Fronts and Friends: Social Contingencies in the Management of Drug Debt

Abstract

ABSTRACT Illicit drug markets have long been associated with violence as a mode of regulating market behavior, especially regarding debts linked to drug purchase. While a growing literature examines violent and nonviolent modes of ensuring repayment by dealers and lenders, little research has focused on strategies of buyers and borrowers in navigating drug debt. Drawing on interviews with 75 people who use drugs within a materially disadvantaged neighborhood, we explore experiences in managing debt to dealers and within social networks adjacent to drug markets. Findings describe complex strategies to protect reputation, foster relationships with dealers, and employ cooperative, assertive, or coercive tactics to negotiate credit arrangements that sustain and stabilize the drug market while mitigating violent retaliation for unpaid debt. Findings also elucidate informal credit arrangements within social networks, identifying reciprocity and self-control as constitutive of social capital within friendship groups that serve as financial and social safety nets. This research considers socially embedded, boundedly rational decisions of marginalized drug market actors, highlighting diverse financial management practices among structurally vulnerable borrowers that serve economic and social goals while seeking to mitigate the risk of violence.