Theorizing the Rise of Microenterprise Development in Caribbean Context

This paper analyzes the unprecedented and world-wide promotion of microenterprise development as a solution to poverty.

Development agencies and governments throughout the world promote microenterprise development as a solution to unemployment and poverty. The paper seeks to explain this phenomenon, and studies microenterprise expansion in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It offers a grounded theory analysis based on interviews with national and international officials active in microenterprise development. Themes drawn from the interviews demonstrate that:

• Failure of past development policies and the neo-liberal response to these failures help explain the vast development of microenterprise in Trinidad and Tobago;
• Trinidad and Tobago found it difficult to attract foreign investments outside the capital intensive energy sector and create sufficient employment opportunities;
• Microenterprises are helping the government diversify the economy and create job growth at the rate of 4% per annum.

The study develops a conceptual framework for understanding microenterprise development under neo-liberalism. In this era, microenterprise development reflects two separate strategies of dealing with economic crises, informal or unwaged work and government transfer or social safety nets, merged into one.