Hawala Discourses and the War on Terrorist Finance

Bibliographic Data

ID4476459
AuthorsMarieke De Goede (0000-0001-5726-1795, Politics, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume21
Issue5
Pages513-532
Publication date2003-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d310t
OpenAlexW2092901719
LanguageEN
Citations received46
References cited25

In this paper I argue that the informal hawala money-transfer networks, which were made to take much of the blame for terrorist financing in the wake of the September 11 attacks, are not 'underground' banking systems but are connected to Western banking in a myriad of ways. I argue that negative stereotyping of hawala in press and policy discourses has implicitly constructed Western banking as the normal and legitimate space of international finance and has deflected calls for regulation of Western investment banking. I discuss how hawala is connected to the financial exclusion of migrant workers in the West. In the war on terrorist finance, discourses of hawala have led to the underestimation of the complexity of cutting off terrorist funding, while criminalising remittance networks

Blame · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Remittance · Terrorism · War on terror · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Islamic Finance and Banking Studies · Law · Finance

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