection will offer a distinct opportunity in respect of both theoretical and empirical advancement. The authors hale from both sides of the Atlantic and form an inter-disciplinary group to provide complementary perspectives in this field.
The persistence of poverty hurts us all, and attacking poverty is a major policy objective everywhere. In Britain, the main political parties have an anti-poverty mandate and in particular an agreed commitment to eliminate child poverty by 2020, but there is controversy over how this should be done. This book addresses one of the main causes of poverty, financial exclusion – the inability to access finance from the high-street banks. People on low or irregular incomes typically have to resort to loan sharks, ‘doorstep lenders’ and other informal credit sources, a predicament which makes escape from the poverty trap doubly difficult. Over the last fifteen years, a strategy of breaking down the poverty trap has been implemented, known in the UK as community development financial institutions (CDFIs), typically non-profit lending institutions focussed on the financially excluded, and seeking to learn from the achievements of microfinance around the world. Focussing on the period 2007-09, during which the UK went into a global recession, this book investigates how CDFIs work and how well they have helped low-income people and businesses to weather that recession. Based on a study of eight CDFIs in four UK cities, we ask: what ideas for overcoming financial exclusion have worked well, and which have worked badly? What can we learn from the experience of these CDFIs which can help reduce poverty in this country and globally? We assess the impact of CDFIs using a range of indicators (including income, assets, education, health) and ask what changes in policy by both CDFIs and government agencies (for example, benefits agencies) might be able to increase impact. Some of the key lessons are: CDFIs need to work with appropriate partners to build up savings capacity in their clients; the community environment is vital in determining who escapes from the poverty trap; and CDFIs can never function properly unless they learn how to control their overdue debts. This book will be vital reading for those concerned with social policy, microfinance and anti-poverty policies in industrialised countries and around the world.
The untold story of the role of humanitarian NGOs in building the neoliberal order after empire After India gained independence in 1947, Britain reinvented its role in the global economy through nongovernmental aid organizations. Utilizing existing imperial networks and colonial bureaucracy, the nonprofit sector sought an ethical capitalism, one that would equalize relationships between British consumers and Third World producers as the age of empire was ending. The Solidarity Economy examines the role of nonstate actors in the major transformations of the world economy in the postwar era, showing how British NGOs charted a path to neoliberalism in their pursuit of ethical markets. Between the 1950s and 1990s, nonprofits sought to establish an alternative to Keynesianism through their welfare and development programs. Encouraging the fair trade of commodities and goods through microfinance, consumer boycotts, and corporate social responsibility, these programs emphasized decentralization, privatization, and entrepreneurship. Tehila Sasson tells the stories of the activists, economists, politicians, and businessmen who reimagined the marketplace as a workshop for global reform. She reveals how their ideas, though commonly associated with conservative neoliberal policies, were part of a nonprofit-driven endeavor by the liberal left to envision markets as autonomous and humanizing spaces, facilitating ethical relationships beyond the impersonal realm of the state. Drawing on dozens of newly available repositories from nongovernmental, international, national, and business archives, The Solidarity Economy reconstructs the political economy of these markets—from handicrafts and sugar to tea and coffee—shedding critical light on the postimperial origins of neoliberalism.
Beyond Micro-Credit sets out how Indian Micro-Finance Initiatives are combining micro-finance with a wide range of development goals, these include not only poverty alleviation through providing savings, credit and insurance services but also promoting livelihoods, empowering women, building people's organizations and changing institutions.
Urban Geography in America offers a comprehensive historiography of this major field. Compiling the best essays from the flagship journal Urban Geography , it shows the evolution of the field from the 1950s to 2000, as it shifted from data-driven social science modeling in the 1960s to the more critical perspectives of the 1970s to postmodernism in the 1980s to feminism and globalization in the 1990s. It covers all the major trends and figures, and features some of the most important names in the field. Ultimately, this will be a necessary reference for all scholars in the field and all graduate students taking introductory courses and preparing for their comprehensive exams.
This text is concerned with the increasingly important and problematic area of financial exclusion, broadly defined as the inability and/or reluctance of particular societal groups to access mainstream financial services. This has emerged as a major international policy issue. There is growing evidence that deregulation in developed financial sectors improves financial inclusion for some societal groups (more products become available to a bigger customer base), but may at the same time exacerbate it for others (for example, by emphasizing greater customer segmentation and more emphasis on risk-based pricing and 'value added'). In developing countries access to financial services is typically limited and therefore providing wider access to such services can aid financial and economic development. This is the first text to analyze financial exclusion issues in different parts of the world and it covers the various public and private sector mechanisms that have been advanced to help eradicate this problem.
The book emphasizes the importance of studying the local context, and then considering the macroeconomic factors which may be operating upon the economy of a particular country. Five extended case studies, in the Gambia, Ecuador, Mexico, Pakistan, and the UK are examined with reference to further aspects of sustainability and impact assessment.
When low-income city dwellers lack access to mainstream banking services, many end up turning to 'fringe banks,' such as cheque-cashers and pawnshops, for some or all of their financial transactions. This predicament of 'financial exclusion' - faced by those underserved by conventional financial institutions - is comprehensively examined in Jerry Buckland's powerful study, Hard Choices. The first account of the nature and causes of financial exclusion in Canada, Hard Choices thoroughly integrates economic and social data on consumer choice, bank behaviour, and government policy. Buckland demonstrates why the current two-tier system of banking is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, especially in the context of new credit products that aggravate income inequality and stifle local economic growth. Featuring a foreword by esteemed economics scholar John P. Caskey, Hard Choices presents pragmatic policy improvements on both the public and private levels that can promote and build financial inclusion for all.