This article discusses problem debt in the Netherlands, building on an anthropological perspective that acknowledges the role of social relations of people moving in and out of private debt (Hart 2016; Peebles 2010). In so doing, we expect to rectify problematic assumptions about the role of class positions in private debt in the Netherlands that are based on static, stereotypical understandings of class. Whereas a focus on class is commonplace in academic and public policy thinking in the Netherlands, it does not fully square with what we observed in the field. To overcome the gap between our observations and the dominant thought on the subject, we especially zoom in on the agentic properties of social connectedness, which we connect to a new, multidimensional, theoretical concept: the metaphor of the “debt maelstrom.”
Problem debt prevails in various social groups in the Netherlands, and it is a persistent problem with far-reaching consequences.1 Indebtedness impedes autonomy and the capacity to forge one's life, compromising accepted ideals of future prospects (Zaloom 2019). Being in debt is further often stigmatized, internalized as shame, and is associated with apathy, social isolation, and feelings of loneliness (Plantinga 2019). And problem debt has a long arm in the sense that its impact extends in time beyond the present, in some cases stringing together several generations into chains of debt (Stout 2019). Nevertheless, the available empirical record also suggests that indebted groups and individuals, often through force of circumstances, try to make the best of their lives. Some stoically accept the debt as an inevitable nuisance and carry on with their lives; others revolt against it, voicing their fateful situation in no uncertain terms. Yet, crucial for this article, others turn to their network for support.
Social class is considered important in problem debt in the sense that the extraction of financial rents in debt relations matches, if not replaces, labor relations in class reproduction (Davey 2020). In the Netherlands, a standard interpretation of social class that informs academic as well as public policy thinking about debt, generally follows a stratification approach: it categorizes the Dutch people according to static, socioeconomic factors, such as educational attainment, type of job/income, and home equity (Vrooman et al. 2023). It then assumes a positive relationship between “lower”-class positions, indicated by a relatively low amount of socioeconomic resources, and problem debt (Westhof et al. 2015).2 Problem debt seen in this light thus plays a special role in reproducing the class structure of Dutch society: through debt, lower-class groups remain trapped in their class position (Posthumus et al. 2020). However, dur- ing the ethnographic field research for this study, we encountered a more complex reality. Whereas some of the groups in debt we observed corroborate the stratification interpretation of class, we also noticed groups with a so-called lower-class position that succeed in wrestling out of problem debt, while other groups with a higher-class position previously untouched by problem debt we saw confronted with debt-related financial hardship. Thus, social class in the sense of a system of socioeconomic stratification offers only a partial explanation why some groups end up in problem debt, and others do not, or why they escape from problem debt, and others do not.
In order to transcend a narrow stratification approach while remaining committed to acknowledging class in the interpretation of our empirical material, we turn to a processual class interpretation informed by the anthropological work of Pierre Bourdieu. We will show that a Bourdieuan class interpretation, although inspired by social stratification, also focuses on how particular groups actively and purposively mobilize their network of social relations, or “social capital,” to maintain or transform class configurations. It directs the attention to how conversions of favors and support travel through a debtor's interpersonal network, strengthening or weakening it, with different consequences for problem debt. For instance, social connectedness may contribute to forging close and dependable ties through which solidarities emerge that propel groups out of debt (Han 2012). Conversely, connectedness may also be antagonistic, meaning that disruptive tensions can build up in social relations, resulting in a social fissure which eventually compounds debt problems (Guérin 2014). We posit that closely considering particular biographies of (dis)connectedness can be expected to help unpack how networks of dynamic social practices interact with social class, shaping the financial realities of problem debt.
In the next section, we begin with a critical sociopolitical reflection on the context of problem debt in the Netherlands. This reflection shows how, over the past two decades, global economic forces interlocked with a state that lost interest in caring for financially vulnerable groups, replacing welfare for workfare, creating a “perfect storm” for problem debt. At the same time, the neoliberal Dutch state invested in debt counseling, though paradoxically this system individualizes debt rather than considering its structural conditions, thus compounding the problem. Subsequently, we theorize social class in Bourdieuan terms, thereby paying special attention to the question of whether or not social capital can be reduced to social class. Following the presentation of four debt biographies, we demonstrate how social class position and connectedness through kinship can interlock in what we dub a “debt maelstrom”: a whirling funnel that occurs when conversions of favors and support interlock negatively. Yet at the same time, a fortuitous combination of social conversions, following from the active work of mobilizing social resources, may also contribute to carving a path out of the debt maelstrom. We conclude with a short reflection on the further significance of the maelstrom metaphor in opening up a new vista for research on problem debt.
Context: A “perfect storm” for problem debt
A combination of global economic setbacks, expanded credit facilities for personal loans, and, especially, a state increasingly wary of supporting those in need of financial assistance appears to have created a perfect storm for problem debt in the Netherlands. Appreciating the sociopolitical dynamics of this perfect storm is important to appraise the biographical narratives that will follow.
During the postwar expansion of the social- democratic welfare state that accelerated dur- ing the 1970s, the Dutch state functioned as a bulwark against problem debt. Disadvantaged groups were entitled to protection against financial hardship through state support anchored in Dutch citizenship (Swaan 1998). Since the late 1990s, however, political-administrative elites have widely embraced new public management, propagating the use of business principles in running public institutions. This neoliberal turn in public policy repurposed the social contract as an arrangement with paid work as the basis of citizenship. Consequently, those who need state support to counteract financial hardship are obliged to partake in “workfare” programs mandating welfare “clients” to perform all kinds of work—from unpaid and community work to attending courses—in return for receiving social benefits (Arts 2020). In practice this means that fewer groups in need of financial support qualify for benefits, and that those entitled to benefits face an increasingly hostile state bureaucracy administering workfare, compromising their resilience against problem debt (Spies and van Berkel 2001).
During the economic boom years around the turn of the millennium, none of this was considered a major problem. It was broadly expected that steadily rising wages and the labor market's capacity to absorb surplus workers would automatically resolve problem debt. This image dramatically changed, however, when wage cuts, unemployment, and other economic fallout of the 2008 financial crisis engulfed Dutch society. A hard core of disadvantaged groups that lack the networks, means and political clout to move out of their predicament, reproduced through intergenerational transfer and geographical clustering, was particularly hard hit (Afman 2020). Following economic stagnation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, a spectacular rise in living costs resulting from the war in Ukraine, problem debt began to spread into new, higher-class position groups that were previously protected from debt-related financial trouble. Anecdotal evidence suggests they also started becoming massively indebted about a decade ago (Persoon 2021).
That same period saw the rise of new financial markets globally, those for personal credit especially, which evolved alongside pre-existing credit schemes such as hire-purchase and installment payment (James 2014). These new markets benefited from financial deregulation since the 1990s as well as from “fintech”—new online banking instruments developed in the internet age (Arslanian and Fischer 2019). All this combined, led to an upsurge in companies specializing in selling unsecured micro-credit, “buy now, pay later,” and other quick cash arrangements, quietly absorbing the increasing need for money of indebted groups.3 It is hard to underestimate the long and pernicious arm of personal credit, however. First, financial institutions must feed the details of credit transactions into the specially created, independent central credit register (BKR), which gives banks and other creditors insight into borrowers’ outstanding debts and personal credit ratings. Second, under stringent financial laws promulgated after the financial crisis, successive failures to pay back outstanding debt eventually results in personal bankruptcy, which is a punishment in the form of the public humiliation of subjecting the individual's legal capacity to outside parties, such as curators and supervisory judges (Schors et al. 2019).
In an attempt to polish its image as the custodian of the nation, the Dutch state heavily invested in a system of debt counseling. Ironically, this system comes with a package of desired behavioral changes, such as prudent bookkeeping and cutting unnecessary expenses, reinforcing the neoliberal image of problem debt as a matter of individual failure (Madern 2015) rather than of systemic malfunction, as the sociopolitical interpretation to which we subscribe suggests. Whereas debt counseling predates the neoliberal turn in public policy and generally accepts the sociopolitical interpretation, under political pressure it has been compelled to embrace the individualizing debt discourse, emphasizing cost efficiency and debt repayment, the consequences of which are discussed further in this article. At the same time, we argue that whereas problem debt is managed by neoliberal debt counseling, debt's consequences are varied, suggesting that forces beyond individual conduct and formal arrangements and relationships are at play. In the following section, we explore this issue further by theorizing the interaction between social class and kinship in relation to problem debt.
Theory: Social class and kinship in problem debt
Academic thinking about the nexus between social class and kinship (or connectedness) in the context of problem debt frequently focuses on the question whether social relations are passive baggage or active resource. The aforementioned standard interpretation of class emphasizes the latter: it posits that social reproduction is grounded in class positions, and that the purpose of social ties therefore is the preservation of—typically antagonistic—class relations (Carrier 2015). For the study of private debt, this means that looking at an individual's social relations is relatively unimportant to grasp the social dynamics of problem debt. The central idea here is that individual interests follow class interests, and that, under pressure of class contradictions, in-group solidarities develop as a matter of course (Graeber 2011). Class struggle is thus considered the chief social mechanism in (re)producing and sustaining problem debt, with the network of interpersonal relations of debtors playing a non-central, derivative role.
Although Bourdieu shares with the standard interpretation an interest in the structure of antagonistic class positions, his work offers a more dynamic view of social relations that includes attention to how actors actively mobilize social relations, perpetuating and/or transforming existing class positions. In Bourdieu's perspective, the class structure presents an ordered disposition, created through a myriad of individual actions, internalized in thoughts, perceptions, and feelings (Grenfell 2008). In contrast to the standard interpretation, however, Bourdieu has an interest in social change. In his seminal The Bachelors’ Ball (Bourdieu 2008), for instance, he unpacks social change in the French countryside in terms of shifting class configurations. Whereas the sons of the landed gentry reproduced their rural elite position through the social institution of marriage, with the modernizing French economy giving sway to an urban-based services economy, they lost their once-coveted position to town dwellers, who were increasingly considered more attractive marriage partners. The town dwellers thus leveraged their new class position into increased connectedness through marriage and, consequently, offspring.
Bourdieu's capital ontology offers concrete, analytical suggestions for the view of dynamic class relations that is relevant for the study of problem debt. It posits that the capacity of social actors to mobilize resources by being part of a durable, social network of connections may be considered a form of capital; that is “social capital” (Bourdieu 1986: 241).4 With reference to problem debt, we develop the idea of social capital analytically in the following transactional terms. We argue that a social debt accrues when there is an imbalance in favors obtained by drawing on social capital (Lin 2004). Over time, the corpus of social capital may grow and thrive; typically, this happens when favors in the form of requests for assistance or support can be easily reciprocated. Conversely, when demands for support are frequent and one-sided, asymmetries will develop that may lead to a corrosion of the network of one's social relations. As a consequence, a social debt will develop. Whether or not disbalances in social practices counteract or strengthen the class positions of particular social groups in problem debt cannot be inferred from the capital model itself.
In studying practices of (dis)connectedness that inform indebtedness, this article privileges kinship relations over other social relations. Kinship ranks among the stronger social ties that are often mobilized in times of hardship such as indebtedness. Or, in the language of classic anthropology, family relations are intense in the sense that they involve multistranded social practices that entail strong expectations of mutual support and solidarity (Carsten 2003). At the same time, we do not make a priori assumptions about scope and direction: kinship ties may lift those in debt out of their financial hardship, but they may also aggravate an already insupportable predicament. We adhere to the epistemological position that such processes have to be established empirically in the first place.
Empirical material: Four biographical narratives
We shall present and briefly discuss four bio- graphical narratives, that present different interactions of social class and kinship ties. A short note on research methodology helps to appreciate this article's knowledge claims (for an extended version, see Van der Burgt 2024). The presented narratives were selected from a larger sample of interview material collected during ethnographic field research in the eastern part of the Netherlands between February 2018 and August 2019. Research participants were invited to partake in our study via contacts established with debt counselors at an early stage of the field research. The selection of narratives is grounded in a case study methodology, following the maxims of theoretical sampling: narratives were selected that are considered representative for particular class-debt interactions. Though this means that our findings are not statistically representative for all problem debtors in the Netherlands (Beuving and de Vries 2015), we nevertheless argue that the material offers interesting insights into the social mechanisms creating, perpetuating, and/or resolving problem debt, as further discussed below.
Rachida is a 23-year-old woman whose parents migrated to the Netherlands from Morocco when she was still young. When Rachida's father died unexpectedly, the Dutch government intervened, deeming her mother, who had relied mostly on her husband and did not speak Dutch, unfit to raise her children on her own. Consequently, the child and youth care authorities placed Rachida and her siblings in various state boarding schools (which are less common in the Netherlands compared to the Anglo- Saxon world), depriving her of key social relations with her family; she visited her mother infrequently, and rarely met with her siblings. Whereas she grew up in a protective environment, when she turned eighteen and legally became an adult (meaning she could no longer draw on the cushion of state support available for under-aged minors), she was expected to be fully responsible for her own financial situation. In absence of the boarding school's caring oversight, Rachida has quickly found that her protective upbringing had deprived her of essential qualifications in the form of financial training. For instance, her acute lack of awareness of the need to earn a steady income to pay bills and buy groceries, earlier dealt with by the boarding school, led to financial mismanagement, particularly payment arrears. Lacking a protective, guiding hand, she quickly incurred debts that immediately became problematic in the sense that she was unable to repay them. Initially she aimed to reach an agreement with her creditors. When this proved to be too taxing, Rachida decided to ignore her debt problem by leaving debt collector letters unopened and agreeing to scheduled payments that she could not possibly afford. These delays caused her debts to rise to around 5,000 euros.
The story of Rachida exemplifies the standard interpretation of problem debt. She hails from a lower social class position, and her social disconnectedness means that she lacks a pathway out of problem debt. A further breakdown of her biography supports this. First, Rachida is a young woman with a non-EU, racialized migration background. A recent parliamentary inquiry supports what social studies had unearthed earlier: such groups, through a racialization of social class, are objects of institutional racism (Eerste Kamer der Staten-Generaal 2022). This, in turn, works against their capabilities to advance in life by attaining higher education that leads to better-paying, more secure jobs that offer better protection against financial hard- ship. It further appears that Rachida is a young woman whose ties with her close kin were compromised early on in her life. Whereas a “kinship deficit” may be compensated by a support network of significant others under special circumstances, Rachida faced the additional challenge of her age. With advancing age, we often see the gradual buildup of social capital in the sense of a stepwise increment associated with the nurturing of social relations over a longer time, associated with repeated exchanges of favors (McDonald and Mair 2010). In addition to an extension of the number of social contacts, advancing age may lead to a greater diversity in contacts that comes with the effect of spreading debt-related risks over time. Kinship ties may be productive in the sense of functioning as go- betweens to other types of networks, but Rachida was especially handicapped in that regard with her father deceased and other members of her patrikin remaining in distant Morocco.
Karel and Anna, a middle-aged couple with few educational qualifications, present a case where lower-class position is offset by social connectedness. While both were of a working age, Karel had long since struggled to stay employed—his professional career entailed a string of manual jobs, interspersed with periods of unemployment—and Anna worked irregular hours in a lunch bar. In the past, they incurred several debts totaling around 10,000 euros, which eventually sent them into a debt settlement program. They remembered this as a deeply unsettling experience of being forced to live on a tiny budget, which convinced them to stay clear of debt counselors and other representatives of the debt counseling system. They instead resorted to their personal social relations combined with side-hustles. The couple lived with Anna's daughter Irene, who had a low- paying job that brought in just enough money for rent and groceries. In return, Karel and Anna looked after Irene's son. Anna's and Karel's parents were still alive and they helped the couple financially by buying groceries and presents whenever they could, although their economic means were also limited. In addition, the couple maintained friendly relations with their direct neighbors who occasionally lent them small sums of money and with whom they shared black-market cigarettes, traded groceries, or helped one another out with do-it-yourself jobs in and around the house. Karel further helped a friend sell goods at a weekly market, for which he received some payment in kind, mostly groceries. He also began buying and selling items online, making a modest profit. His income in cash and kind sufficed to repay their remaining financial debts, and the side-hustles allowed for small luxuries that made life bearable. They were thus able to visit friends and relatives who lived further away and to reciprocate favors, both contributing to their status as socially inclusive members of society.
The story of Karel and Anna points at social dynamics that appear to transcend the confines of social class in the sense that their debt, though sufficiently substantial to impede household expenditure, does not degenerate into the financial hardship that we saw in Rachida's case. The material suggests, however, that counteracting lower-class position depends on the couple's ingenuity to make ends meet, which is made possible by a supportive social network. The material suggests the following in more detail. First, early in life, the couple was set on a downward slope that is more common among those living off small jobs in a context of few labor market qualifications. Automatic price compensation in this labor market segment is not self-evident, meaning that even small increases in living costs bite into the household budget. The couple tried to close the gap in their budget with quick cash solutions, but then the credit register authorities (BKR) intervened, forcing them into debt settlement. Their situation further aggravated when Karel began to suffer from a knee injury that he left untreated due to a fear of medical costs, limiting his working hours. Fortunately, Karel and Anna had nurtured a network of reciprocal favors, which opened an avenue for side-hustles. To achieve this, the couple carefully navigated state structures in the sense that they did not report the small income they generated to the unemployment benefit authorities—their earlier, negative experience with debt counseling had made them wary of the state. By thus playing with the system, they succeeded in accumulating some funds, which kept them out of debt.
Whereas the previous cases discussed the biographies of problem debtors coming from lower-class social groups—Rachida's non-EU, racialized migrant background, and Karel and Anna's lack of special labor market qualifications coupled with irregular, low-paying work and occasional unemployment benefits—we now turn to two cases that are representative of higher-class groups. By virtue of standard indicators—educational attainment, type of job/income, and home equity—members of these groups used to be relatively unaffected by the financial hardship of problem debt. Like we did in the previous part, we will juxtapose two cases with markedly diverging outcomes, focusing on the interactions of social class and (dis)connectedness, especially through kinship, beginning with Hendrik.
Hendrik is a middle-aged former businessman who once owned an international transport company. The business initially thrived; at one point he commanded no less than twenty-four lorries. Hendrik remembered with pride the considerable prestige this brought: he was seen as a successful entrepreneur, a man of the world. This dramatically and unexpectedly changed in 2014 when the European Union, in response to Russia's occupation of Crimea, imposed economic sanctions on Russia. This stymied about half of Hendrik's business (Russia was a major market for Dutch exports), depriving him of revenue. Profit margins in the competitive international transport business are small, and Hendrik had just borrowed a substantial sum using his house as collateral to finance the expansion of his fleet. Unable to service the credit line however, he had to sell the house and move into a rented apartment. Being away from home often when business still went well, he had become estranged from his wife, which led to a divorce, and children. Now that the family was confined to a more modest existence, relations with them further strained. With the demise of his business, Hendrik also sensed how his status as a successful businessman plummeted—he remembers how former peers and colleagues no longer sought his company. Approaching retirement, and therefore lacking the energy to venture into other economic activity, Hendrik felt the prospect of personal bankruptcy looming large over him. He was starting to realize that entering debt resettlement, which he pointedly described as “a walk of shame,” was only a matter of time.
Hendrik's story illustrates a broader trend. He used to be accustomed to a solid middle- class existence—a self-made entrepreneur with money to spend, not prone to falling into personal debt. But there is mounting evidence that Hendrik's downfall rhymes with the experience of a larger class of entrepreneurs. The Dutch voluntary self-help organization “Over Rood” caters to entrepreneurs in financial trouble, and they document a rapid increase in applications for about ten years. It is furthermore estimated that, out of about 1.5 million independent contractors and entrepreneurs, about a half earn below minimum wage and about a fifth experience some sort of financial hardship, contradicting the common stereotype of entrepreneurs as rich (CBS 2023). Furthermore, entrepreneurs are usually not eligible for state support in the sense that wage workers normally are: in the state's neoliberal parlance that surrounds indebtedness, the folding of a business is considered the consequence of entrepreneurial risk ingrained in market forces.5 Adding to this is the stigmatization of business setbacks as personal failures; it relegates persons like Hendrik to a special social category associated with impurity and dirt, which causes social distance and creates tension in intimate relationships (Beuving and van Kempen 2023). Compounding the shame of failure are the real economic consequences of imminent personal bankruptcy, especially a drop in income and losing one's financial autonomy, profoundly compromising the idea of an open future. In a context of already strained relationships, this may be a tipping point, disconnecting one from close ties.
Tom and Kimberly present a case wherein class and kinship interact in a fortuitous way, keeping the couple out of financial hardship. The couple is well-educated (both have a college degree) and both were in secure, decently paying jobs. Their problem debt originated in a real- estate deal involving Tom's previous wife that went awry after the seller defrauded Tom, disappearing with 45,000 euros of his money. His ex-wife subsequently divorced him, making it impossible for him to service the mortgage obligations on the house with just one income. Tom applied for debt settlement but was denied it on grounds that it could not be established whether he had acted in good faith when setting up the deal with the seller. During the following decade, Tom lived off a meager income as most of his wage income was seized by his creditors through a wage garnishment procedure. Tom's predicament improved when he met, and later married, Kimberly. Following the advice of a friendly contact at the municipal credit institution, they married with a prenuptial agreement and put their material belongings in Kimberly's name, meaning that Tom's debts would not affect Kimberly. At this time, Kimberly's family proved essential in tiding the couple over, helping them out with money to service part of the debt, but especially with material support. For instance, Kimberly's sister would pay for groceries or petrol when the couple borrowed a car to visit her. When times were tough, their mothers shared food with them, and sometimes the family surprised them—Tom fondly remembered a dinner party when they showed up with food and drinks. There were setbacks too. Kimberly sometimes had to ask her mother for help with groceries, which she found humiliating. Under the pretext of helping Kimberly's son from her previous marriage, the mother usually complied however.
The couple's story shows how social connectedness can serve as powerful prophylaxis to avoid a problem debt spiraling out of control. The material suggests various social mechanisms. First, kinship relations initially set Tom on a downhill slope: the fateful divorce from his first wife, saddling him with a considerable debt. A quick glance at the popular Dutch internet forum for debtors, Schuldenforum,6 indicates that this reflects a more common pattern: unpaid mortgage losses are often the cause for problem debt. Tom succeeded to stave off the worst of the debt repayment by fencing off his belongings from the bank so that the couple remained with sufficient material means to sustain their former lifestyle, though at a slightly lower level. The friendly financial contact, a well-educated man like Tom, proved essential, demonstrating the power of social capital: a network that has value, in this case coming with specialist, financial, and legal expertise. Tom further mobilized social capital through his consanguineal relations in the form of middle-class solidarities. It has been observed that members of middle classes are prone to close ranks when one among them is about to slip away, undermining the prestige claims of the entire group (Wright-Mills [1952] 2002). Maintaining the symbolic capital of middle-classness hence justifies a social investment, in this case of gratis material support from the couple's mothers. It allowed Tom and Kimberly to minimize expenses on groceries, so they could better afford debt repayment, reducing the time spent in problem debt.
Interpretation: Navigating the debt maelstrom
The biographical narratives reveal the importance of debt institutions, or what Marek Mikuš and Irene Sabaté Muriel (this theme section) call “debt apparatuses.” Though this follows in part from the sampling (snowballing began with debt counselors), it also shows the dual nature of such institutions. In Karel and Anna's case, for instance, the couple expressed a deep-felt sentiment that debt counseling impacted them negatively. In Rachida's case, the child and youth care authorities, while not a debt apparatus, shaped her pathway to problem debt by pushing her into financial marginalization. And Hendrik, though he had not yet entered debt counseling, communicated with the counseling agencies to negotiate his impending bankruptcy and feared what would happen next. Tom and Kimberly stand out as a positive case in the sense that they benefited from their contact at the municipal credit institution (part of the Dutch debt counseling infrastructure), shielding the couple from dispossession. It follows further that, whereas debt counseling institutions present an important backdrop for actors in debt, the magnitude and direction of their effects vary considerably. Thus, focusing on debt institutions offers at best a partial explanation of the mechanics of problem debt.
As a second observation, the amount of debt in itself is not what makes it problematic per se. While it is apparent that all the persons figuring in the narratives struggle with problem debt, their debts range from 5,000 euros (Rachida) to around 100,000 euros (Hendrik); an immense, twenty-fold difference. This broad range ties into recent work showing that variation in problem debt in the Netherlands is considerable. To cite one prominent (and rather unsettling) statistic: debt counseling documents that average non-mortgage debt in the population of people experiencing problems with debts is around 37,500 euros on average—though with a considerable variance, meaning that groups with both more and less than average debt are common (NVVK 2023). The narratives suggest that such variation is connected to age, though in an ambivalent manner. On the one hand, Rachida's story suggests that younger people have lower incomes which compromises debt repayment. On the other hand, the other cases conversely suggest that advancing age can promote the accruing of larger debts, which offsets the positive effect of income rising with advancing age. Age thus may be a double-edged sword in relation to problem debt, which perhaps also explains why national statistics do not unequivocally point at a strong age-related trend in problem debt: both old and young suffer from it.7
A closer look at the biographical narratives supports our theoretical lens: that problem debt emerges from particular interactions between class and connectedness, especially through kinship. The broad pattern that emerges from the material is that there are two contrasting outcomes. Class and kinship can interact in a virtuous manner, functioning as a springboard that lifts people in debt out of their financial hardship and into an open future (Karel and Anna; Tom and Kimberly). Yet class and kinship can also interact in a detrimental way, projecting those in debt deeper into it, seemingly without recourse (Rachida; Hendrik). Between these extremes, important variations occur; for instance, moving down for a while but then, through a reconfiguration of class and kinship, going up again, and so on; pathways in and out of debt are dynamic in practice. An important, tentative conclusion that follows from the empirical material is that this dynamic cannot be inferred from social stratification as the standard interpretation assumes. Stratification obviously operates on problem debt—it cannot be denied that groups without financial means or social clout are more vulnerable to problem debt—but the material shows that outcomes are not necessarily inescapable. In other words, just because a person is classified as “high” or “low” class according to a class model that uses static socioeconomic categories, does not mean that they will end up having the positive or negative expected problem debt outcome. Further research is obviously needed, and an important question is: what to look for?
When looking closely at the various interactions of class and kinship in the narratives, represented in conversions of favors and support, the metaphor of the maelstrom suggests itself: a whirling mass of water that arranges itself in the form of a funnel. We argue that “maelstrom” is a useful metaphor for studying problem debt as it closely resonates with the presented narrative material. In the vocabulary of physics, a maelstrom emerges when different forces—in our case: class and connectedness/kinship—meet, subsequently they begin to revolve around an imaginary center, and thus create a circular vortex that results in a centripetal movement: water particles are increasingly pulled toward the center and the bottom (Faber 2012). It follows that, the more powerful the colliding forces are, the stronger the centripetal grip of the maelstrom becomes, drawing particles into the trunk of the funnel, where they disappear below the water surface. Yet when the encountering forces are not that powerful, or when they organize in different, non-colliding ways, the revolving vortex may slow down, so that the funnel flattens, and the maelstrom eventually disappears (or fails to materialize in the first place). Let us consider the fit of the maelstrom metaphor with the narrative material more closely below.8
From the biographies it follows that, initially, social class, matched to certain life events, positions a person in the debt maelstrom. Rachida, for instance, as a semi-orphan with non-European migration roots, had few starting qualifications in life, let alone property in the sense of home equity. Rachida's lower-class position encountered her lack of social capital, setting in motion a debt maelstrom that started to revolve at considerable speed, putting her on a centripetal trajectory. Karel and Anna, however, had patiently built up and cultivated a support network, investing in the social capital of close relations. Whereas their initial social position resembles that of Rachida in the sense of little educational attainment, a shaky income foundation, and no home equity as an economic buffer, meaning that they were prone to be swallowed by the debt maelstrom, they succeeded in overcoming the centripetal forces and stave off the worst effects of debt. Hendrik's case shows a middle-class man who plunged into the debt maelstrom once the social capital of his network collapsed as his business setback made him a liability in the eyes of those around him. Home equity and company assets initially shielded him from maelstrom currents but were eventually overtaken by centripetal forces once his contacts ran unexpectedly thin. Tom initially went under in the maelstrom, but, through his marriage with Kimberly, mobilizing middle- class solidarities, he succeeded in slowing down the maelstrom so that the couple could swim away from problem debt.
The maelstrom metaphor, in addition to explaining the direction and tempo of debt trajectories, further captures a central experiential aspect of problem debt that emerges from all documented narratives. That is, being in problem debt often causes considerable anxiety and confusion as those affected lack oversight and often feel subjected to invisible powers. Note, for instance, how Rachida felt powerless in the face of the debt bureaucracy, the pile of unanswered letters in her apartment, and her poor understanding of repayment schedules. Karel and Anna remembered with horror the conversations they had with numerous debt counselors whose bureaucratic language they struggled to understand. Hendrik, though more skilled in dealing with bureaucracy, remembered the bewilderment when he slowly began to realize that his status of respect was evaporating, unsure how to move on. And Tom felt paralyzed when he failed to convey how he had acted in good faith with the real-estate seller, and could no longer envisage a future. The cases thus show how problem debt upends social expectations as well as ideas of possible futures, with the result that many feel drowned and cannot see what happens across the foamy waters of the maelstrom.9
At the same time, the material shows that, under particular circumstances, debtors’ attempts to slow down the maelstrom current can make a difference. Whereas being in problem debt is a deeply unsettling experience, there also appears to be some room for maneuver. Under particular circumstances, debtors may be able to actively convert social transactions such as favors and support into a brake pad that mitigates the speed of the maelstrom, resulting in calmer waters that allow to catch one's breath and recollect one's thoughts, dreams, and desires. The documented narratives suggest that this happened in particular with Karel and Anna: a couple that a standard interpretation would classify probably as lower-class would have been engulfed in problem debt, yet they succeeded to counter centripetal forces through a productive and meaningful network of kinship and other close social relations that are managed actively. Their biographies counter the standard interpretation that only groups in a lower-class position get into problem debt and, once they do, are bound to stay trapped in it—unless helped by debt counseling institutions. This counterintuitive finding makes one wonder about its wider ramifications. To be sure, the sampling strategy applied in our study does not permit making claims about the statistical representativity of this outcome. Yet numerous conversations with debt counselors carried out during this study suggest that it transcends the mere anecdotal: there may be more “Karels and Annas” than are usually accounted for in national figures. Advancing our understanding of debt dynamics in a workfare setting such as the Netherlands may benefit, therefore, from deliberately looking at groups in lower- class positions who succeeded in navigating out of the debt maelstrom, thereby specifically focusing explicitly on social connectedness.
Conclusions
This article sought to clarify why members of particular groups in the Netherlands enter and/or remain in problem debt whereas others succeed in staying or getting out of it. Grounded in ethnographic field research, we observed that this follows from interactions between social class dynamics and kinship that sets in motion what we termed a “debt maelstrom”: a whirling movement that produces centripetal forces that draws groups deeper in debt. We further noted that, whereas the social constraints of class operate on debt maelstroms, individual debt trajectories are not fully determined by social class. That is, our material corroborates a broader trend: even groups marked by a higher-class position may struggle with problem debt and find themselves powerless against centripetal currents, drawing them deeper into financial predicament. In our view, this testifies to the increasing impact of problem debt: as a total social fact that engulfs contemporary society.
Yet our material also points at another possibility: that the force of intimate social relations, those of kinship in particular, can help to offset, and sometimes even reverse, centripetal maelstrom forces. It appears that a functioning network of kinship ties helps to organize the exchange of favors and support, which creates favorable conditions for directed action and motion away from problem debt. The social mechanisms of such fortuitous interaction effects remain to be studied further. This would possibly benefit from a more fine-grained analysis of histories of (dis)connectedness with more ethnographic depth and a longer timeframe than we were able to offer in this article. Drawing on the debt maelstrom metaphor, in our view, thereby presents a powerful heuristic device: it aids thinking about the multiplicity of responses to problem debt, thereby looking for the structures that perpetuate indebtedness along with a focus on social practices that can help break away from problem debt as well as the experiences that go along with it.
Acknowledgments
This article is part of the first author's PhD project, “In Dire Straits? Meanings and Structures of Consumer Debts in the Netherlands,” funded by Radboud University and supervised by the co-authors. We thank the Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology editors for their unremitting efforts to bring the article to a successful completion, and two unnamed reviewers for their valuable insights and suggestions. The participants of the IUAES conference panel where an earlier version of the article was presented are also thanked. Catherine O'Dea is thanked for language editing.
Notes
We consider a problem debt a private financial commitment that the debtor is not able to repay in an orderly manner without excessive hardship. Widespread academic consensus about the meaning(s) of problem debt in the Netherlands has yet to emerge. Rather than offering yet another definition, as a sensitizing concept we embrace a relatively loose, common-sense description of problem debt, whereby we expect to show its various workings in social practice.
This article uses the terms low(er)-class and high(er)-class exclusively in reference to the standard interpretation, not as normative reference points. The explicit ambition of this article is to demonstrate the limits of this terminology by pointing out how social resources influence economic resources, and vice versa. Class boundaries are more fluid, and therefore less deterministic, than a standard interpretation assumes.
Whereas some of this money may have been spent on expensive consumer items in a competitive struggle for social status, there is mounting evidence that most personal debt is in fact used for daily expenses such as groceries and services bills, and coinciding with cuts in public expenditure on health care, on medical costs (Aalders2023). Room for economizing household budgets is therefore limited in practice.
In his capital ontology, Bourdieu distinguishes four forms of capital—economic, social, cultural and symbolic—and he argues that the availability of capital as a functional resource determines a person's position in the social world. Social capital is most prominently linked to the reproduction of class, status, and power (Smith and Kulnych 2002), and therefore, it warrants our special interest.
Deregulation of the labor market since the early 2000s created an army of freelancers, which urged the Dutch state to recognize the limits of its debt policy for entrepreneurs. New policies for the financial support of indebted entrepreneurs are being put in place, see especially www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/bijstand-voor-zelfstandigen-bbz/vraag-en-antwoord/kan-ik-gebruikmaken-van-het-bbz-als-ik-al-langere-tijd-een-eigen-bedrijf-heb.
Studying such statistics is compromised by mortgage debt and college debt: whereas the former applies more to older groups, the latter mostly pertains to younger groups. Though it would be worthwhile to arrive at a more precise estimation, we feel this is not central to the argument of this article.
Henry van der Burgt (2024) more elaborately discusses the metaphor of the debt maelstrom; this article presents a summarized version.
Capturing the consequences of this confusion for financial decision-making has been foregrounded by the so-called psychology of scarcity perspective. Proponents of this perspective argue that indebtedness reduces the mental bandwidth, which compromises cool-headed decision-making (Mullainathan and Shafir 2013). The debt maelstrom adds to this attention for socio-institutional structures of problem debt.
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