Hoření Samec, Tomáš, Lucie Trlifajová. 2025. Jak v české společnosti osobní dluhy formují životy zadlužených a společenské hierarchie?. Praha: Nakladatelství Karolinum. 216 s. ISBN 978-80-246-5992-3.
This setting of personal debt in the Czech Republic is characterized by the punitive system of foreclosures and debt enforcement, which enabled to multiplied fees for debt enforcement starting the so-called "debt traps" and "debt spirals", on the one side and on the other by the rather stable system of mortgage debts with low number of arrears. The punitive debt enforcement system has been thus related to the segment of predatory consumption loans which were until 2016 highly deregulated and which enabled the debtfare to proliferate focusing on mostly low-income households which used them to substitute for their limited incomes. Only recently the protection of debtors is increased by the legislation and the possibilities of personal bankruptcy has increased, anyway between 700 and 800 thousand people face legally foreclosure and debt enforcement significantly limiting their rights and economic status.
To theoretically and empirically illustrate these setting, we employ three main concepts to conceptualise what we have observed during our field research. These also help to theoretize our analysis and interpretation of our data. We work with the concepts of financialization of subjects, debt performativity and citizenship which allow us to illustrate the governmentality of debt with its disciplinary power and specific mechanisms. These also enable us to discuss its contradictions and possibility to be challenged or contested. We argue that although the processes of moralization and responsibilisation of personal debt use are facilitated through public and private discourses of blame and guilt, financial literacy and accent on meritocratic approach to the citizens, there is also a crucial dimension of emotions and affectivity related to the process of debt governance. The affectivity was related to certain discursive strategies which aimed to modulated the conduct of debtors forcing them to either repay or attempt to become "disciplined subjects"; the narratives of debtors revealed emotionality related to the experience oť debt, and various stress related for instance to the imminent experience of housing precarity.
Through our research data and their analysis we argue that not only the affective dimension of personal debt is crucial for policy and political discussion and for the reproduction of hierarchies. We further argue that although named persona} debt, the experience is far from being individua}, rather the debt is indeed a collective experience while the debtors engage with multiple public and private actors (e.g. their families); it is thus opaque to individualize the issue and reproduce discourses which individualize the "failures" and omit the collective nature oť debts and the structural relationships. Furthermore, we illustrate that although the meritocratic discourse related to the personal debt in terms of who is (un)deserving support and equal rights (only those who are "trying hard''), was seemingly omnipresent, it has practical limitations again – that even one tries as hard as possible to become again "normal member of society'', it might not be enought – again, it is not feasible to understand debts as purely individual metter.
The book is available in the e-shop of Karolinum Press.
Authors
- Mgr. Tomáš Hoření Samec, Ph.D.
- Mgr. Lucie Trlifajová