L'exclusion bancaire

A Tale of Two Debtors: Responding to the Shock of Over‐Indebtedness in France and England – a Story from the Trente Piteuses

“…141 The nineteenth century justification for protection of the worker casualties of industrialisation is applied to the consumer casualties of contemporary credit society.This 'social' 142 aspect should not however be equated with socialism: avoiding social exclusion draws support from both the conservative right and the social left. Discharge of debts through insolvency is a modest form of redistribution reducing the need for state welfare 143 . A procedure originally stigmatised as creating social exclusion is now supposed to achieve the opposite objective.…”

“…In some cases there may be a substantial period of time elapsing between the exogenous ‘shock’ eg divorce and the application to the over‐indebtedness commission. Individuals may use credit cards or crédit renouvelable in France to attempt to maintain a lifestyle hoping that their prospects will improve but does one classify this situation as active rather than passive over‐indebtedness? Even official reports recognise that the distinction is an oversimplification.…”

“…The law of over‐indebtedness is a symbolic focus for discussion of the supposed breakdown of social and familial sources of solidarity, concerns about the rise in inequality in France and the tensions between neo‐liberalism and the social market. The continuing increase in individuals seeking access to the Over‐Indebtedness Commissions is a challenge for a country which claims to have strong consumer protections for credit, including interest rate ceilings, and yet which seems to have a comparatively high rate of over‐indebtedness compared with England and Wales, which has much higher levels of outstanding household debt.…”

La dette sacralisée

“…La financiarisation de nos sociétés s'est accompagnée d'une augmentation massive de la dette financière privée et de la pénétration de celle-ci dans de plus en plus de domaines du quotidien. Pour les ménages, cette évolution a fait de la capacité à s'endetter et à jongler entre différentes formes d'endettement un besoin social (Gloukoviezoff 2010). Les données exposées dans les deux premiers chapitres de cet ouvrage montrent que la situation helvétique n'est pas différente.…”

“…Comme le mentionne Gloukoviezoff (2011) : « Vous avez des banques qui sont des entreprises commerciales avec des contraintes de rentabilité, […] qui fournissent ces services indispensables à l'ensemble de la population […]. Vous avez un besoin social qui doit être satisfait par des entreprises qui s'adressent à des clients.…”