, to see if you have full access to this publication.
Book Titles No access
El Norte or Bust!
How Migration Fever and Microcredit Produced a Financial Crash in a Latin American Town
Authors:
Publisher:
2012
Summary
Debt is the hidden engine driving undocumented migration to the United States. So argues David Stoll in this powerful chronicle of migrants, moneylenders, and swindlers in the Guatemalan highlands, one of the locales that, collectively, are sending millions of Latin Americans north in search of higher wages. As an anthropologist, Stoll has witnessed the Ixil Mayas of Nebaj grow in numbers, run out of land, and struggle to find employment. Aid agencies have provided microcredits to turn the Nebajenses into entrepreneurs, but credit alone cannot boost productivity in crowded mountain valleys, which is why many recipients have invested the loans in smuggling themselves to the United States. Back home, their remittances have inflated the price of land so high that only migrants can afford to buy it. Thus, more Nebajenses have felt obliged to borrow the large sums needed to go north. So many have done so that, even before the Great Recession hit the U.S. in 2008, many were unable to find enough work to pay back their loans, triggering a financial crash back home. Now migrants and their families are losing the land and homes they have pledged as collateral. Chain migration, moneylending, and large families, Stoll proposes, have turned into pyramid schemes in which the poor transfer risk and loss to their near and dear.
Keywords
Search publication
Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2012
ISBN-Print
978-1-4422-2068-3
ISBN-Online
978-1-4422-2069-0
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
282
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Maps and Tables No access
Preface No access
Chapter One. Great Expectations in a Guatemalan Town No access
Chapter Two. A Town of Many Projects No access
Chapter Three. Nebaj Goes North No access
Chapter Four. Indenture Travel No access
Chapter Five. Borrowers, Moneylenders, and Banks No access
Chapter Six. Projects and Their Penumbra—Swindles No access
Chapter Seven. Losing Husbands to El Norte No access
Chapter Eight. Dreams and Pyramid Schemes No access
