From Inclusive Informality to Alienating Inclusion

The Rise of Mexico’s Debtfare Society on the Urban Fringes of Guadalajara

Bibliographic Data

ID13085552
AuthorsInés Escobar González (0000-0001-9522-0070, Harvard University Press, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume9
Issue2
Pages161-193
Publication date2022-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2326-4462 • E-ISSN: 2326-4470
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/721835
OpenAlexW4313140406
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

This article ethnographically traces the social transformation brought about by Mexico’s 2001 housing reform to argue that financial inclusion restructured Mexican society and conditioned a shift away from a social order of inclusive informality to one defined by alienating inclusion. Financial inclusion upended the social arrangements that underpinned Mexico’s old urban periphery, which exhibited high levels of social cohesion and strong horizontal relations based on reciprocity and trust. As the reform unleashed mortgage finance to erect vast, peripheral housing complexes and make formal homeowners out of Mexico’s urban poor, the households inhabiting these new urban worlds came to experiment with, and ultimately depend on, consumer credit finance to sustain themselves. The “debtfare” society that matured with the financial inclusion of Mexico’s urban poor is now marked by atomization, social isolation, and uncertainty as the beneficiaries of Mexico’s housing reform adapt and respond to their incorporation into global financial flows

Economics · Financial inclusion · Financial services · Inclusion (mineral · Political science · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Social science · Sociology · Housing Market and Economics · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Finance

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