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Paper Short Abstract:

This article investigates the financial practices of Venezuelans in Brazil, focusing on their strategies to support themselves financially outside of humanitarian aid. It focuses on Venezuelans' spatial and socio-cultural practices of digital money to rebuild their lives and spaces as they settle.

Paper Abstract:

Fintech, the introduction of technology for finance and banking, has been embraced by governments, humanitarian actors and the private sector as a key enabler of financial inclusion and a means for generating income and livelihoods in refugee communities. Overall, the discourse around the role of fintech for financial inclusion for refugees tends to overlook the fact that refugees are already ‘connected’ and have been finding ways of doing finance with mobile technologies ever since their inception. Previous research has explored how refugees use mobile phones and social media to access financial resources and information, while also creating informal workarounds to overcome exclusion from digital financial systems, like borrowing IDs for SIM cards, mobile money accounts and digital work platforms. This article investigates the financial practices of Venezuelans in Brazil, focusing on their strategies to support themselves financially outside of humanitarian aid. By examining the spatial and relational aspects of finance, this article explores how Venezuelans' use of digital money shapes their lives and spaces as they settle. Using multi-sited ethnography, this study observes the financial interactions of Venezuelans in various physical locations (commercial streets and shops), and their engagement on WhatsApp and Telegram networks. In-depth interviews further complement the research. Preliminary results of the study uncover three themes that aid in comprehending the spatial and socio-cultural aspects of refugees' digital money practices and their meaning for belonging: income, remittances, and payments. These practices prompt us to question the limits to financial regulation and the creation of financial subjectivities in displacement.