This internship is in cooperation with Dr. Jessie Pool (Faculty of Law) and connects social-scientific insights on indebtedness with legal research on debt relief and insolvency proceedings. Particular attention is paid to how legal rules, institutional procedures and communication shape indebtedness and people’s experiences of debt. The project gains insight into whether these systems realistically match people’s practical abilities under financial circumstances.

You will contribute in the following ways:

• Use an intersectional life history approach to understand how people experience debt and all its social, moral and economic consequences at different moments in their life.
• Gain insight into the structural and social circumstances that lead to so called problematic debt; How do family circumstances, healthcare responsibilities, and employment opportunities play a role in debt?
• Understand the relations of institutional and formal debt (consumption, taxes, healthcare, and so on) with informal debt (obligations towards family, informal moneylenders, gift giving relations).
• Examine how people experience the various institutional support structures that aim to overcome indebtedness (volunteer organizations such as Humanitas and Schuldhulpmaatje, support from the municipality (e.g. Gemeente Leiden), court proceedings, etc). One can think of bureaucratic procedural aspects, but also how institutions deal with feelings of responsibility, stigma and blame.

We will help with providing access via the above mentioned organizations. In order to interview research participants, it is necessary to be able to understand Dutch. For more info, contact dr. Erik Bähre, the supervisor of this internship.