Roscas, Ethnicity and Strategy: Suriname Creole Women’s Saving Clubs in Amsterdam

Abstract

Roscas are associations by means of which people save funds collectively and are able to ‘draw out’ in such a way as to enable them to afford things which would otherwise be beyond their financial reach. One typical setting within which these forms of collaboration are found is among migrant communities in urban centres. In the present case study the migrants are Surinamese settled in Amsterdam after the independence of Surinam from the Netherlands. The savings and credit associations not only provide an excellent site for the observation of ethnicity ‘in action’ but also raise the question of whether they are to be primarily understood in economic (economistic) terms or with a primary emphasis on the cultural and symbolic. It is clear too that women have a leading role in the organization of the Rosea in this case study and present a close-up view of the intersection of gender and ethnicity.