Protect or punish debtors? Policymaker discourse on the state’s role in personal debt governance

ABSTRACT

Personal debt is a device increasing one’s agency but embedded within moral and legal frameworks that constructs people as individualised financial subjects. This article aims to enrich research on the state role in (subject) financialisation through a focus on personal debt governance modes as constructed in policymaker discourse on the state role in personal debt regulation. Our argument is contextualised in the Czech Republic, where, in 2021, 10 per cent of the adult population faced legal debt enforcement, significantly disrupting their economic situation. Through an analysis of 84 parliamentary debate transcripts and 32 regulatory impact assessment documents related to consumer credit and debt relief laws, we illustrate the ambivalence and complexity of debt governance and state roles. Although two main state roles were enacted – punitive and protective – the policymaker discourse forms a continuum of sorts, blending various moral logics, ascribing multiple responsibilities (individual, state and private actors) and intensively negotiating the category of debtor deservingness. We argue that by accenting financial education as a tool to solve perceived market failures (predatory lending), the financialised logic and structures are reaffirmed, albeit leaving certain discursive spaces for renegotiation and potential resistance against such state functions.

KEYWORDS:

• Personal debt
• debt governance
• financialisation of subjects
• political discourse
• debt enforcement

Acknowledgement

The previous version of the paper was presented at the Biograf 2021 conference, and we thank it for the substantial feedback we received. We thank our colleague Anja Decker for her feedback, Brad McGregor for language proofreading and two anonymous referees for their inspiring comments. All remaining errors are our responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Adamec, 3 March 2018, Chamber of Deputies, 7th session.

2 Tejc, 9 November 2012, Chamber of Deputies, 47th session.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [grant number GA20-04863S].

Notes on contributors

Tomáš Hoření Samec

Tomáš Hoření Samec works at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is interested in critical housing and urban studies, and the analysis of discourses on housing debt and financialization. He currently focuses on forms of collaborative housing and its implementation. He has published research articles in Urban Studies, Housing, Theory and Society, Housing Studies and Journal of Cultural Economy.

Lucie Trlifajová

Lucie Trlifajová is a social anthropologist and public policy analyst. She works at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and the Centre for Social Issues (SPOT), a Czech non-profit research and policy organization. She focuses on the topics of precarity, social exclusion and marginalization, welfare state and citizenship. She has published research articles in Journal of European Social Policy or Work, Employment and Society.