Abstract
ABSTRACT Government-backed student loans are not a panacea for educational inequality or social ills. By examining student loans as a means of social control, Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence can provide novel ways to encapsulate debt-response patterns across cultures and geographies. This gentle, invisible violence creeps in via misrecognition, a process that encompasses rationalising indebtedness and attaching latent meaning or emotional weight to student debt. Student debt is, first, internalised as a regular and reliable part of life, whether through income-contingent repayment or traditional mortgage-style programmes. Also present is the gradual internalisation of gratitude, trust, and obligation. Deferment or delinquency is subsequently interpreted as a sign of personal inadequacy. In essence, symbolic violence establishes a missing link between an individual’s subjective experience and institutional structural barriers. It disrupts commonly held assumptions on marketisation, private return, and individual responsibility in top-down neo-liberal discourse, informing student loan policy through a multidimensional lens.
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