Microfinance in a developed welfare state: A hybrid technology for the government of the outcast

•Microfinance in Sweden adopts neo-liberal logic and methods of entrepreneurship.•Neoliberal logic dominating microfinance in Europe turns the social into the personal.•Microfinance as a technique for the government of the outcast in the West.•Microfinance extends the act of governing to include private and civil society actors.•Highlights everyday resistance to neo-liberal financialization of inclusion efforts.

Although microfinance is often thought of as a tool to address poverty in developing countries, it is also being introduced in a number of countries in the developed world. The paper presents a qualitative study of the first year of the introduction of microfinance to address vulnerable groups in Sweden. Savings banks and nonprofit organisations collaborated in the introduction of microfinance as microcredit for micro-enterprise. The paper argues that the rationalities behind actors' participation in microfinance differed, with banks adopting a market rationality and nonprofits mainly a rationality of community empowerment. In line with a governmentality approach, the paper argues that the neoliberal market rationality dominating microcredit for micro-enterprise colonises the space of the communitarian aspect by turning the social into the personal. The paper's qualitative approach complements a governmentality analysis by highlighting the everyday resistance to the neoliberal financialisation of inclusion efforts.