ABSTRACT
This chapter maps out the continuities and disruptions in remittance-related policymaking and development and private sector initiatives over the past 40 years. It starts by critically assessing the efforts behind the creation of the remittances-for-development agenda, a development project that aims to leverage remittances for development. The chapter shows that existing critiques of this remittances-for-development agenda have revolved around three main dimensions: (1) the political and discursive transformation of migrants into development agents, (2) the making of remittances into a resource to be capitalised on, and (3) economistic and gendered characteristics of interventions designed to render remittances (more) productive. The chapter then continues with an exploration of the recent transformation of the remittances-for-development agenda into what I call the ‘remittances-financial inclusion nexus’. It examines the drivers behind the emergence and consolidation of this nexus and draws on a growing body of literature on remittances, financial inclusion, and financialisation. Outlining existing studies’ limitations in theorising the grounded efforts and controversies behind these attempts to incorporate remittance flows and households into global financial circuits, the chapter concludes by highlighting the need for an alternative geographical analytical framework to account for the ordinary messy work that lies behind such market-led development projects.
