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Microcredit, the practice of extending small loans to women who work in the informal economy, aims to help women achieve financial empowerment and independence. The research on microcredit, however, has tended to ignore how the context of women's household relations can complicate this goal. This report of an ethnographic study of women's participation in microcredit in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, indicates that male partners' behaviors can both facilitate and limit women's use of loans and repayment strategies. The article concludes with a discussion of how relational and family dynamics may be considered in the design of future economic development programs, such as savings initiatives.

Although immigrant hometown associations (HTAs) are most often recognized as important for sustaining transnational ties to sending societies, Chicago HTAs took a leadership role in the 2006 marches for US immigrant rights. Employing a binational historical framework focused on the influence of political opportunities and threats on social movement activism, we argue that the involvement of Chicago HTAs in US-oriented mobilization resulted from an evolving series of organizational responses to state actors in both Mexico and the USA. We find that these interactions conferred growing levels of organizational capacity and political legitimacy upon CONFEMEX, the Chicago-based HTA confederation, and played a key role in its embrace of US-centred strategies of popular mobilization in 2006. These findings suggest the utility of a long-term, binational focus on multiple state actors in order to understand the complex political evolution of HTAs and the emergence of the US immigrant rights movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potential of microfinance to contribute to household development. Data suggest that required saving facilitates debt payment, mobilizes savings into financial institutions, encourages regular deposits, and provides non-economic effects. However, most participants think about their savings only as an emergency fund and insurance mechanism for debt payment instead of as a resource to enhance household and business net worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]