Financial Inclusion: Between Access and Control

The text analyzes financial inclusion not as a simple technical program, but as a complex institutional construct and a language of global governance. The author introduces the concept of participatory ambiguity, pointing out that the success of the idea of financial inclusion results from the possibility of different groups assigning it various meanings: from humanitarian organizations and governments of the Global South to tech companies and regulators. The article rejects a simplified view of inclusion solely as a project of capital expansion or the indebtedness of the poor, emphasizing that it is a space of negotiation between individual agency and systems of control. Inclusion becomes a field of tension between real access to basic payment services and the drive toward formalization and surveillance of financial flows on a global scale.