The Social Meaning of Extra Money by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030182977
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

These tontines are female spaces from which men are excluded.12 As J. Semin has shown, tontines serve many and varied purposes. Mtsango are used to rapidly raise capital to pay for family ceremonies such as “big weddings,” substantial funds to invest in personal projects such as building or finishing a house, and money to pay for a child’s schooling or studies abroad. Above all, they serve as a social meeting place for members. So tontines are effectively spaces that facilitate the migrant integration in the land of immigration and prevent new newcomers from being isolated.

In addition to the tontine networks, community network solidarity takes the shape of shopping missions in marketplaces such as Istanbul. Shopping missions are a form of solidarity offered by traders to women who do not get out much and need certain products that can only be found in larger stores and markets. A customer gives a sum to a trader with precise instructions as to the prices to pay for the products. Most shopping missions mentioned in the interviews are for products for big wedding celebrations in the home or host country. Sometimes, traders are asked to buy more everyday products such as Indian fabric held in high esteem in Comorian society. And then there are the shopping missions by traders in the host country and those dispatched by freight and cargo to the country of origin when goods and products are needed for projects such as house building. For this type of project, the shopping mission may consist of asking the businesswoman to buy building materials that the customer is responsible for clearing through customs in the country of origin. The customer has to provide the trader with enough capital to provide the service. Yet, as with any exchange, a system of give and take is the norm, and it can be both social and economic in this case. For example, customers may provide capital over the sum of the prices of the products to be bought, with the remainder to be used for the traders’ traveling expenses. This is actually an explicit part of the negotiating strategies used by female “customers ” to persuade traders to provide them with the service. The capital provided for a shopping mission can sometimes be used to part-finance tontines. In the case of social returns, tradeswomen who accept these missions expand their customer network and build up symbolic capital (prestige) that can advance their sales activities. One trader (Halima, 60 years old) told us that she gets the impression that she is known by everyone in Marseille as a “great trader” because she accepts certain shopping missions.

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