Race, Debt and the Welfare State

Credit/debt and human capital: Financialized neoliberalism and the production of subjectivity

“…The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Brown, 2015;Pitcher, 2016;van Doorn, 2014). 4.…”

“…To make this claim, I now draw upon and further develop approaches from Feher (2009) and Lazzarato (2012; 2015), whose work has engaged with questions of neoliberal subjectivity in the era of financialization, and has been influential for scholars exploring a range of issues surrounding financialized neoliberalism (Adkins, 2017; Brown, 2015; Pitcher, 2016; van Doorn, 2014). I argue that while Lazzarato’s concept of ‘indebted man’ accurately captures debt’s function as a control technique, a speculative logic has now intervened in the conduct of the subject which his work cannot properly account for.…”

“…While Lazzarato’s work usefully demonstrates how debt is intertwined with the production of homo œconomicus , several theorists have complicated his account of indebted life while also gesturing to developments that it cannot account for (Adkins, 2017; Pitcher, 2016; Stavrakakis, 2013). In particular, Adkins (2017) writes against Lazzarato’s claim that indebtedness empties time by giving both the present and the future over to creditors.…”

“…Although scholars have often focused on how either neoliberalism (Dardot and Laval, 2013; Leyva, 2019) or financialization (Langley, 2007; Martin, 2002; Mulcahy, 2017) shape subjectivity and experiences of the everyday, a growing body of research is now starting to recognize how subjects are profoundly shaped by the entanglement of financialization and neoliberalism. While much of this scholarship is indebted to Foucault’s conceptualization of the neoliberal subject as an instantiation of homo œconomicus , who conducts him/herself as an ‘entrepreneur of the self’ (2008: 226), theorists have tended to conceptualize finance very differently, normally as either debt and indebtedness (Lazzarato, 2012; Pitcher, 2016) or as investment and credit (Brown, 2015; Feher, 2009; van Doorn, 2014). This has meant that ideas about how finance capital has shaped neoliberal subjectivity have tended to be organized around diverse, even oppositional, ideas.…”

Debt, the migrant, and the refugee:Lampedusaon stage

“…An analysis of the debt system in Canada indicated that 70% were either paid or paying off loan with data taken over a ten-year period. The Canadian Authority for Citizenship and Immigration concluded from their 2015 report that loans aided settlement(CACI, 2015, 40), see also BenPitcher (2016).…”