Having outlined the broad contours of financialisation, transnational migration and financial exclusion, and public policy responses to these, this chapter provides a first detailed insight into the formal financial practices of migrant men and women drawn from the Brazilian, Bulgarian, Polish, Turkish and Somali communities in London. With varying levels of resources at their disposal, migrant lives are initially played out on the fringes of formal circuits, which different men and women are able to maintain for different lengths of time. Yet, given the financialisation of the British economy which renders living on the margins increasingly difficult, the majority have to engineer some level of access to formal services, particularly banking in the first instance, but also savings and credit instruments over a period of time, as they seek to navigate their (working) lives, provide for their children and households in London as well as fulfil their transnational obligations to families left behind in home countries. Furthermore, access to savings and particularly credit is recognised as crucial for asset accumulation, whether in the UK or more usually in home countries, and is often, although not always, a driving force behind migration.

Utilising understandings of financial in/exclusion expanded upon in Chapter Two, and focusing upon the core services of banking, savings and credit, this chapter details the differential access that migrant men and women have to the formal financial sector in London, and the financial practices that they develop around these services. In so doing the chapter extrapolates the ‘demand-side’ factors that shape migrants’ financial practices, paying particular attention to labour market participation, immigration status, the intersectional location of migrants in relation to gender, nationality and class hierarchies, as well as transnational financial practices. As part of London's ‘super-diverse’ population, earlier discussion has highlighted that migrants enter the UK with very different entitlements in relation to their right to live and work here, and also occupy distinct segments of the UK labour market.