Mortgage indebtedness and home repossessions as symptoms of the financialisation of housing provisioning in Spain

Bibliographic Data

ID2360992
AuthorsIrene Sabaté (Universitat de Barcelona), Irene Sabaté Muriel (0000-0001-8470-0765, Universitat de Barcelona, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume36
Issue2
Pages197-211
Publication date2016-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308275x15614636
OpenAlexW2403545467
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited9

This paper addresses a particular aspect of financialisation: how mortgages taken out by ordinary people in order to become home owners have been the object of securitisation processes, that is to say, have been used by banking institutions to issue financial derivatives that are then sold to investors. Despite taking place on the abstract arena of financial markets, this process has crucial consequences for people's livelihoods, as it is anchored on a material resource: housing. The world of finance has thus an impact on the satisfaction of a basic human need. Drawing on an ethnographic research among those affected by home repossessions in Spain, it will be examined 1) how financialisation has a direct impact on the lives of mortgage borrowers, especially as they face economic hardship, and 2) how 'folk' understandings of financial products, and the practical knowledge associated to it, are challenging expert discourses, while claiming for the restoration of moral principles under financial capitalism

Agriculture · Business · Capitalism · Collateral · Economics · Face (sociological concept · Financial system · Livelihood · Market economy · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Finance

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