From Neoliberal Dreams to Precarity: Micro-Entrepreneurs and Family Debt in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This article argues that precarity partly arises from the growth of household debt in the age of rentier capitalism. It examines the mechanisms of neoliberal finance and its debt-based economic growth model in shaping precarious work and life in Kyrgyzstan. The unequal social relationship between lenders and borrowers generates considerable economic dispossession, appropriation, precarity, and harm. For debt-ridden micro-entrepreneurs, some of the pressures and consequences of debt are acutely felt within their family context, where members struggle to negotiate and ameliorate the impact. By drawing on three case studies of a small farmer, a bakery owner, and a petty trader turned petty producer, the article examines how usurious interest loans plunged them and their families into distress, insecurity, fear, loss, and powerlessness. The first-person accounts of these micro-entrepreneurs-cum-borrowers explain how debt was produced and experienced, and how it was inseparable from the country's rentier capitalist transformation. The study also draws on twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with financial institutions and thirty-three semi-structured interviews with borrowers conducted in Kyrgyzstan.

Rentier capitalism and global economic imaginaries in Central Asia 1

“…Many households have struggled to make ends meet as a result of higher interest charges, rental costs, utility prices, commissions other fees (Satybaldieva & Sanghera, 2023). The extractive industries have plundered resource-rich Central Asian countries through predatory drilling and mining, and have damaged local ecosystems.…”

“…Some MFIs charged interest rates as high as 180% (Sabi, 2015). Predatory lending, high interest and aggressive debt collection have generated immense economic dispossession, social misery, unlawful evictions, fraudulent practices, social shame and self-harm (Satybaldieva & Sanghera, 2023). Moreover, global financial corporations and offand onshore centres have facilitated and benefitted from illicit and licit capital outflows from Central Asia (Cooley & Heathershaw, 2017).…”