From Wage Migration to Debt Migration?

In the 1990s there were two new ideas to make the Ixil Mayas of Nebaj, Guatemala, self-sufficient. The first idea, conceived by microcredit consultants, was to make it easier for the Ixils to borrow money so that they could become entrepreneurs. The second idea, conceived by Ixils, was to use the credits to smuggle themselves into U.S. labor markets. In the process, Ixils turned many of the credits into loans to other Ixils at 10 percent interest per month. By 2006-2007 many stateside Ixils were failing to find enough work to pay their loans, and their serial debts were collapsing back in Nebaj. Currently an association of Nebaj women is asking international organizations and the Guatemalan government to save their houses and land from foreclosure. The stories that Ixils tell suggest that migration is a highly competitive process not just in U.S. labor markets but in the sending population, where people are being forced to go north by remittance- and credit-driven inflation. Their stories also suggest that migration is a process that runs on debt, with migrants indebting themselves and their relatives to the migration stream in ways that many are unable to repay. The debts not only enable migration but require more people to migrate north, in a chain of exploitation that may suck more value from the sending population than it returns.