Bringing labor back: Financialized inclusion and survival struggles in the periphery of the periphery

Abstract

This article examines how financial platforms address the value realization crisis within contemporary capitalism in “the periphery of the periphery.” Drawing from Marxist political economy, particularly in the context of its interpretation in peripheral spaces, we empirically studied the introduction of a digital microcredit platform in the living and working space-time of informal workers in Brazil’s periphery. Expanding on the household financialization literature, we scrutinize how this organization extracts value directly from living labor. Through dialectical analysis, we investigate how informal workers fearfully adhere to microcredit while cultivating invisibility practices, constituting forms of resistance against the advance of the microcredit platform. These workers’ labor-life narratives illustrate how credit adherence, while alluring, poses a threat to transform their lives, not only by leading to indebtedness but also by exposing the survival practices that enable their precarious existence on the fringes of the system, which we term “survival struggles.” These struggles manifest in the blurred boundaries between the center and the periphery, as well as between production and reproduction, creating an intersection between the concepts of survival and boundary struggles.

Keywords

Survival and boundary struggles financial platforms the periphery of the periphery

Introduction

Financial inclusion has been promoted as a strategy to overcome poverty by granting impoverished and marginalized individuals’ access to formal financial services. This access is thought to empower these groups with enhanced means to produce, distribute, and circulate resources within the economy (Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2018). However, while certain randomized sampling studies support this correlation, others contend that it is either weak or context-dependent or does not exist at all. According to the latter perspective, access to financial services facilitated through financial inclusion and microfinance, including microcredit, does not improve the quality of life for the impoverished and marginalized (Alvarez et al., 2015; Banerjee et al., 2015). Despite this controversy, international development organizations and collaborative networks such as the World Bank persist in advocating for financial inclusion as a potential remedy for individual challenges related to accessing goods, services, rights, and overall quality of life. Gabor and Brooks (2017) refer to this model as “financialized inclusion,” while Roy (2010) characterizes it as an “invitation to live by finance.”

Both financialized inclusion and the invitation to live by finance have been explored in the literature on household financialization. Critical examinations of these themes have delved into the reliance on household indebtedness as an alternative for securing reproduction amid the escalating impact of neoliberalism, the privatization of public services, low wages, and the growing prevalence of informality and precarious employment. While household indebtedness in developed economies typically revolves around mortgages, in peripheral countries, especially among lower-income groups, it predominantly rests on unsecured consumer debt (Lapavitsas and Soydan, 2022). Consequently, the informal economy, predominantly inhabited by impoverished, low-income individuals, has become the focal point of financial inclusion and microcredit initiatives (Soederberg, 2014).

The literature on household financialization provides a comprehensive analysis of how the financial market, often in collaboration with governments and international bodies, exploits and impoverishes vulnerable individuals by perpetuating a cycle of debt that sustains a poverty industry (Gabor and Brooks, 2017; Mader, 2014; Soederberg, 2014). Soederberg (2014) terms this phenomenon “secondary exploitation” as it unfolds beyond the conventional wage-labor relationship, within the realm of exchange. In the same vein, feminist literature has systematically demonstrated how production and reproduction intertwine when it comes to capital accumulation, particularly when examining unpaid reproductive labor or the financialization of the sphere of reproduction and everyday life, which are subsequently integrated into the debt market (Montgomerie and Tepe-Belfrage, 2017). While it is acknowledged that the ability of these households to repay their debts will depend on their capacity to generate income from precarious and uncertain labor (Bernards, 2019), and that debt inherently presupposes a claim to the value produced through labor (Harvey, 2017; Mader, 2014), scant attention has been dedicated within this body of literature to the intricate interplay between the realms of production and reproduction found in the informal labor characteristic of these households. By perceiving households solely in the domain of exchange, we risk marginalizing the surplus value extracted from informal labor within credit-labor relationships that do not conform to the conventional wage-labor paradigm.

Despite the mentioned criticism directed at financial inclusion and microcredit programs, such as the exacerbation of neoliberal ideologies and their contribution to deeper assimilation of impoverished and marginalized populations into the mechanism of capital accumulation (Guermond et al., 2023), over the past decade, fintech companies (an abbreviation for “financial technology,” hereinafter “fintech,”) have emerged as key players within the framework of financial inclusion. While traditional microfinance institutions (MFIs), whether operating for-profit or as non-profits, had encountered challenges in scaling their operations and extending the scope of so-called financial inclusion, characterized by limited access to financial resources, low productivity, and high operating costs, fintech offer solutions to some of these issues. These organizations leverage technology to promise broader access to formal financial services for impoverished and marginalized individuals at reduced costs (Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2018). International cooperation organizations recognize fintech as critical drivers of financial inclusion innovation (Gabor and Brooks, 2017). This progression, described by Bernards (2019) as a “technological turn,” represents a departure from conventional efforts to establish a financial market for the disadvantaged populations of the Global South.

Amidst the ongoing debates regarding the definitions and purposes of fintech (Knight and Wójcik, 2020), critical dialogs on its impacts in developing countries contend that these platforms, often framed as instruments of financial inclusion (Blakstad and Allen, 2018) and enablers of the empowerment of vulnerable groups (Banerjee and Jackson, 2017), have led to adverse effects. These include the reinforcement of processes of racial discrimination (Bhagat and Roderick, 2020) and an exacerbation of indebtedness among already marginalized groups, thereby amplifying inequality (Gabor and Brooks, 2017; Roy, 2010).

This article offers a perspective on fintech-mediated indebtedness and how informal and precarious workers on the “periphery of the periphery” adhere to and resist it. We coined the term “periphery of the periphery” to refer to even more marginalized spaces within countries already positioned on the periphery of central capitalism. This concept is grounded in the Marxist understanding of spatial production and value systems within contexts of unequal geographical development (Harvey, 2014, 2017).

Our study centers on Brazil, a country situated on the periphery of central capitalism, but which, nonetheless, experiences a form of “internal colonialism” (Casanova, 2006) characterized by regional divisions that further marginalize certain spaces (Canettieri, 2019; Oliveira, 2003; Santos, 2017).

Our research was conducted in two stages, focusing on the performance of a fintech company in Brazil’s periphery in the context of financial inclusion and the dynamics of informal workers’ adherence-resistance to financialization. Firstly, we analyzed a Microcredit Fintech Platform (MFP) organization as an illustrative case study at the corporate level (Stake, 2005). Subsequently, we conducted empirical research in the Agreste¹ region of Pernambuco, which houses the country’s second-largest fashion and apparel complex. A sizable portion of the clothing produced in this area originates from informal home sewing workshops and is sold at regional fairs known as “Sulanca Fairs.”

Our study makes two primary contributions. First, whereas the literature on financialization often addresses the realms of exchange and production in isolation (Chesnais, 2014; Harvey, 2017; Soederberg, 2014) or contends that value is primarily extracted outside of the labor process (Appelbaum et al., 2013), we elucidate how financial capital, through fintech, has directly extracted surplus value from labor-life, from workers who have historically occupied precarious space within this doubly peripheral domain.

Second, we offer an empirically grounded narrative about the lived realities of informal workers in the periphery of Brazil, describing their ambiguous relations with microcredit through fintech and chronicling their process of embracing and resisting debt. Lacking formal employment contracts and State protection, these workers have adapted to a form of labor we term “labor-life,” which, although extremely precarious, enables them to lead a life they perceive as “free and good.” Following Baker (2021), we argue that the advent of fintech threatens to disrupt this fragile balance. Moreover, the resistance-adhesion dynamic demonstrates how, despite the prominence of labor value in these informal production spaces, there is no corresponding emphasis on class struggle as envisaged in the classical Marxist notion of conflict between labor and capital, in the context of wage labor within factory settings. Instead, Sulanca workers’ resistance to debt is neither critical of nor targeted at capital.

Our research has uncovered a distinctive form of resistance among Sulanca workers, which we term “survival struggles.” Theoretical analysis of these struggles leads us to draw a parallel with the concept of “boundary struggles” (Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018), particularly concerning the various forms of domination that intersect with class struggle. In the case of Sulanca workers, the concept of boundaries is entwined with the production and reproduction spaces of home sewing workshops as well as the center-periphery divide, both on a global and national scale. This divide is shaped by regional divisions (Santos, 2017) stemming from internal colonialism (Casanova, 2006).

Thus, we contend that reflecting on modes of resistance in the periphery of the periphery, specifically in the form of “survival struggles,” can enhance the critical literature on potential forms of resistance to financialized inclusion to the extent that, even if not organized or targeted at the capital, they can impede the proliferation of indebtedness and, consequently, the crisis of value realization.

The subsequent section entails the literature review and is followed by the methodology and data presentation and contextualization. Then, we explore invisibility as a form of resistance among Sulanca’s workers before finally connecting the notion of survival struggles with boundary struggles and presenting our implications.

Fintech, anti-value and labor value in peripheral capitalism

Fintech are a unique form of digital platform offering financial services and intermediation functions (Langley and Leyshon, 2021). Certain scholars view them as a form of a financial revolution enabled by digital platforms, with extensive possibilities of reaching people who have been marginalized by traditional financial systems, thus leading to a more inclusive and democratic financial market and sustainably reducing poverty (Arner et al., 2020; Lagna and Ravishankar, 2022).

Conversely, criticism of these organizations focuses on exposing the mechanisms and institutional arrangements that have enabled them and their investors to profit at the expense of poor, vulnerable, or marginalized groups (Gabor and Brooks, 2017; Langley and Leyshon, 2022). The financialization of poverty exacerbated by fintech is linked to the neoliberal governmentality framework (Bateman and Teixeira, 2021; Soederberg, 2014) and to “debt” as the engine of capital accumulation in this stage of financial capitalism (Harvey, 2017), which, in turn, involves the production of anti-value and its redemption as value.

From a Marxist perspective, anti-value denotes interest-bearing capital circulating in the credit system, while debt represents “a claim on the future production of value that can only be effectively redeemed through the creation of value” (Harvey, 2017: 85–86). The significant expansion of anti-value through debt as a mechanism to delay the crisis of value realization has reached alarming levels with the advent of the so-called platform capitalism (Grabher and König, 2020). This process has led to significant social impacts, including an escalating social debt that surpasses the potential for future value recovery. Moreover, this creditor-debtor relationship presupposes inherent power imbalances, marked by creditor dominance and the imposition of a management and discipline framework upon the debtor (Soederberg, 2014). Indeed, this process has contributed to heightened economic and social vulnerability (Banerjee and Jackson, 2017; Bhagat and Roderick, 2020; Roy, 2010).

Since financial capitalism is not autonomous and relies on labor value, an increasingly avid search for abstract labor has produced absolute surplus value in the form of self-employed workers who contend with low incomes, extended work hours, and a lack of basic social protection. In essence, these workers have been reduced to mere production factors (Oliveira, 2003). The periphery of peripheral capitalism serves as fertile ground for this trend, given that a substantial portion of its workforce has been historically deprived of the safeguards offered by the formal labor market. Consequently, informal labor in the periphery embodies the logic of financial capitalism insofar as it sustains the materiality necessary to expand interest-bearing capital on the production side of value. Our research is located from this perspective, where the search for the anti-value of financial capitalism meets the use of informal and precarious labor. Let us examine, therefore, how this phenomenon occurs, specifically in the Brazilian periphery.

The Brazilian periphery

The informal labor market in Brazil has always existed, but it is particularly prevalent and precarious in certain regions, notably the Northeast. This region serves as the locus of our research and is termed “the periphery of the periphery” of capitalism. This terminology builds upon the concept of “periphery” formulated by Marxist urban sociology in the 1970s. In this framework, “a given territory of the metropolis is qualified by the set of shortages observed there and not found elsewhere: lack of basic public services, urbanization of public areas, property ownership, and proximity to the labor market, among others” (Canettieri, 2019: 30). This results in precarious working conditions and low-income populations in urban and metropolitan areas.

The formation of these peripheral spaces in already peripheral countries are likened to what Casanova (2006) has described as internal colonialism, when elucidating how regions and populations in former colonies and inheriting structures from colonialism proceed to colonize other regions and populations, thereby reshaping internal class struggles. Accordingly, internal colonialism emerges as one of the persistent effects of colonialism (Quijano, 2005). Indeed, the Brazilian Northeast has played the role of a colony with intense and unequal relations between the colonial and the metropolitan center since the colonial mercantilism era. The marks of this initial form of colonialism have endured but evolved to incapsulate unique internal dynamics, molded by the distinctive class divisions in Brazil, within the broader context of the global division of labor in capitalism.

During the 19th century, the Brazilian economy enjoyed a golden era of growth, thanks to its most valuable export commodity (coffee), which was followed by an industrialization process. Concurrently, the Northeast region played a role in sustaining this growth as a hub of traditional agriculture. This helped finance modern agriculture and industrialization, as it produced a surplus of the labor force that facilitated the accumulation of industrial capital by lowering the reproduction cost of urban labor (Oliveira, 2003).

In the 20th century, São Paulo emerged as an industrial center, while the Northeast remained tied to its roots in colonial-style production (Furtado, 2007). The formalization of the labor market in Brazil began during that period, particularly in the industrialized Southeast. In contrast, informal labor arrangements predominated in the Northeast and, even when these became formalized, they maintained the hallmarks of exceptionally low wages, extended wok hours, and strongly authoritarian management forms rooted in authority and fear.

The division between the industrialized and agrarian regions, referred to as “modern” and “backward” labor relations, has also impacted class struggle and political dynamics. Indeed, São Paulo served as the cradle of labor unionism and the foundation for the establishment of the Workers’ Party (“Partido dos Trabalhadores,” PT), whereas the Northeast has been historically associated to a political system named after the “colonels.” The “coronelismo” is characterized by policies that prioritize the self-interests of local elites who have traditionally held power within the State. Another defining feature of this system is its reliance on repression and violence as a means to suppress any form of social conflict.

Brazilian geographer Santos (2017) introduced the concept of upper and lower urban circuits to explain spatial occupation and economic development in colonized countries. The upper circuit comprises individuals with consistent access to goods and services, while the lower circuit encompasses those who cannot fulfill their needs and rely on the so-called Brazilian “jeitinho”² to survive. The upper circuit thrives on technological progress and high capital investment, while the lower circuit relies on labor-intensive and minimum capital mobilization, with activities divided into countless stages capable of accommodating a large workforce. Santos’ depiction of the lower circuit, which we interpret as representing the periphery of the periphery, remains relevant today, particularly as we delve into Sulanca, situated in the northeastern backlands.

Sulanca, the locus of this research, serves financial capital, disguised as a fintech company, creating a highly conducible setting for the emergence of a debt model based on the discourse of financial inclusion. Nevertheless, the Brazilian jeitinho employed by informal workers as a survival strategy in the periphery of the periphery can also pose a challenge to fintech and financialization, giving rise to a dynamic we term “adherence-resistance.”

Methodology

This research was conducted in two stages to analyze the operations of a fintech company within the Brazilian periphery and to explore the adherence-resistance dynamics. In the initial phase, we conducted an instrumental case study of the Microcredit Fintech Platform (MFP) at the corporate level (Stake, 2005), by collecting an range of secondary data spanning the years 2017–2019. This data included public statements by the company’s founder and CEO, case studies, reports, public employees’ testimonials, and institutional materials. Furthermore, the MFP case study offered insights into how this organization expands into peripheral regions and monetizes venture capitalists. Table 1 presents an overview of the secondary data.

Table 1.

Overview of secondary data collection.

Data source description	Amount	Timeframe
Online articles about the company	12	2013 to 2019
Published case studies	2	2015 and 2018
Public pages and presentations from the company’s corporate websites and social media and its partners	11	2018 and 2019
Public presentations and statements by MFP’s CEO	3	2015 to 2018
Public interviews with CEOs and directors of MFP’s partner companies	2	2017 to 2019
Accountability reports to investors	3	2018 to 2019
Public employee and former employee anonymous reports	19	2018
Mentions on a website that collects customer complaints	43	2019

We complemented secondary data by conducting four in-person interviews between March 2018 and January 2019. One interview was with the CEO, while the other three were with employees of the organization: a regional coordinator, a local supervisor, and one microcredit agent.

In the second phase, we focused on MFP’s expansion into the fashion and apparel complex located in Northeast Brazil. The lead author spent 4 months in Sulanca, in the Agreste³ region of Pernambuco, from November 2018 to February 2019. During this period, she engaged in participant and non-participant observations, conducted visits and interviews at informal home sewing workshops, and listened to various actors, including local fabric merchants and association presidents. Additionally, she took photos and captured audio-visual recordings. Furthermore, she surveyed the Caruaru Sulanca Fair, which included a structured paper-based questionnaire completed by 371 workers. The aim was to gain insights into the utilization (or lack thereof) of financial services, whether facilitated digitally. From the stories gathered from domiciliary production (totaling 24), we selected Bia and Nelson’s narrative to illustrate how Sulanca workers organize their work, navigate precarious living conditions, and exhibit adherence-resistance to financialization.

This research was structured and grounded in the dialectical thinking present in the work of Marxist geographers such as Harvey (2006), which integrates the financial (temporal) and geographical (global and spatial) aspects of accumulation within the overall framework of Marx’s argument in capturing the flow of capital movement in space and time. This approach also recognizes the importance of rearranging the conceptual apparatus from the perspective of the periphery of capital when critiquing the political economy developed by Marx. Accordingly, it is always crucial to operationalize “the limit of validity of the categories of Marxism” in the peripheral context (Canettieri, 2019: 8), particularly in the current state of financialization. Indeed, our objective is to analyze how the global process of financialization has unfolded within the particular context of the capitalist form in Brazil by connecting the particular case of the Microcredit Fintech Platform (MFP) to the global logic of accumulation in financial capitalism.

According to Marx’s perspective, money is perceived as a direct manifestation of human labor, and its examination is intrinsically linked to the sphere of production. Our analysis, situated in the historical context of the evolving phase of financial capitalism and the pivotal role of modern technologies in the process of financialization, is centered on labor value and its unique characteristics in the periphery of capitalism. Thus, we turned to the real-life experiences of Sulanca workers, seeking to understand their specificities while examining the tensions and contradictions inherent in their adherence-resistance to debt. In doing so, we aimed to shed light on the (im)possibilities of expanding this form particular of accumulation.

According to Marxist dialectics, “the mode of exposition must be distinguished from the mode of investigation” (Harvey, 2010: 17). As such, we condense the labor life of Sulanca workers and their ambiguous relationship with microcredit into Bia and Nelson’ life history. This narrative approach severs to illustrate how “the basic concept of the social as an objective form” (Larsen, 2007: 19) manifests within the life experiences recounted by the workers themselves, emphasizing that this realm is not merely a direct reflection of economic determinants.

Building on this interpretation, we introduce the concept of “boundary struggles” (Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018), rooted in dialectical thought. It acknowledges that capitalism is inherently historical and shaped by spatial dynamics that challenge traditional Marxist conceptions, including those related to the theory of value, often associated with the factory floor, and the theory of conflict, commonly tied to class struggle. Therefore, we analyzed the logic of fintechs’ operation and the labor-life spaces of Sulanca’s workers to understand the MFP’s operation and its impact on them.

The Microcredit Fintech Platform case

The Microcredit Fintech Platform (MFP⁴) is a fintech established in 2012 by a former partner of a prominent brokerage firm in São Paulo, Brazil. Its primary objective was to address the issue of limited access to financial services by low-income populations, notably the self-employed, who comprise nearly half of the Brazilian workforce.⁵ This individual, hereafter referred to as the “CEO,” envisioned a business model that aimed to tackle what he perceived as a significant problem in Brazil while generating profits for its shareholders, aligning with the conventional risk investment market.

Despite various challenges, the platform achieved relative success, as evidenced in the growing number of financial transactions. Beginning in 2013, it underwent multiple rounds of venture capital investments (including international funding) and fine-tuned its business model to focus primarily on microcredit offerings rather than a range of financial products. Consequently, MFP relocated its operations to the northeast, an area that had already a well-established microcredit culture, thanks to a microcredit program managed by a large public development bank operating in the region. Microcredit is not only characterized by its modest value but is also intended for investment in microbusinesses, serving both capital expansion and cash flow requirements. While the initial microcredit models in the world were predominantly geared toward women, exemplified by institutions such as the Grameen Bank, with the rationale that this approach would empower women to establish their own businesses, consequently enhancing their family’s living standards (Roy, 2010), this public microcredit program in Brazil and MFP’s microcredit exclusively targets small businesses, irrespective of genre.

Since its inception, MPF has collected users’ and visitors’ data, including psychometric tests, through its digital channels. This has paved the way for a sophisticated credit scoring algorithm, enabling the company to compute intricate credit scores even when clients lack a conventional banking history. The CEO attributes a portion of MFP’s success to the algorithm’s ability to accurately pinpoint the clients most likely to close a deal, thereby enhancing the organization’s overall performance. The innovation introduced by MFP into the pre-existing microcredit landscape in this region is rooted in its algorithmic approach. While the conventional lending model relies on solidarity lending, where participants share joint responsibility for debt repayment, the Fintech model offers individual unsecured loans predicated on data analysis, significantly mitigating the risk of default.

In the northeast region, where this fintech has established a solid presence, the company employs local microcredit agents (or “loan officers”) who conduct regular visits and oversight to informal workers. These workers, referred to as micro-entrepreneurs by the CEO, media, and microcredit agents, are the targets of MFP’s microcredit services. By integrating the algorithm with the personal relationships cultivated by these microcredit agents with the borrowers, MFP maintains a loan portfolio with remarkably low default rates and a substantial microcredit renewal rate. According to the CEO, over 80% of informal workers opt to renew their microcredit agreements. In other words, apart from the algorithmic control, which identifies customers with the desired profile and calculates default ratings, the fusion of data analysis with the proximity of agents with access to the personal lives of workers to oversee production and collect debts ensures low default rates.

One of MFP’s first investors was a national venture capital fund that identified itself as a social impact fund. This fund aimed to invest in social impact startups while guaranteeing growth and profitability for its shareholders, like any other risk venture investment. One of the fund’s founders is the heir to a large financial-industrial complex in Brazil, with deep-rooted family wealth dating back to colonial-era sugar mills on the Northeastern Brazilian coast. The alignment of these two classes (the inheriting investor and the informal worker on the periphery of the periphery, who is the very target of microcredit) illustrates internal colonialism by showing how class dynamics emerge from structures inherited from colonialism.

In this instrumental case study, we emphasize that MFP aims to capitalize on the existing microcredit culture and historical informality prevalent in rural areas of Northeast Brazil. Indeed, MFP plans to expand its operation, grow its platform, and capitalize on its investment funds by establishing debt relations with informal and precarious workers. While continuing to depend on microcredit agents who play a critical role in legitimizing their product and managing borrowers, which include collecting and ensuring timely payments, MFP’s digital platform and algorithm are paramount to identifying, ranking, and tracking potential informal workers who are current borrowers.

Still, MFP’s case is critical in understanding how the crisis of value realization can be (partially) solved, on the one hand, by creating more debt (anti-value) and, on the other hand, by enabling the extraction of surplus value in the form of interest from precarious informal labor. As one MFP worker noted, the Northeast of Brazil proves to be an ideal setting for MFP’s product (individual microcredit), due to its history of labor informality, which turns informal workers (microentrepreneurs) into ideal clients:

“[. . .] you come to the Northeast, where there is a barn of microentrepreneurs, people who are informal [workers] [. . .]. By having a superior product and having the ideal customer for what I’m offering, the goal and result become much simpler [. . .]” (Interview with the coordinator, 2018)

The Sulanca Fairs and The Factory Towns

The Sulanca Fairs are held in the state of Pernambuco (Figure 1), specifically in Pernambuco’s Agreste, a region situated between the ocean and the arid backlands, often affected by severe droughts. Prior to the emergence of the Sulanca phenomenon, it had a reputation for limited economic activity, but it has since become Brazil’s second-largest fashion and apparel hub, trailing only São Paulo (Sá, 2018).

Figure 1 & 2.

Location of the State of Pernambuco in Brazil.

The cities in this region (Figure 2) resemble factories in disguise, with houses serving as productive units. These sprawling, decentralized “factories” utilize streets as electronic conveyor belts, transferring fabrics, trims, parts, and molds between units. Initially, these small home production units operate in rooms within houses, but they often expand into unfinished “outbuildings,” (lacking plaster, paint, or windows), blurring the boundaries between labor/life and space/time. These work arrangements deviate from traditional factory labor since they are marked by informality, precariousness, and intensive and exhausting workdays. However, despite these challenging conditions, Sulanca’s informal workers value the autonomy that comes with their own business since there is no boss to supervise them, as Bia and Nelson’s story will later illustrate.

The Sulanca Fairs serve as traditional markets specializing in clothing from over 50 cities within the Sulanca region. Home sewing workshops are the primary source of production, where families create and sell items, either directly at the Sulanca Fairs or upon request from contractors using the “putting-out system.” In addition to relying on family members, these home workshops can employ close relatives and neighbors as well. Workshops producing goods for contractors are known as “facções,” and compensate workers with piece rates, eliminating fixed payment rates. Seamstresses can earn anywhere from US$ 0.05⁶ to US$ 0.50 per item, while cleaning (removing scraps of sewing thread), folding, and adding buttons or elastic bands can fetch up to US$ 0.02 per piece. As these sewing workshops expand production and hire more workers, they are often referred to as “fabrico” indicating their status as small manufacturers.

We collected data on the workers’ utilization of financial services during a Sulanca Fair held in Caruaru, the region’s main city. Based on their responses (Table 2), including the number of fair sales points and social security status, it is clear that these workers rely on micro and informal businesses.

Table 2.

Survey conducted with 371 Sulanca workers.

Survey item	Results
Average age	40 years old
Gender	52% are female workers
Level of education	40% have low schooling
Average years of experience in the field	10 years
Business capacity	Low resource capacity (number of sale points at the fair as a proxy—68% only have a single one)
Informality	High informality (social security as a proxy—67% do not contribute)

We also found that the fair workers had limited engagement with financial services. While a majority of respondents mentioned using credit or debit cards (69%) for their personal transactions, only a portion availed themselves of additional banking services, such as savings accounts (36%) or loans (38%), as outlined in Table 3. Out of the 140 workers who had utilized formal loans, only four mentioned MFP as the lending institution. Transactions with customers at the fair primarily revolved around cash, with a considerable number not accepting payments via debit or credit cards (70%).

Table 3.

Utilization of financial services.

Survey Item	Results
Utilization of debit or credit cards	69% use debit or credit cards.
Acceptance of debit or credit card payments	70% do not accept card payments.
Reliance on financial technologies such as internet or mobile banking	54% do not rely on them.
Formal loans	38% borrow funds from formal financial institutions.
Formal savings	36% maintain savings deposited within formal financial institutions.

Sulanca workers expressed a preference for cash transactions due to their practicality in daily business, accounting, purchases, and negotiation advantages with suppliers. This inclination toward a cash-based aligns with the broader trend in the informal sector, as described by Baker (2021) in the context of India’s informal drivers.

The informal nature of their work presents a barrier to accessing certain payment services from banks. However, the limited use of formal payment methods (with banks) is important for those who cannot file tax returns with the income from their informal activities. Regarding the lack of mobile phone and internet banking usage, some respondents cited reasons such as unfamiliarity with these technologies or a general mistrust of them.

Regard these reasons, which we term “invisibilities” (undeclared income, absence of formal business registration, distrust of banks and their fees), as strategies to sustain informal microbusinesses dependent on informal and precarious labor.

These data present a conflicting relationship between informal workers and financial services, exemplified through the narrative of Bia and Nelson, a couple working at Sulanca. Their story will be incorporated into the broader discussion of invisibility as a means of survival, along with these data.

The Bia and Nelson’s Story: What a Nice New Car!

The couple’s house in Caruaru serves as a productive unit, with eight machines concentrated on the upper floor, creating a cramped and blazing hot workspace. Despite the prevailing heat in the area, it is unfeasible to have a strong breeze or installing a ceiling fan to prevent breakage of the sewing threads. An unplastered wall, and a fabric cutting table on the side complete the workshop.

Bia and Nelson specialize in children’s clothing. During peak seasons, they produce 200–300 units daily for sale at Sulanca Fair every Sunday, with December being their best sales month. On Saturdays, they work late hours. On that very Saturday evening, after dinner, around 9 p.m., they went to the fair. One of them stays at the fair stand until 2 a.m. and then switches with the other, who sleeps in the car. Some customers arrive at dawn, so all merchandise must be packed before then. The fair ends on Sunday afternoon, after which they can go home and rest before production is resumed on Monday at 7a.m.

Bia explains that on good days, they earn US$ 120, but there was a time when they would make up to US$ 400. Nelson recalls an occasion when they sold a meager US$ 3 in merchandise. After a week’s worth of garment production plus the early mornings working at the stand, earning only US$ 3 was “disheartening.” In the good old days, they also worked as an outsourced workshop (“facção”), charging US$ 0.56 per clothing item. At that time, they even had to hire extra seamstresses, but now only Bia and her husband handle the production.

Bia, who has been sewing for 30 years, learned the craft through a course, where she learned the craft to supplement her husband’s income and support their six children. After completing her training, she found work in a small factory alongside two other seamstresses. A decade ago, she left that and used the compensation to buy sewing machines. Bia explains that she prefers to work from home as she can determine the pace of production and stop whenever she wants. As for Nelson, he used to work in a denim laundry in the neighborhood. When he realized his wife’s home factory was expanding, he joined her. They incur approximately US$ 1.30 in production costs for each item, which they sell for US$ 2 at the fair. They pay an outsourced seamstress US$ 0.03 per piece of an elastic band, and their child handles the stamping.

Operating under the MEI regime (an individual micro-entrepreneur license) registered under Bia’s name incurs a monthly cost of US$ 50 to US$ 60. They once used to employ six seamstresses, while also operating as a “facção,” earning between US$ 800 and US$ 1000 monthly. Although not formally hired, the seamstresses received a monthly salary (the average amount paid in the region is approximately US$ 214). Bia perceives herself as a street peddler because she lacks a registered (i.e. formalized) booth at the Sulanca Fair. When asked how customers paid for their items, she said they always did so in cash, but she is now considering accepting payments with debit and credit cards as well.

Bia mentioned that she had a credit card but rarely used it, unlike her husband, who often loaned it to family and friends, in addition to paying bills. As Nelson explained, he seemed pleased to enjoy a high credit card limit. However, as sales decreased, some customers failed to pay for it. This, in turn, led to delays, affecting both credit card bills and payments to the outsourced seamstresses plunging them into debt. Subsequently, he obtained a microcredit loan offered by a neighbor who served as an MFP microcredit agent to address his indebtedness. Initially, they sought approval for the microcredit in his wife’s name, as she is a seamstress. When this application was rejected, they re-applied using Nelson’s information. The loan amounted to US$ 600, repayable in six installments of around US$ 116.40 each. They both lacked a checking account but held a savings account where the loan funds were deposited. Nelson said he has always been apprehensive about taking out loans, and this was his first one ever. Nonetheless, he was satisfied and considered renewing or obtaining another loan after paying off this one.

When asked about their financial obligations beyond loan payments, credit card bills, and MEI expenses, Nelson smiled and revealed they had recently purchased a new car. The couple now owns a sedan valued at US$ 8400, obtained through a trade-in deal that involved their previous vehicle, and they made a down payment of US$ 3000. They are left with 42 monthly installments of approximately US$ 180 to settle. While Nelson expressed pride when talking about their new car, Bia appeared less enthusiastic, mentioning that their old car was still functional and running. In contrast, Nelson explained that the new car facilitates transporting more merchandise to the fair and provides a more comfortable ride.

Discussion

Invisible practices as struggles for survival: “Having one’s skin at stake.”

Our empirical investigation into informal workers has unveiled the need to make them visible to credit providers by overcoming their invisibility practices they employ as survival strategies. These invisibility practices refer to business, financial, and rights invisibilities, all of which create barriers to the expansion of financialization by fintech companies.

Business invisibility concerns the inclination to keep businesses informal and invisible, thereby rendering business interactions with the government and financial institutions less attractive. Small-scale production units operating within households frequently rely on family labor. Although there are ways to formalize these units, such as the semi-formal MEI registration process, formalization demands time and knowledge, and incurs expenses, such as maintaining an invoice control system. Maintaining informality presents an option that affords flexibility and adaptability, sparing them from the required legal obligations, and saving both time and resources. For example, Bia and Nelson’s experience demonstrates that factories and workers can be temporarily hired during high seasons and then released without financial burdens. Goods can be sent for production stages from one place to another without the costs of issuing an invoice, and sales can be expanded without increasing tax costs. These informal dynamics enable workers in this hub to quickly accommodate the region’s production pace, responding to economic booms and downturns without compromising their fragile structure.

In turn, business invisibility also imposes necessary financial invisibility. Most fair workers in our survey avoided the use of payment terminals, indicating a preference for cash transactions. They also recounted experiences of cancelations and refusals to engage with financial institutions, which exhibited a palpable “aversion” to banks and loans, possibly stemming from prior dealings with bank debts or concerns related to the informality of their business, where financial movements lack traceability. Furthermore, financial invisibility is closely associated with the fear of debt. The Sulanca workers invest everything they have into their businesses: their savings, their time, foregoing meals and rest, and even their homes. They harness their children’s labor, their physical vitality, and work to the point of exhaustion. These workers have the game (the business of clothing production and fairs) inscribed in their very skins (Sá, 2018), and soon “their own skin” will be invested in their informal businesses as well. Their work is etched into the very core of their existence, and whatever outcomes are paramount to their livelihood. Consequently, the fear of indebtedness is coupled with a moral obligation to be acknowledged as “good payers” to establish working relationships and engender trust among their peers.

These findings are substantiated by a recent survey encompassing 2150 low-income Brazilians, primarily residing in peripheral regions of Brazil. The results unveiled a pervasive apprehension toward banks and fintech companies due to a perceived lack of trustworthiness. A staggering 77% cited this as the primary reason for not holding a bank account, opting for cash transactions instead and reported having bad experiences in their relationship with these institutions (Locomotiva, 2019). Bia and Nelson’s narrative exemplifies a nuanced adherence to formal finance, not devoid of tension. The close proximity to a neighbor who happens to be a microcredit agent played a pivotal role in legitimizing the loan application and in assessing the profiles most likely to secure approval. Nelson, like Bia, displayed unease regarding microcredit acceptance, and she expressed discomfort with using a credit card or engaging in car financing.

Business invisibility is closely related to the notion of “dealing with the devil,” which encompasses the invisibility of rights. The Sulanca workforce has historically evolved from a mixture of life and permanent everyday survival tactics, in a world where nothing is guaranteed, including job security, housing, or even life itself, due to the lack of formal jobs and social guarantees provided by the State. This is a government ruled by a land-owning and oligarchic elite dating back to the colonization era, which has failed to provide the basic needs of the population (Furtado, 2007; Oliveira, 2008). In this sense, even though resources like water, educational facilities, and healthcare are unevenly distributed, high employment rates are sustained through informality and minimal regulatory oversight (Sá, 2018). A Faustian bargain appears to be a fundamental structural feature in the periphery of the periphery. A respondent affiliated with the Association of Entrepreneurs elucidated that any governmental attempts to tighten regulations, such as increasing inspections and tax collection would significantly impact the lives of thousands of individuals (Elton—Interview 2019). This policy is aptly known as “no rights, full employment” (Zanini, 2019).

Moreover, beyond informality, full employment in this context can be observed in what Santos (2017) pointed out when characterizing lower-circuit spaces: an endless division of labor into small activities capable of absorbing a sizable portion of the population. These realms of invisibility (in terms of business, finance, and rights) typically structure informal labor in Brazil, exemplifying what the critical national literature has labeled “jeitinho” (Oliveira, 2003; Santos, 2017). As previously highlighted, this term encapsulates the life and work strategies that enable workers to operate on the fringes of the formal system without receiving any benefits from it. Therefore, we can conclude that the survival struggles of Sulanca workers are anchored in their invisibility practices and the fear that comes with “putting their skin at stake.”⁷

Survival struggles as boundary struggles

In the factory towns of Sulanca, precarious workers struggle to survive and save their skin. This struggle can be seen as a form of resistance against the widespread use of microcredit and the resulting indebtedness. Nonetheless, it is crucial to recognize that this resistance does not stem from an active and organized endeavor by Sulanca workers to resist capitalism. Instead, it arises from their fear of sinking further into debt, all while understanding they have no one to turn to. Paradoxically, some of these workers, such as Bia and Nelson, find themselves ensnared in debt, having resorted to loans to settle pre-existing financial obligations or to fund their reproduction (and production), such as the acquisition of a new car. This intricate interplay of adherence and resistance to financialized inclusion has led us to conceptualize a form of struggle for survival that aligns with the theoretical framework of boundary struggles.

Indeed, these struggles can be seen as arising “at the points where production meets reproduction, economy meets polity, and human society meets non-human nature” (Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018: 187). Therefore, they represent struggles emerging from outside the formal economic system—that is, the struggles around wage labor—and can manifest in various forms, ranging from defensive to offensive, affirmative or transformative. This broadened comprehension of class struggles encompasses conflicts related to non-wage labor, with the boundaries themselves serving as both the epicenters and the subjects of these struggles. These struggles also reveal the structural foundations of axes of domination beyond class, such as gender issues inherent in the separation between production and reproduction or issues of domination related to “race, nationality, and civic consciousness in its separations of exploitation from expropriation and core from the periphery” (Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018: 233).

Building upon our analysis of Sulanca’s workers, we have identified the center-periphery dynamic as a fundamental boundary in comprehending the interplay of adherence and resistance to credit and indebtedness, as discussed within the scope of the “jeitinho” in the periphery of the periphery. This axis of domination mirrors the historical traits of expropriation, the absence of the State, and the imbrication of production and reproduction, which serve as yet other boundaries shaping the labor-life relationship in Sulanca. According to Fraser and Jaeggi (2018: 172), these ways of existence and laboring within the interstices of the formal economy can create resonances “among distinct forms of resistance, survival, or critique, which may accumulate into movements, parties, or even governments that try to do something different.”

However, this resistance does not conform to a class struggle, nor does it imply the emergence of a new political force capable of challenging capitalism. Instead, it embodies a struggle for survival, with resistance materializing through the pursuit of invisibility within the system, driven by the atavistic fear of having to rely solely on one’s resources due to the absence of social protection from the State, that is, the fear of “putting their skin at stake.” In any case, this resistance can serve as a barrier to the process of indebtedness, thereby postponing the crisis of value realization.

One of MFP’s institutional videos promotes its business model as a way of providing financial inclusion to informal workers by taking them out of invisibility. Critical literature on financialization highlights that taking someone out of invisibility, that is, exposing them to the credit system, constitutes a new means of control and profit extraction from the most vulnerable segments of society (Gabor and Brooks, 2017; Soederberg, 2014). Sulanca workers, in their lived experiences, are seeking to resist this reality, not just in a theoretical or critical sense.

Implications

The concept of the periphery is instrumental in understanding the intersection of informal labor precarization and indebtedness. In this sense, we have identified four primary implications of this phenomenon. Firstly, by drawing on the Marxist perspective that financial capital depends on living labor for the extraction of surplus value, we assert that digital financial platforms have targeted informal and precarious labor to cultivate a credit-indebtedness dynamic aimed at deferring the crisis of value realization. The case of Sulanca’s workers, who produce garments in their own home sweatshops, sheds light on the blurred boundary between production and reproduction in the periphery of the periphery. Therefore, credit enters the realm of production (and reproduction) as fictitious capital, enabling the extraction of surplus value from informal labor. On the one hand, these platforms increase the anti-value (debit) in circulation. However, on the other hand, they create real conditions for its profitability through informal precarious work, guaranteeing the realization of value.

Fintech operating in the financial inclusion and microfinance sectors, such as MFP, may employ established techniques prevalent in these domains, including borrower oversight via microcredit agents and the offering low-value, short-term loans (revolving) that ensnare borrowers in the so-called “microcredit trap” (Mader, 2014). These recognized “methodologies” in microfinance guarantee loan repayment rates exceeding 90% and renewal rates above 80%. In this context, the debt relationship becomes not only a means of discipline but also a long-term arrangement (given the renewals) that empowers fintech firms to control and manage informal precarious work. Our contribution to the literature on household financialization reinstates labor at the core of financial accumulation analysis, a perspective not commonly emphasized in studies that traditionally position households solely within the exchange realm (e.g. Appelbaum et al., 2013; Chesnais, 2014; Harvey, 2017; Soederberg, 2014).

Secondly, some studies have delved into the challenges and forms of resistance to financialization process in the Global South, directly associated with the living and working conditions imposed or intensified by financialization and neoliberalism (Baker, 2021; Bernards, 2019; Guermond, 2022). For example, Baker (2021) sheds light on the informal but widely utilized and unlawful practice of imposing surcharges on transportation services by informal self-employed workers in India. This practice is pivotal for their survival, albeit precarious. By introducing fee transparency, fintech companies pose a threat to this practice, and workers resist their adoption. Bernards (2019) further contends that the unstable income and labor conditions endured by impoverished populations in the Global South impede the expansion of financial inclusion through fintech, rendering formal debt relationships unfeasible.

Our study posits that the living and income conditions of poor populations in the Global South are not solely a consequence of neoliberalism but also stem from the internal dynamics stemming from the post-colonial era (internal colonialism). Within these circumstances, workers on the periphery of the periphery rely on “jeitinho” to survive, akin to Baker’s (2021) findings concerning Indian drivers. The “jeitinho” practices, in our case, serve the reproduction and livelihoods of informal workers operating on the fringes of the system but can also obstruct the expansion of financialization through fintech. Therefore, in addition to the absence or unpredictability of income that constraints the expansion of financialization (Bernards, 2019), the invisibility strategies adopted by precarious workers to safeguard their informal businesses, which are deeply ingrained in their “skins” acts as barriers to this process. Furthermore, the uncertainty and unpredictability of income, characteristics of informality, do not stand as the sole impediments to expanding financialization. Fintech operating in the periphery under the guise of financial inclusion continue to rely on microfinance tactics (agents, proximity, monitoring, surveillance, and fractional payments) that are already tailored to this reality. Consequently, they allow business-oriented microfinance institutions to persist in capitalizing on these populations (Mader, 2014).

Thirdly, this study employs the concept of boundary struggles as articulated by Fraser and Jaeggi (2018) to understand invisibility practices as survival struggles of informal workers in the Global South. We argue that these struggles are not class-based but rather a form of resistance against financialized inclusion. However, these invisibility practices can strengthen exclusion, vulnerability, and marginalization, given that they are often negative responses to the forms of class contradiction in Brazil (Oliveira, 2018). By framing survival struggles as boundary struggles, we can dialectically analyze the tensions emerging between (financial) capital and labor within the multiple boundaries of the periphery, encompassing the center/periphery dynamics, the modern/colonial divide, and the interplay of production and reproduction. This approach situates informal workers at the epicenter of financial capitalism, underlining the historical and geographical context in which capitalism operates.

Lastly (and less stressed), this study examines the role of digital platforms in financialization. Existing literature addressing the political economy of digital platforms suggests that these technologies enable the accumulation of financial capital through assetization (Cooiman, 2022), rentiership (Birch and Ward, 2023), and portfolio valorization (Langley and Leyshon, 2017). Our examination of the MFP case adds a novel mode of accumulating financial capital to this list: the direct extraction of surplus values from precarious informal labor. This perspective opens doors to future research exploring the relationship between labor platformization (Doorn and Vijay, 2021) and the indebtedness of precarious workers via financial platforms. Mader (2014: 608) contends that market-based microfinance establishes a direct link from “the (very) poor to the (very) wealthy, and globally so; literally from Wall Street to the slums and villages of the Global South.” Similarly, we argue that fintech companies, operating under the guise of financial inclusion, enable Wall Street and Silicon Valley to engage directly with the most underprivileged communities in the Global South through digital platforms.

Conclusion

Our study has revealed how the precarious conditions of Sulanca’s workers have been viewed as advantageous by MFP. The selection of the Northeast region as the focus of its activities confirms the critical understanding that the periphery of the periphery presents an ideal arena for microcredit as a means of capitalist accumulation (Bhagat and Roderick, 2020; Gabor and Brooks, 2017; Roy, 2010). This can lead to the indebtedness of numerous workers, further enabling the postponement of value realization while also “ensuring another round of commodity consumption and the disciplining/socialization of peripheral bodies for the painful repayment of debts” (Canettieri, 2019: 31).

Therefore, financial capitalism has penetrated the core of social reproduction serving as the last frontier for the capital crisis. In Sulanca, financial platforms have become intertwined with precarious forms of labor. The newest components of capitalism, platforms, and fintech are interwoven with the most archaic aspects of the system, specifically the precarious informal work. This confirms the analysis put forth by Oliveira (2003: 151) that “the new forms of accumulation produce the old” in the periphery of the capital.

By providing the perspective of the labor life of informal workers in the periphery of the periphery, our research adds to the studies on resistance and barriers to the expansion of the financialization of poverty. As we demonstrate, the periphery of the periphery possesses distinctive characteristics, which are disclosed through the way self-employed informal workers have been resisting microcredit through invisibility practices. The precarious conditions these informal workers have been historically subjected to make them fearful about participating in a credit-debt cycle dynamic. Their social reproduction has historically been beyond the purview of State intervention, and these workers have had to fend for themselves. It is intriguing to observe how precisely this peripheral condition of abandonment to their fate now hinders the indebtedness pursued by financial capital “as the beast proceeds to devour its own tail” (Fraser, 2015: 181).

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Erica Souza Siqueira

Notes

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