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

Abstract

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.