Between debt and inclusion. An analysis of the financialization of Argentina´s social policy

TOMAS NOUGUES

Paris

Conferencia; el 6th European Research Conference on Microfinance; 2019

Paris-Dauphine University, Montpellier Bussiness School, Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement

This paper intends to explore the financialisation process of Argentina´s contemporary social policy. By this, we pretend to contribute to the study of the linkages between economic and social policies by analyzing Argentina´s welfare system reform. The main objective is to analyze a new aspect of this financialisation process: the establishment of a debt relation (creditor/debtor) between the Welfare State and the recipient of social policy consolidated by the adoption of microcredit as a key policy instrument. In Argentina, microcredit was introduced as a marginal instrument to complement the existing social policy plan but, slowly and gradually, it effected a profound change that resulted in a shift to a more financialized policy design. To assess the scope of this financialization process, the papers analyses three social policies that attend to three major social life´s areas: consume, production and housing. The first case is the "Argenta Program" of the National Agency of Social Security that provides personal credits to social policies beneficiaries using the social policy benefit as a collateral for access to the financial sector. The second one is the "National Microcredit Program" of the National Microcredit Commission which finances IMFs that provide productive microcredit to poor entrepreneurs. Finally, "Improve Your Home" is a program of the Secretary of Housing and Habitat that finances IMFs that provide microcredit to improve houses and to access public services.In the light of the assessment of these social policies, the paper reflects on the consequences of the incorporation of credit, hence the establishment of a debt relation, as an instrument for social policy. The use of credit generates a series of transfers and delegations -both material and moral- to the recipient of the program: costs transferring, responsibility delegation and risk individualization. These are characteristic features of the financialization of social policy.Thus, that process cannot be reduce to the increment of households indebtedness and the extension of finance to everyday life. It also constitute a profound retooling of the social policy design.