Gendered redistribution and family debt: The ambiguities of a cash transfer program in Brazil

Ana Flavia Badue and Florbela Ribeiro

Economic Anthropology, 2018, vol. 5, issue 2, 261-273

Abstract: Latin American conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are usually regarded as policies of social protection that question the neoliberal agenda. This article suggests instead that the Brazilian CCT Bolsa Família (Family Grant) is ambiguous in the sense that it was consolidated in association with policies of expansion of financial markets in the country under the rubric of social rights and female emancipation. To analyze the ambiguities of the program, we first delve into official federal documents and practices, which expose the connections between financialization and cash transfer. Second, we build on ethnographic data investigating the financial lives of Bolsa Família beneficiaries in the city of São Paulo. Our findings suggest that there are two scales at which Bolsa Família is associated with financialization: on the national level, the state†led policy of cash transfer provides the conditions for the expansion of the banking system, and vice versa; on the local level, among the beneficiaries, Bolsa Família and access to credit tools trigger lateral dependencies and family conflicts.

Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:5:y:2018:i:2:p:261-273

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