In a neoliberal world where commercial financial services are controlled by elites, poor Black women in the slums are usually excluded from financial programs – even microfinance ones. In my empirical study of 491 people in Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti, I argue that the participation in informal...

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Mohammed Yunus and Grameen Bank confirmed to the industry's advocates that microfinance was a tool to help excluded groups access financing. In my political ethnographic study of 491 people in three countries I show that politics operate throughout the...