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Credit apartheid, migrants, mines and money

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 19:34 authored by Deborah James, Dinah RajakDinah Rajak
Migrant life has long required a careful balancing of responsibilities. Migrants travel to earn a wage in a capitalist economy while saving resources and honouring obligations that arise in a seemingly less-than-capitalist one. Various agents – rural patriarchs, traders, government authorities, appliance retailers – have used techniques to keep wages beyond migrants' control. Paradoxically, similar techniques have, on occasion, been eagerly embraced by migrants themselves, who know that these resources will need to be husbanded for the upkeep of home. This article explores these contradictions, showing that recent forms of debt build on expectations born of forms of credit that proliferated earlier, but differ in consolidating these forms of credit to produce an unimpeded flow of money into migrants' bank accounts and out of them again. It looks at the advantages and dangers of the recent expansion of credit to constituencies – like migrants – where it previously did not reach.

Funding

ESRC; RES-062-23-1290

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

African Studies

ISSN

0002-0184

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Issue

3

Volume

73

Page range

455-476

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Notes

Published online: 06 Nov 2014

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-01-15

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