Research
Money Tales: Financial Socialization of US Immigrants’ Use of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations
AbstractThis Money Tales project explores the financial socialization experiences of some Black immigrants from West African and Afro-Caribbean diasporas living in the United States, focusing on their participation in Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs)—informal, communal savings groups. While ROSCAs are globally practiced and culturally diverse, this study analyzes them through the interpretive lens of African Indigenous knowledge (AIK) to illuminate how relationality, mutual aid, and intergenerational learning can shape financial behavior among immigrant communities.
Using life history calendar methodology with thirteen U.S.-based immigrants, the study explores money-related messages Money Tales storytellers received and how they inform their adult financial decisions, particularly their use of non-mainstream tools like ROSCAs. This research addresses key omissions in existing financial socialization literature, which often centers on white, middle-class young adults and formal banking systems, by amplifying the voices and strategies of often-overlooked populations.
Although ROSCAs predate currencies, modern financial institutions, and are practiced across the globe, they remain marginalized within dominant financial discourses—often dismissed as relics of the Global South or tools for those excluded from the formal economy. This study challenges such assumptions by advocating for inclusive frameworks that recognize ROSCAs as legitimate, culturally grounded economic practices.
Findings from the Money Tales storytellers' stories reveal that financial knowledge was often absorbed through silent observation, communal obligations, and early-life exposure to ROSCAs—experiences rarely framed as “formal education” but quite impactful. Storytellers described reactivating these lessons in adulthood as strategies for achieving not only economic security but also relational accountability and cultural continuity.
In centering their money message memories, the study positions ROSCAs as instruments not just of survival, but of communal stewardship, group prosperity, economic agency, and diasporic resilience.
Research Interests
Diverse Economies: the big picture
Drawing on diverse economies theory to recognize the plurality of economic life—capitalist and noncapitalist alike—including informal lending, communal savings, care work, barter, and collective ownership beyond and beside markets and wage labor. Across all my work, I draw on diverse economies scholarship pioneered by J.K. Gibson-Graham.
Community Economies: the everyday
Community economies—one of the core expressions of diverse economies theory—are the economic practices communities build on their own terms—the cooperative structures, rotating savings, and mutual aid networks that center collective support over individual accumulation, beyond and beside dominant financial systems. I explore how these economies take shape, sustain themselves, and what we can learn from them.
Rotating Savings & Credit Associations (ROSCAs): the heartbeat
This is where my work began—and continues to grow. A ROSCA is a communal savings group in which lump sum contributions rotate to one member at a time. I document and highlight the cultural and economic significance of these systems—known across African and Caribbean diasporas as esusus, susus, box, and partner (and many more)—as robust, community-designed financial traditions academia has long mislabeled as informal. ROSCAs are one of the most enduring examples of community economies in practice—predating modern currency and mainstream financial institutions—and the subject of my dissertation.
Cultural Memory: the listening
I examine where financial equity, cultural practice, and community resilience meet and depart, using oral history methodology and handmade books as alternative forms of documentation.
Financial Socialization: the passing down
I trace how and from whom financial knowledge travels across generations—at kitchen tables, in church halls, or without a word mentioned at all—with particular attention to immigrant and economically vulnerable communities.
Broadening Financial Circles: the why
I work toward reimagining access to financial systems and resources, with particular attention to economically vulnerable and immigrant communities whose practices and needs are often overlooked by traditional institutions.
Culturally Responsive Financial Literacy Initiatives: the practice
I advocate for financial education initiatives that honor the whole economic life of a community—beginning with what they already know and practice—rather than replacing it with one-size-fits-all financial frameworks.
Where the Art-Making Happens
An experimental practice and studio bridging ancestral economics and living art
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