Debt and Austerity

Edited by Jodi Gardner, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Mia Gray, Senior University Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge and Fellow at Girton College and Katharina Moser, Lecturer, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, UK

Contents:

Foreword xv
Acknowledgements xviii

PART I NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
1 Understanding low-income debt in a high-income country 2
Mia Gray, Katharina Möser and Jodi Gardner
2 Mortgage debt in an age of austerity 30
Susan J. Smith
3 Debt begets debt: public and private debt in austerity Britain 46
Mia Gray
4 Austerity and financial safety nets: bankruptcy abuse prevention
and bank protection in Irish post-crisis policy? 69
Joseph Spooner
5 The changing infrastructure of debt relief: privatisation,
bureaucracy and public choice 94
Katharina Möser
6 ‘I just felt responsible for my debts’: debt stigma and class
(ificatory) exploitation 125
Matthew Sparkes
7 Austere social reproduction and the gendered geographies of debt 151
Sam Strong

PART II NATURE OF THE SOLUTION
8 The poverty premium and debt 175
Sara Davies and Andrea Finney
9 High-cost credit in the UK: what’s the problem and how
should policy respond? 194
Karen Rowlingson
10 The rise and rise of affordability complaints 219
Sara Williams
11 Consumer debt problems and the image of the consumer in
Swedish consumer credit regulation 240
Ann-Sofie Henrikson
12 Partnering to address financial exclusion in Australia 260
Jordan Grace
13 Relief from austerity: the case for a targeted write-off of the
UK’s household debt stock 280
Johnna Montgomerie
14 Austerity, inequality and high-cost credit: understanding the
role of a social minimum 299
Jodi Gardner

Index