Paper short abstract:

Many development institutions are promoting deepening financialisation through new and evolving forms of financing, partnerships and narratives. This paper will critically assess these trends and their implications for critical development studies, and for sustainable and inclusive development.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore the ways in which the 'formal' international development community is increasingly enabling and supporting 'financialisation for development'. The close interlinkages with neoliberalism (causality remains debated) mean that financialisation and its underlying institutions and logics are by no means new in development. From Structural Adjustment Programmes to the huge wave of household financialisation in the global South through, most notably, microfinance and land/property titling, development studies has long critically engaged with various forms, sites and scales of financialisation. However, we suggest that a deepening, accelerating and intensifying roll out of financialisation is now openly being pursued by various parts of the development industry, with concerning implications.