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Paper short abstract:

In Political Sciences, the international debt regime has long been interpreted and critiqued from a parochial Western perspective. Drawing on the example of Jubilee Afrika, this contribution seeks to rethink international debt relations from the perspective of social movements in the Global South.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution strives to rethink international debt relations from the perspective of social movements in the Global South. With their critiques, these movements reversed liberal economic assumptions of debt relations and brought forward visions for more equitable and just futures.

The ‘global turn’ in critical IPE and social movement scholarship led to a broadening of the disciplines that invite to research these complex interrelations. The recent acknowledgement of ‘blind spots’ in IPE contributed to shift attention to the periphery in order to be able to grasp knowledge that does not neatly fit into modern categories. However, important struggles in debt activism in Africa remain almost invisible and there is still little work done to conceptualize debt starting from the epistemologies of the South.

Taking the example of Jubilee Afrika, this contribution seeks to rethink the critique of international debt relations from the perspective of social movements in the Global South. It argues to broaden our understanding of debt by garnering greater visibility for the African movements, their conceptualisations of debt and their visions for social justice.