‘I’m not going to feed the bailiffs’: personal bankruptcy and debtor agency in narrative accounts of struggling debtors
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378025%3A_____%2F25%3A00597758" target="_blank" >RIV/68378025:_____/25:00597758 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2360915" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2360915</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2360915" target="_blank" >10.1080/17530350.2024.2360915</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
‘I’m not going to feed the bailiffs’: personal bankruptcy and debtor agency in narrative accounts of struggling debtors
Original language description
The article uses the formal instrument of personal bankruptcy proceedings as an illuminating context to contribute to the scholarship on the lived experience of overindebtedness. Through the analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with heavy debtors living in Czechia, we provide a focus on debtor agency, exploring how bankruptcy interrelates with how struggling debtors narratively approach debt and construct their capacity to act. We show that first-hand accounts of (planned) participation in a bankruptcy proceeding contain a surprising number and variety of narratives of agency. Emphasizing the processual character of bankruptcy proceedings, we demonstrate that bankruptcy supports enactments of debtor agency by interfering in the temporal ordering of debt as performed by the struggling debtors, shaping the experiences of overindebtedness also among those debtors who have not (yet) entered the formal process. We show that the narrative constructions of agency as regards bankruptcy are often embedded in a neoliberal discourse of merit and self-responsibilization. While the respondents reproduce a largely depoliticized and individualized account of debt resistance that at times operates with a hierarchization of struggling debtors, disclosing bankruptcy (intentions) to others also evokes spontaneous and unorganized acts of solidarity within personal networks that empower debtors.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
50401 - Sociology
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/GA20-04863S" target="_blank" >GA20-04863S: Constructing and Performing Citizenship through Debt in the Czech Republic</a><br>
Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Journal of Cultural Economy
ISSN
1753-0350
e-ISSN
1753-0369
Volume of the periodical
18
Issue of the periodical within the volume
1
Country of publishing house
GB - UNITED KINGDOM
Number of pages
17
Pages from-to
18-34
UT code for WoS article
001296286000001
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85201795108