Urbanization and finance in developing countries: marketization, institutionalization and internationalization of housing microfinance in Mexico

该项目旨在审查墨西哥住房小额供资市场化、制度化和国际化的进程和效果。目前，这些进程扩大了低收入家庭获得非抵押小额贷款的机会，用于翻修和改造自建房屋。一方面，我们要问这些进程是如何演变的，它们是如何表现和相互关联的。另一方面，我们亦会评估这些过程对低收入家庭自组建屋的潜在影响。这就造成了对将金融市场与非正规住房部门联系起来的机构和机制以及低收入家庭获得和消费金融服务的日常做法的双重关注。宏观层面的分析旨在评估住房小额信贷在联邦、州和地方住房政策中的作用和工具，市场中的私人和公共行为者，以及目标人群。这是通过对法律的、政策和行业文件的文件分析以及一系列专家访谈来实现的。微观层面的分析旨在通过评估首次借款人的改造项目以及债务水平增加对家庭和社区的社会影响，了解扩大向低收入家庭提供住房小额信贷的潜在后果。这是通过对墨西哥城大都市区和金塔纳罗奥沿海地区低收入社区进行一系列定性个案研究来实施的。案例研究是基于深入的访谈和集中的民族志观察。通过对墨西哥的分析，我们试图超越对抵押贷款市场和证券化的强烈关注，以及现有文献对金融化分析的广泛限制，这些文献主要集中在美国，英国和欧洲的案例上。 通过借鉴城市社会科学文献和发展规划和发展研究的见解，该项目有望在两个重要方面提供见解：首先，它可能有助于在后殖民城市和规划理论方法启发的更广泛辩论的背景下，对金融化的国际辩论是否以及如何从欧洲和美国的经验中得出的概念可以用于分析拉丁美洲。第二，它可能允许联合收割机和对比的理论考虑与经验数据从地理，经济和文化背景下，迄今为止，在金融化和城市建成环境的生产的国际文献中，在很大程度上被忽视。

The project seeks to examine processes and effects of marketization, institutionalization and internationalization of housing microfinance in Mexico. These processes currently result in expanded access to non-mortgage microloans for low-income households for purposes of renovation and remodeling of self-built homes. On the one hand, we ask how these processes evolve, how they are manifested and interrelated. On the other hand, we seek to assess the potential effects of these processes on self-organized building practices of low-income households. This results in a double focus on the institutions and mechanisms which link financial markets and the informal housing sector as well as on the everyday practices in which financial services are obtained and consumed by low-income households. The broad aim is to reflect on changes in the logic in which the financial sector is tied to urbanization, in the context of Mexico as a developing country.We approach the topic from two complementary perspectives: The macro-level analysis aims to evaluate the role and instruments of housing microfinance within federal, state, and local housing policies, the private and public actors in this market, and the targeted segments of population. This is operationalized through document analysis of legal, policy and industry documents and a series of expert interviews. The micro-level analysis seeks to understand potential consequences of expanding housing microfinance provision to low-income households by evaluating remodeling projects of first-time borrowers and the social implications of increased debt levels on households and communities. This is operationalized through a series of qualitative case studies of low-income communities located in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area and the coastal zone of the State of Quintana Roo. Case studies are based on in-depth interviews and focused ethnographic observations.With our analysis of Mexico, we seek to go beyond both the strong focus on mortgage markets and securitization and the broad limitation of analysis in the existing literature on financialization, which focuses heavily on US, UK and European cases. By drawing on urban social science literature and insights from development planning and development studies, the project promises insights in two important ways: First, it potentially contributes to international debates on financialization against the background of wider debates inspired by post-colonial approaches to urban and planning theory about whether and how concepts derived from European and US experiences can serve in analyzing Latin America. Second, it potentially allows to combine and contrast theoretical considerations with empirical data from a geographical, economic and cultural context that has until now been largely neglected in the international literature on financialization and the production of urban built environment.