Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates everyday lives of indebted young Danes and discusses credit/debt constellations involved in the 'financialization' of the everyday. The paper outlines emotions and experiences as linked to different forms of debt and carves out the emergence of new moral hierarchies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the everyday lives of indebted young Danes and discusses emerging meanings and usage of credit and debt involved in the 'financialization' of the everyday (Gonzalez 2015). A growing number of Danish young adults have problems navigating digital money in a market offering easy access to credit and a complexity of credit forms. Debt problems severely impacts life and in a Danish context living in debt is characterized by loneliness, shame and fear. Being indebted also alters temporal orientation in a context valuing independence by imagining one's life as 'moving backwards' e.g. living like a teenager with mum and dad. Young people's narratives' reflect financing characterized by continual movements in and out of debt, sometimes default debt, and highlight an ongoing struggle to control personal finances where the boundary between 'having money' and 'owing money' is blurred. People in their late twenties outsource their everyday budgeting to their parents or bank manager, while others wonder: 'Why am I allowed credit at all'? Building on anthropological notions of emotional and moral connotations linked to the credit/debt dyad (Peebles 2010) the analysis of emotions and experiences with various forms of debt points towards a variety of credit/debt constellations transgressing the temporal spectrum outlined by Gregory (2012). In particular, while debt in itself is not considered problematic, the increasing usage of 'overindebtedness' in the Danish context simultaneously normalizes debt and stigmatizes 'default debt'. The Danish case therefore carves out a more complex moral hierarchy of debt forms.