Matthew Sparkes
Biographic Data
| ID | 6685985 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Sparkes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Sparkes |
| SIGNATURE | SPARKES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6636-2931 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Stigmatized Homeowner: Variegated Debt Moralities, Credit-Score Governance, and the Making of UK Mortgage Prisoners
This article examines how UK political and financial elites construct and legitimize the marginalization of “mortgage prisoners” – homeowners trapped in closed-book mortgages and unable to remortgage. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis of 55 texts (2007–2025), it identifies three discursive practices that emerged sequentially and underpin policy (in)action. Initially, elites downplayed distinctions between active and inactive lenders, legitimizi…
Housing, debt, and credit score classification situations: What the unique ‘situation’ of mortgage prisoners reveals about contemporary class inequality
The expansion of debt-leveraged homeownership in Anglocapitalist economiesincluding the US, UK, and Australiahas created powerful stratifying effects, which prevailing critical Marxist and asset-based stratification accounts assert are reconfiguring class inequalities.While the Marxist account contends that altered class relations are centred on bifurcations between creditors and debtors, the asset-based one constructs typologies of differing rel…
Debt, Credit Payment Holidays, and Their Relationship with Mental Health during the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United Kingdom
Although the relationship between debt and mental health is well documented, little is known about how changes in debt status and the specific policies implemented to assist borrowers during the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the mental health of men and women. Particular attention is paid to the implementation of a non-neoliberal “credit payment holiday” scheme during the pandemic in the United Kingdom. Data come from three waves of the Underst…
The manufactured crisis of Covid-Keynesianism in Britain, Germany and the USA
Economic policymaking shifted away from neoliberal ideals towards ‘crisis’ Keynesianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a comparative process tracing approach to examine how political and economic actors in Britain, Germany and the USA attempt to legitimise a potential return to neoliberalism to voters. We show that pro-neoliberal actors discursively construct a ‘crisis’ of COVID-Keynesianism by associating it with rising inflation and ‘unsu…
The Political Economy of Household Debt & The Keynesian Policy Paradigm
Britain is an exemplar of a financialised economy that developed systems of household debt to drive economic growth from the 1980s onwards. The prevailing critical and constructivist accounts consider this development as a key feature distinguishing neoliberalism from Keynesianism. We challenge these prevailing accounts for insufficiently acknowledging the socio-political motivations and consequences of a significant rise in household debt from 1…
Borrowed identities: Class(ification), inequality and the role of credit-debt in class making and struggle
Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu's class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class pos…
Borrowed identities: Class(ification), inequality and the role of credit-debt in class making and struggle
Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu's class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class pos…
The manufactured crisis of Covid-Keynesianism in Britain, Germany and the USA
Economic policymaking shifted away from neoliberal ideals towards ‘crisis’ Keynesianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a comparative process tracing approach to examine how political and economic actors in Britain, Germany and the USA attempt to legitimise a potential return to neoliberalism to voters. We show that pro-neoliberal actors discursively construct a ‘crisis’ of COVID-Keynesianism by associating it with rising inflation and ‘unsu…
The Political Economy of Household Debt & The Keynesian Policy Paradigm
Britain is an exemplar of a financialised economy that developed systems of household debt to drive economic growth from the 1980s onwards. The prevailing critical and constructivist accounts consider this development as a key feature distinguishing neoliberalism from Keynesianism. We challenge these prevailing accounts for insufficiently acknowledging the socio-political motivations and consequences of a significant rise in household debt from 1…
Borrowed identities: Class(ification), inequality and the role of credit-debt in class making and struggle
Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu's class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class pos…
The Political Economy of Household Debt & The Keynesian Policy Paradigm
Britain is an exemplar of a financialised economy that developed systems of household debt to drive economic growth from the 1980s onwards. The prevailing critical and constructivist accounts consider this development as a key feature distinguishing neoliberalism from Keynesianism. We challenge these prevailing accounts for insufficiently acknowledging the socio-political motivations and consequences of a significant rise in household debt from 1…
The manufactured crisis of Covid-Keynesianism in Britain, Germany and the USA
Economic policymaking shifted away from neoliberal ideals towards ‘crisis’ Keynesianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a comparative process tracing approach to examine how political and economic actors in Britain, Germany and the USA attempt to legitimise a potential return to neoliberalism to voters. We show that pro-neoliberal actors discursively construct a ‘crisis’ of COVID-Keynesianism by associating it with rising inflation and ‘unsu…
Debt, Credit Payment Holidays, and Their Relationship with Mental Health during the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United Kingdom
Although the relationship between debt and mental health is well documented, little is known about how changes in debt status and the specific policies implemented to assist borrowers during the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the mental health of men and women. Particular attention is paid to the implementation of a non-neoliberal “credit payment holiday” scheme during the pandemic in the United Kingdom. Data come from three waves of the Underst…
Housing, debt, and credit score classification situations: What the unique ‘situation’ of mortgage prisoners reveals about contemporary class inequality
The expansion of debt-leveraged homeownership in Anglocapitalist economiesincluding the US, UK, and Australiahas created powerful stratifying effects, which prevailing critical Marxist and asset-based stratification accounts assert are reconfiguring class inequalities.While the Marxist account contends that altered class relations are centred on bifurcations between creditors and debtors, the asset-based one constructs typologies of differing rel…
The Stigmatized Homeowner: Variegated Debt Moralities, Credit-Score Governance, and the Making of UK Mortgage Prisoners
This article examines how UK political and financial elites construct and legitimize the marginalization of “mortgage prisoners” – homeowners trapped in closed-book mortgages and unable to remortgage. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis of 55 texts (2007–2025), it identifies three discursive practices that emerged sequentially and underpin policy (in)action. Initially, elites downplayed distinctions between active and inactive lenders, legitimizi…
Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (6 works) · Debt (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Finance (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Inequality (2 works) · Market economy (2 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (2 works) · Political economy (2 works) · Politics (2 works)