FIN 239: Finance and Society: Migrant Finance
Course Outline and TimeTable - Fall 2026

Date

Module

Assignment

8/31

Module 1: Intro to Migration
World Bank. (2023) "Outlook: Changing Patterns, Needs and Risks" in World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2023, Chapter 3.

9/2

Module 2: Intro to Financial System
Bodie, Zvi; Robert Merton and David L. Cleeton. 2009. Financial Markets and Institutions, in Financial Economics, 2nd edition, Chap. 2, Pearson Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

9/14
Part 1

Module 3A: Financing the Journey
Age of Empire and Commerce:
Galenson, David. “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas,” The Journal of Economic History, Mar., 1984, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 1-26

10/5
Part 1

Module 3C: Financing the Journey
Age of Shadow Migration
"The Epidemic of Debt Plaguing Central American Migrants" (Pulitzer Center, 2019), https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/epidemic-debt-plaguing-central-american-migrants
Ruiz Soto, Ariel G.; Rossella Bottone; Jaret Waters; Sarah Williams; Ashley Louie and Yuehan Wang. 2021. “The Economic Costs of Migration,” Section 3 in Charting a New Regional Course of Action: The Complex Motivations and Costs of Central American Migration, Inter-American Development Bank

10/5
Part 2

10/12
Part 1

Module 4B: Financing En Route
Age of Mass Migration
https://www.hursthistory.org/uploads/1/0/7/0/107013873/steerage.pdf
Boyd, James. 2015. “Merchants of Migration: Keeping the German Atlantic Connected in America’s Early National Period,”
German Historical Institute: Immigrant Entrepreneurship, https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/merchants-of-migration-keeping-the-german-atlantic-connected-in-americas-early-national-period/

Critical Reflection on Io Capitano

10/19
Part 1

Module 4C: Financing En Route
Age of Shadow Migration
Look at slides for Journeys: Migrants in Transit; and Smuggler Viewpoint
read and discuss Jason De Leon, "The Land of Open Graves," University of California Press, 2015, chapters 4-7

10/26
Part 1

Module 5: Financing the Business of Life
Age of Empire and Commerce:
Edwards, Justene Hill.  ‘“This Slavery Business Is a Horrible Thing”: The Economy of American Slavery in the Lives of the Enslaved.’  Business History Review 97 (Summer 2023): 307–334. doi:10.1017/S000768052300034X
Edwards, Justene Hill.  “Introduction: Capitalism in the Economic Lives of Enslaved People.” In Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina. Columbia University Press, 2021. http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.7312/hill19112.5.
Edwards, Justene Hill. “‘Negroes Publickly Cabaling in the Streets: The Enslaved Economy and the Culture of Slavery in Colonial South Carolina.” In Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina. Columbia University Press, 2021. http://www.jstor.org.rlib.pace.edu/stable/10.7312/hill19112.6.

Talk by Michelle Maita from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs

11/2

Exam 1

11/9
Part 1

Module 5B: Financing the Business of Life
Age of Mass Migration
Kobrin, R. A. (2026). “Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Financial Landscape of New York City,” Chapter 3 in Credit to the nation: Eastern European Jewish immigrant bankers and the shaping of American finance, 1873–1930. Harvard University Press.
Kobrin, Rebecca. 2018.  “Jewish Immigrant Bankers, New York Real Estate, and American Finance, 1870–1914” in Hasia R. Diner (ed.) Doing Business in America: A Jewish History. Purdue University Press, 2018. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/65068.
Recommended:
McCraw, T. K. "Immigrant Entrepreneurs in U.S. Financial History, 1775-1914." Capitalism and Society 5, no. 1 (January 2010): 1–47.

11/18
Wed
Part 1

Module 5C: Financing the Business of Life
Age of Shadow Migration
Ashe, J., & Wilson, K. (2025). Backyard bankers: Immigrants, money clubs, and the pursuit of the American dream. Practical Action Publishing.
Zhao, Linda Shuo. 2013.  “Underground banks in NYC, their main clientele and operators: The perspective of Chinese illegal immigrants,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 41 (2013) 36e57
Lisa A Keister. 2015. “Financial Asset Ownership: The Case of Chinese and Indian Immigrants to the United States, Bus Econ J. 2015 ; 6:24

Module 5C: Financing the Business of Life
Age of Shadow Migration
Lisa A Keister. 2015. “Financial Asset Ownership: The Case of Chinese and Indian Immigrants to the United States, Bus Econ J. 2015 ; 6:24
Talk by Jessie Lee from Renaissance CDFI

11/23
Part 1

Module 6B: Remittances
Age of Shadow Migration
Pertilla, Atiba. (2025). “U.S. Immigrants, Remittances, and the Courts, 1904–1925,” in Speculative Endeavors: Cultures of Knowledge and Capital in the Long Nineteenth Century ed. Katrin Horn et al. (University of Manchester Press, 2025): https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526182166.00010

Short Reaction on Benton and Liu (2018)
Short Reaction on Rodriquez-Sanchez; and Ruiz Soto et al. (2021)

11/30
Part 1

Module 6B: Remittances
Benton, Gregor and Hong Liu. 2018. “Introduction,” Chapter 1 in Dear China: Emigrant Letters and Remittances, 1820–1980, Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520970540
Benton, Gregor and Hong Liu. 2018. “The Structure of the Qiaopi Trade and Transnational Networks,” Chapter 2 in Dear China: Emigrant Letters and Remittances, 1820–1980, Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520970540

12/7
Part 1

Module 7: Migration Industry and its Political Economy
Mayda, Anna Maria; Giovanni Peri. 2018. ”The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States,” Research Briefs in Economic Policy, no. 130, Cato Institute, Sept. 12

Final CE project report due

12/14

Final