Natalia Gómez Muñoz

Entitlement, Deservingness and Notions of Need: Colombian Forced Migrants and their Livelihoods amid Social Impact Investing

Building on a growing body of anthropological work on development interventions and on contemporary discussions about the moral turn in capitalism, this study uses an ethnographic approach to explore the Colombian context of social impact investing and its entanglements with the lives and livelihoods of forced migrants. Social impact investing is an aggregation of actors and initiatives that have been responding to social challenges using market forces, in the capital and financial markets, allegedly with double-purpose goals: to generate ‘good’ -vaguely defined-, and, at the same time, financial returns. Top level governance and different political and programmatic stakeholders in Colombia have embraced social impact investing as a way to increase the resources available for the improvement of the living conditions of the population (Bain & Company, Inc., 2014); to fill the funding gaps that exist on the road to overcoming so many years of war (Global Steering Group for Impact Investing, 2019); and to make development interventions more outcome oriented, rather than based on the delivery of specific activities (Reisman et. al., 2018).

Specifically, I seek to understand how notions of entitlements, needs and deservingness around certain problems, places and people are produced throughout the Colombian Program for Impact Investing “SIBs.Co” and (i.e., who needs/deserves/is entitled to: job placement support; financial returns; peacebuilding interventions). I first examine the rationale and aims of the Program SIBs.Co as formulated by the commissioners: the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Inter-American Development Bank and the Colombian government. Then, I approach the Empleando Futuro Bond through the service providers, to understand how they re-interpret, reproduce and/or contest the perspectives of the Program and the Bond, in the moral, economic, and administrative dimensions, when putting it into practice. Finally, I work with the intended “beneficiaries”, inquiring about this term, both in terms of identity and power relations, and accounting for how they respond and cope with the Program and Bond’s configurations, and intended outcomes while searching for new livelihoods.