In Debt to the State: Lived Experiences of Indebtedness in State-led Housing Projects in Istanbul

Over the last couple of decades, global debt has soared. Withdrawal of state welfare provision, expansion of financial markets, and dependency of people on credit for basic needs have led to increased indebtedness. Household debts are piling up across the world, in the form of mortgages, student loans, medical debts, credit card debts, and more. Although debt is often seen as a financial transaction in the form of borrowing and repayment, scholars recognize that debt is also a power relationship inseparable from an overall set of interdependencies and a social experience ingrained with subjectivities, obligations and aspirations. Our lives are shaped by the ebb and flow of debt relations. Nevertheless, the lived experiences of indebtedness, everyday negotiations of debts, with regards to power, conflict and consent, and the embodied and emotional labour of caring for debts are still understudied areas. This dissertation draws from ethnographic research conducted in 2019 that focuses on state-led, debt-based housing provision for low-income groups in Turkey. The research examines lived experiences of indebtedness in mass housing projects developed by the state’s Mass Housing Administration (TOKI). The ethnographic fieldwork employs multiple qualitative methods including in-depth interviews with TOKI mass housing estate residents, semi-structured interviews with key informants, public officials, and local actors, as well as focus groups, participant observation and document analysis. By tracing the experiences of indebted households, as well as the narratives created through the state’s housing policy and practice, this research interrogates (1) how ‘debt to state’ is manifested and experienced (2) how the Turkish state’s housing policy operates and shapes gender relations of homemaking and homeownership (3) how debts are cared for in the context of state-led housing provision for low-income groups in Turkey. I share the findings of this research in three empirical and one theoretical article-based chapters. Chapter Three proposes a feminist direction for financialization research in economic geography informed by Social Reproduction Theory. The chapter argues that as austerity regimes exacerbate debt-based finance and household indebtedness across the world, debts are cared for within the social reproductive capacities of home, while the capacity to care for others depletes through precarity and debt. The chapter offers a framework for ‘caring for debts’ by