Abstract
The ‘financialization of everyday life’ is a concept widely recognized by academics as an increasingly fundamental way of understanding the impact of neoliberal ideologies and financial processes on individual identities, subjectivities and relationships with financial services. This article contributes to debates on the consumption of sub-prime credit and calls for a sophisticated analysis of this aspect of financialization to take into account the variegated use of financial services and use of credit by people on low and moderate incomes. Drawing on qualitative analysis of the ‘lived experience’ of financialization, based on rigorous in-depth interviews with 44 low/middle income borrowers in the United Kingdom the article concludes that: individuals are at risk of financial insecurity due to increasing variegation of credit markets, and; that the binaries of ‘super inclusion’/’relic’ financial ecologies fail to reflect the complexity and variegation of credit use in contemporary society as a result of financialization.
Highlights
The consumption of personal credit has received increased attention in recent years across the social sciences, in relation to the ways in which it shapes markets and subjectivity (Burton, 2008; Burton et al, 2004; Langley, 2008a, 2008b, 2014; Leyshon et al, 2004, 2006; Soederberg, 2013)
Drawing on the concept of financial ecologies (Leyshon et al, 2004) this article adds to this debate by exploring the relationships between the sub-prime consumer credit market and individuals at the financial ‘fringe’
This article has highlighted the ways in which the geographies of credit consumption at the ‘fringes’ are being redrawn as a result of how alternative credit products and regulation are in some ways becoming normalized (Aitken, 2006, 2010)
Summary
The consumption of personal credit has received increased attention in recent years across the social sciences, in relation to the ways in which it shapes markets and subjectivity (Burton, 2008; Burton et al, 2004; Langley, 2008a, 2008b, 2014; Leyshon et al, 2004, 2006; Soederberg, 2013). Debates have explored how credit is used for lifestyle. Drawing on the concept of financial ecologies (Leyshon et al, 2004) this article adds to this debate by exploring the relationships between the sub-prime consumer credit market and individuals at the financial ‘fringe’. The financial ecologies approach suggests that the financial system (re)produces smaller:
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