ABSTRACT
Global policy discourse on migration and development increasingly centered on the “financialization of remittances” over recent decades. This market-centric discourse suggested that the “inclusion” of migrants and their monies within banks and credit unions would reduce remittance transaction fees, enhance access to credit, and generally improve migrants’ economic livelihoods. Following a review of scholarship in transnational studies on remittances and development and state-led transnationalism, and the nascent body of research on the financialization of remittances, this chapter illustrates the value of bringing these strands of scholarship together to study what states _actually do_ when attempting to tap migrant remittances for developmental purposes. The Directo a México (DaM) remittance transfer service – a collaborative offering of the Federal Reserve Banks and Banco de México – is the central focus of the chapter. The analysis highlights the limited accomplishments of DaM, identifies what financial institutions would have to do to incorporate Mexican migrants effectively and address their various “needs,” and examines the continuities and disjunctures in the migrant financial incorporation policies implemented by the administration of current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. These recent Mexican policies suggest that the market-centric financialization policies of the past may partially be giving way to state-centric initiatives.
