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信贷市场化、制度化和国际化的进程和影响。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住房。一方面，我们问这些过程是如何演变的，它们是如何表现和相互关联的。另一方面，我们试图评估这些过程对低收入家庭自组织建筑实践的潜在影响。这导致双重重点放在连接金融市场和非正规住房部门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上。总体目标是在墨西哥作为一个发展中国家的背景下，反思金融部门与城市化联系在一起的逻辑变化。我们从两个互补的角度来探讨这个主题：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，这个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、政策和行业文件的文件分析以及一系列专家访谈来实施的。微观层面的分析旨在通过评估首次借贷者的改造项目和增加的债务水平对家庭和社区的社会影响，了解向低收入家庭扩大住房小额信贷提供的潜在后果。这是通过对位于墨西哥城大都市区和金塔纳罗奥州沿海地区的低收入社区进行一系列定性案例研究来实施的。案例研究基于深度访谈和重点人种学观察。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，以及现有金融化文献中分析的广泛局限性，这些文献主要关注美国、英国和欧洲的案例。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，它可能有助于在城市和规划理论的后殖民方法所激发的更广泛辩论的背景下，就金融化问题进行国际辩论，即来自欧洲和美国经验的概念是否以及如何适用于分析拉丁美洲。其次，它有可能将理论考虑与地理、经济和文化背景下的经验数据结合起来并进行对比，这些数据迄今为止在关于金融化和城市建筑环境生产的国际文献中基本上被忽视了。

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.