Over the last three decades, the promise for a better environment and a better life turned from a collective affair into a private affair. When Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, etc. promised better environment, education, housing, and health for all, the real promise was one of enabling everybody to become deeply indebted in order to purchase their future welfare credits. It was a promise which enrolled livelihoods, bodies, and the future labour of whole nations into global financial speculative mechanisms, and turned millions of people across the globe into Indebted Wo/men (Lazzarato 2007), a new bio-political subject whose future depends on the performance of global financial markets. The paper focuses on two movements (SOSte-to-nero and 136) that questioned this process. The movements (both with close links to the water company’s trade union in Thessaloniki, Greece) instituted a radical gesture which took citizens outside the cadre of defining themselves as indebted subjects whose sole option is to sell their commons to global speculators. Instead of simply protesting against privatization, they raised funds (136-euros-per-citizen) and bid against global giants like Suez for buying back the water company when it came up for sale. This turned powerless indebted citizens into potentially powerful decision makers, through an alchemy that turned their money from mere purchasing power, into real capital, i.e. into ability to control decisions and allocate resources. This radical gesture opens up a politics against a pending ‘anthropological catastrophe’ (Castoriadis 1987), i.e. of establishing the indebted wo/man as the inevitable anthropological category for financial capitalism.

1. Maria Kaïka

2. Copyright Reuters: Jon Nazca.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/forced-evictions-in-spain-1380887332-
slideshow/
MORTGAGED
LIVES

3. Maria Kaïka

4. Debt as Biopolitics
PI Maria Kaïka
RAs. M Garcia-Lamarca & D Siatitsa
MORTGAGED
LIVES

5. Maria Kaïka

6. Household debt
to net
disposable
income %
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
2004 2005 2006 2007
2008 2009
Belgium 68.3 70.5 68.3 66.3 68.3 70.7 74.6 79.5 83.3 87.4 89.8 90.8
Denmark 221.1 226.3 232.8 237.7 242.9 248.7 261.9 282.1 299.4 324.7 339.4 338.7
Finland 64.7 66.0 69.2 70.8 75.6 79.9 88.6 99.2 109.4 114.7 117.1 117.5
France 72.4 74.9 74.8 77.0 77.5 81.1 81.9 88.4 93.6 96.6 98.7 104.3
Greece – – – – – – – – 72.1 80.4 84.7 85.3
Ireland 110.8 126.2 147.2 170.0 201.0 225.9 236.2 231.9 240.8
Italy 46.0 50.7 54.5 56.5 59.4 62.5 66.2 71.3 76.1 80.2 81.6 86.5
Netherlands 176.7 189.0 199.1 194.2 204.4 222.9 233.0 251.5 256.9 261.4 274.3 286.6
Poland 19.7 21.6 25.0 31.2 39.2 51.5 52.8
Portugal 77.0 94.3 106.8 118.3 121.6 123.6 126.8 135.9 140.6 145.7 148.9 151.4
Spain 79.7 84.2 87.1 94.1 102.3 113.6 128.2 144.3 154.1 150.1 145.2
Sweden 101.5 105.3 108.6 119.2 121.6 128.2 137.0 146.7 153.8 157.4 159.5 163.5
UK 114.4 117.3 118.9 125.6 138.8 151.7 164.9 167.2 178.8 183.3 178.1 167.5
Source: Compiled from data from the: EMF
(2009, 70); OECD (2009); INE (2014) .
HOUSEHOLD DEBT TO NET DISPOSABLE INCOME %

7. Maria Kaïka

8. The metamorphosis of solidarity and welfare into a private
affair (Crouch 2012) threatens to turn what used to be
collectively responsible political subjects into private
indebted objects: or else, into idiots
Etymological origin of ‘idiot’ = Ιδιώτης. Greek word for
private individual who cares only about his/her houshold
and does not participate in ‘the polis’

9. 1. Mortgage contracts have become a form of biopolitical
technology, that weaved the fabric of everyday life deep
into the web of global financial speculative practices
under the promise of regulating risk and securing a
better future
2. The role of mortgage contracts in producing these new
indebted subjectivies is central in fuelling speculative
practices rooted in the built environment

10. WORKING HYPOTHESIS
Macroeconomic and policy changes could not have led
to the global expansion of speculative real estate
investment without a parallel biopolitical process that
mobilized homeownership as a supplementary welfare
system and mobilized mortgage contracts as tools that
integrated not only the economic but also the social
reproduction of the workforce into global cycles of
financial speculation.
MORTGAGED
LIVES

11. Scholarly attention on:
Institutional an macroeconomic changes that led to the
global expansion of speculative real estate investment
and the expansion of mortgage markets.
(Aalbers 2008 2009 2011; Rolnik 2013; Ashton 2012; Coq-Huelva
2013; Baldauf 2010; Christophers 2011; 2015; Gotham 2009;
Wainwright 2009; Rutland, 2010; Sánchez Martínez 2008; Smart
and Lee 2003).
‘Housing financialisation’
A process through which the mortgage finance market
becomes an investment channel in its own right,
increasingly disconnected from housing production
(Aalbers, 2008; see also Christophers 2011; 2015)

12. Scholarly attention on:
How global speculative real estate practices led to
intensified social polarization
(Bridge 2014; Smith and Searle 2010; Lees 2008; Rolniq 2013;
Soederberg 2014: Wyly , Moos, Hammel and Kabahizi 2009)
How mortgage liberalisation went hand in hand with
decline in welfare provision
(Case et al 2005; Ivanova 2011; Toussaint and Elsinga 2009;
Langley 2008; Powell 2008; Watson 2009; Desmond 2012; Crouch
2012; Lowe et al 2012).

13. Excellent insight on housing/mortgage/finance/real
estate speculation nexus,
But remained remarkably disembodied.
Ignores an important constituency of actors that are as
important in animating this process:
Mortgage holders themselves
Notable exceptions: Coq-Huelva 2013; Palomera
2014: Halawa 2015)

14. SIGNIFICANT GAP IN THE FIELD
By neglecting mortgage holders, we leave
undocumented and untheorized the embodied
processes that are instrumental in enrolling citizens
(thought mortgage contracts) in speculative financial
practices the drive urban renewal

15. KEY OBJECTIVE
Move beyond a macroeconomic and policy based
analysis of mortgage debt crisis.
Expand the conceptual framework within which we
examine mortgage debt , by reconceptualising
mortgage contracts as a biopolitical tool; a “technology
of power over life” (Foucault 2003, 246). that engineers
an increasingly intimate relationship between
speculative practices of global financial markets and
human bodies and practices of everyday life.

16. Taking seriously materiality of mortgage contracts as a means of
forging embodied practices of financialisation
KEYAIMS
1. Pay more attention empirically and conceptually onto how
funneling global flows of capital into urban development goes
hand in hand with signing off significant parts of future labour,
decision making capacity and well being of the workforce to
mortgage debt repayments
2. Document how mortgage contracts became the means to
embed the labour force in a process where the production of
surplus value is subsumed not only via the direct exploitation of
their labour power, but also via the circulation of capital (Marazzi
2012).
Translate signatures on mortgage contracts into changes in
everyday lives
Empirically grounded: Spain – Barcelona (currently expanding
empirical basis inAthens, Sao Paolo and Mexico City).

17. KEYRESEARCH QUESTIONS. (empiricallygroundedon Spain)
1) What were the processes, social relations, cultural practices, dreams,
aspirations related to the promise of homeownership that produced an
intimate relation between the production of urban futures and the
reproduction of biological lives through signing mortgage contracts?
2) What were the specific terms and conditions on mortgage contracts
that enrolled livelihoods into global speculative processes of rent
extraction at a scope and scale broader than ever before?
3) What is the full range of the social and personal consequences of
mortgage debt defaults (incl. health, family and community relations,
sense of citizenship, self-esteem, ability to care for oneself and others,
political engagement or disengagement)?
4) What were the reasons why mortgage contracts that promised to be
tools for building future wealth, became a punitive mechanism?
5) What are the emerging practices and/or collectives that try to
disentangle the fabric of life from the web of global financial markets?
MORTGAGED
LIVES

18. Developing Research Hypothesis and Questions into a
Methodological Framework
John Kennedy Campbell,Anthropologist and Historian
+
Emerging literature on financialization and subjectification
(Marazzi 2007; Langley 2006 2007 2008; Lazzarato 2012; French and Kneale 2012; Hall 2011;
Kear 2013; Martin 2002; Soederberg 2014; Kaika and Ruggiero 2013 2015; Benito 2007; Crouch
2009; Doling and Elsinga 2013; Lowe et al. 2012; Case et al. 2005; Castles and Ferrera 1996;
Ivanova 2011;Toussaint and Elsinga 2009;Aron et al. 2012; Forrest and Hirayama 2009; Malpass
2008; Powell 2008; Crouch 2009; Smith and Searle 2010; Finlayson 2009; Regan and Paxton
2001; Watson 2009; Vatter 2009; Rossi 2013).
MORTGAGED
LIVES

19. A QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGY THAT
1. Foregrounds the role of mortgage holders as actors that animate the
global expansion of speculative real estate investment through financial
markets.
2. Takes seriously the materiality of mortgage contracts as a means of
forging new embodied practices of financialisation,
MORTGAGED
LIVES

20. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
access to mortgage contracts
access to mortgage affected people
MORTGAGED
LIVES

21. Collaboration with 13 international partners
Committed partners to research funding applications
1| European Investment Bank, Regional and Urban Development Division
2| Lab Cidade, Sao Paulo
3| Institute of Government and Public Policy, AUBarcelona
4| Observatorio DESC Barcelona
5| Observatorio Metropolitano de Barcelona
6| Cáritas Barcelona
7| PRAKSIS Athens
8| SHEDIA streetmagazine
9| ARSIS Thessaloniki
10| Department of Geography and Regional Planning, NTUAthens
11| Department of Economic Sciences, University of Macedonia
12| Department of Urban Planning, NTUA
13| Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Aristotle University.

22. METHODOLOGY
-One year observation/ follow up participant observation
at PAH’s weekly meetings
- Identifying evicted citizens – life interviews
- Semi-structured interviews with ‘Veteran’key informants:
barking, real estate, policy sectors
- Archival data: National Institute of statistics (INE); Spanish Tax
Agency (AEAT); Bank of Spain; European Mortgage Federation
(EMF)
-Debt Diaries
MORTGAGED
LIVES

23. NORMALIZING HOMEOWNERSHIP in Spain
Jose Luis Arrese, Minister of the
Ministry of Housing (1957)
“We want a country of homeowners, not
proletariats.”
“Man, when he does not have a home,
takes over the street and, driven by his
bad mood, becomes subversive, bitter,
violent.”
Source: http://www.euskomedia.org/aunamendi/4902

24. LIBERALISATION OF MORTGAGE FINANCING SYSTEMS
AND LAND DEVELOPMENT REGULATION
1981: Mortgage Market Regulation Act
• Enables private operators to enter mortgage market
•Increases loan-to-value ratio and introduces variable
interest rates
1992: Act (enabling SPVs)
1998: Planning and Land Act
• Declares “all land not yet incorporated into the urban
process as eligible for development”
1999: Spain enters European Monetary Union

25. Source: Naredo et. al. (2008: 59) from the Ministry of Housing
Price of housing,
(euro per square metre)

26. “Financial establishments
hurled themselves onto
families so that they would ask
for mortgages …”
(Former Catalan Minister of Housing personal
communication, 7 May 2014).

27. “[in 2000] getting a mortgage
was as easy as buying bread.”
(B., 36 year old female, 4 September 2014)

28. “I did not even have to go to a bank to ask for a
mortgage (in 2000). Everything was made easy
for me. People came to you and offered
[mortgages] with conditions that you never in
your life thought you would be offered….They
came to my house, to my workplace….If you
went to an estate agent they would send a sales
agent to your house, he ate you up, he told you
many things, he described it in a lovely,
wonderful way, that this was your life’s dream,
many things. You get excited, and you end up
falling in their web”
(N., 40 year-old male: 11 June 2014).

29. Source: La Vanguardia newspaper archives, 1997
A mortgage catering for every need

30. “[the estate agent told us] Rent a flat
and you’ll have to pay €800. Buy a flat
and you’ll pay €900. For €100 more, you
live in your own flat and as time goes by
that money is yours”
(M., 32 year old female April 2014).

31. “The purchase-sale price of a home was
€100,000 but the mortgage granted
was €130,000, and the Bank of Spain
didn’t meddle. How was this done? By
making it look like there were four
guarantors….It looked like they bought
the flat together but there was no
relationship or anything. Just to balance
the numbers…”
”
(A, Retired banker, Male, 24 July 2014).

32. Year
Mortgages
Issued
1994 429.873
1995 403.587
1996 412.928
1997 479.237
1998 529.565
1999 585.782
2000 612.852
2001 615.703
2002 690.230
2003 989.439
2004 1.107.664
2005 1.257.613
2006 1.342.171
2007 1.238.890
2008 836.419
2009 650.889
2010 607.535
2011 408.461
2012 273.873
Number of homeownership mortgages issued in
Spain between 1994-2012
Source: Garcia-Lamarca and Kaika (2016 in print)
Compiled by authors, based on data from the INE 2014
CREATING A NATION OF
INDEBTED HOMEOWNERS

33. DEBT DISGUISED AS WEALTH
Wealth held by Spanish households
480% GDI in 1995
800% GDI in 2006
540% of wealth recorded in 2006 corresponded to property wealth, and
calculated on the basis of inflated property values
Total outstanding Mortgage debt in 2008 = 674 billion Euros

34. “As the price of flats went up, they
[flats] were presented to us] as if they
were the best caviar in the world… But
all that we, poor people, asked for was
simply … a dignified home where we
can live and work.” (personal
communication 25 July 2014).
(N., 40 year-old male: 11 June 2014).

35. Year Owned Private rent Social rent Other
1950 45.9 N/A N/A N/A
1960 51.9 41 2 -
1970 63.4 28 2 6.6
1981 73.1 19 2 6
1991 78.5 13.2 2 6.5
2001 80.7 9.3 2 7
2007 87 7.6 1.5 4
2011 82.2 9.3 2.8 5.7
Housing tenure, 1950-2010 (percentage of households)
Source: Palomera 2014; last row added by authors based on data from the INE (2012)
NORMALIZING HOMEOWNERSHIP in Spain

36. Distribution of wage earners by income scale in Spain, 2007
Source: Garcia-Lamarca and Kaika 2016 (in print). Compiled by the authors.
Data derived from the Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT) 2007 and López and
Rodríguez (2010, 233)
Salary scale 0 -
€15,977
€15,977 -
39,942
€39,942 -
59,913
€59,913 -
€79,884
>€79,884
Number of
wage earners
10,863,957 7,017,173 958,288 275,817 193,796
Women (%) 50.4 35.4 28 22 14.2
% of total wage
earners
56.8 35.8 5 1.4 1
% of total
salaries
25.2 49.2 13 5.4 7.2
Average
annual salary
€10.935 €26,175 €47,599 €68,111 €129,852

37. CRUMBLE OF SPANISH ECONOMIC MIRACLE:
SKYROCKETING FORECLOSURES AND EVICTIONS
Source: Madrilonia.org

38. “nobody simply stopped paying all of a
sudden … Everyone will explain to you
that they’ve done the same as I did;
initially letting up on one or two
mortgage payments, then trying again,
asking for money, paying again for a
while…”
(personal communication with mortgage affected
male, 38 year old, 8 September 2014).

39. “ I did not want to stop paying, it’s difficult
to accept what is happening to you….I said to
my husband: look, you are going to find work, I
am going to keep paying the mortgage with
the €800 I earn. But we had to pay an
instalment of €600 per month, and husband
said: but we’re left with €200 to survive…I can
not support your choice [to keep paying the
mortgage] … we don’t have any money for
food. We either pay the mortgage or we
stay alive.”
(Z., 34 year old female, 23 June 2014).

40. “When I stopped paying my mortgage, I
went to inform the bank. [Their response
was]: This is your fault, you shouldn’t have
gotten yourself into this. We’re going to
take away your flat, and you’ll still have to
pay us a lifetime.’ I knew I couldn’t pay the
full instalment for that month [€1200]; the
following month I almost sacrificed myself
to pay, and the month after that; just
getting by, just getting by….”
(C., male, 6 May 2014)

41. The end of the ‘love affair’ between mortgage holders and
their creditors.
Showed what was perceived as a personalised relationship
with clerk or director of local bank for what it really was:
a debt contract with an unreachable global financial entity.

42. Once a family is unable to pay, the
broker in effect “manages the portfolio
classified as ‘junk’. So what does that
make us? Rubbish. Scum”
(E., Male, 42, 15 May 2014).

43. Mortgage contracts that were supposed to act as a
life enhancing technology turned into a punitive
mechanism
“A debtor is a debtor for life. Even if they work
twenty-four hours a day they will never repay that
debt. It is the perfect form of extortion and slavery.”
(Ada Colau, co-founder and former spokesperson,
Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH),
Mayor of Barcelona since May 2015. Quoted in
Muriel 2012, last para, no page number.)
‘The violence of financial capitalism’ (Marazzi,
2012)

44. “They were not taking away her home;
they were taking away the woman’s
working years, taking away all her life”
(personal communication 23 June 2014).

45. “I consider myself from a class that no
longer exists, that has been wiped off
the map. Middle. There is no middle
class anymore; now, we are nothing”
(M., Male, 36, 30 May 2014).

46. “I realised. Oh! This is what speculation
really is … it made me realise that yes,
there are rich people …. and there are
poor people. There are no people in the
middle or anything”
(C., Female, 30, 15 July 2014).
“Thanks to finding myself in this situation
I saw reality for what it is. Before, I used
to earn a good salary … and didn’t realise
that people had a really rough time.
So although it doesn’t make me happy, it
has opened my eyes a bit”
(R., Female, 42, 6 May 2014).

47. KEY FINDINGS
Exemplified:
How the expansion of global capital markets through
private deficit spending, enacted through the promise
of homeownership enrolled livelihoods into global
processes of rent extraction and financial speculation at
at a scale broader than ever before.
How Mortgages are not simply a “extraction of
financial profit directly out of personal income”
(Lapavitsas 2009; 114). They are also a disciplinary
mechanism that entangled the fabric of life into the
web of global financial speculation and subjected life
itself to debt servicing practices – producing a
new subjectivity, the “Indebted Man” and Woman
(Lazzarato 2012).
MORTGAGED
LIVES

48. KEY FINDINGS
Foregrounded:
Practices of resistance
Reclaiming housing as the urban commons
Methods for disentangling the fabric of life from the
web of financial institutions
MORTGAGED
LIVES

49. “Ever tried? Ever failed?
No matter,
try again,
fail again.
Fail better”
S. BeckettWorstwardHo

50. LIMITATIONS
Expanding empirical field of inquiry
Athens,
Sao Paolo (Raquel Rolnik),
Mexico City (Susanne Soederberg)
Funding applications submitted
1| British Academy Research Grant (awaiting decision)
Funding applications in preparation
13 international partners plus 3 Co-Pis:
1) Susanne Soederberg, Canada Research Chair in Political Studies, Queen’s University;
2) Raquel Rolnik UN Housing Rapporteur (2010-15) Lab Cidade Sao Paulo;
3) Anne Haila, Professor of Urban studies, University of Helsinki.
-- SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. (November 2016 competition $200K).
-- SSHRC larger Partnership Grants of up to $2.5 mill, (November 2017 competition).
Involves:larger (UN-HABITAT; Habitat for Humanity; FEANTSA (European Federation of
National Organisations for the Homeless).
-- Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie -Innovative Training Networks (MSC-ITN)
January 2017 competition, approx. 2 million.
Confirmed Partners:
UCLA (A. Roy),
University of Barcelona (G Kallis);
Univ of Hamburg (M Grubbauer);
National Technical University of Athens (D Vaiou).

51. 3 KEY CONTRIBUTIONS TO URBAN STUDIES
FIRST. Challenges recent debates in urban political economy
that seek to explain the mortgage crisis and/or the ‘financialisation
of housing’primarily through macroeconomics and/or policy
analysis
(Aalbers 2008 2009 2011; Rolnik 2013;Ashton 2012; Coq-Huelva 2013; Baldauf 2010;
Christophers 2011; 2015; Gotham 2009; Wainwright 2009; Rutland, 2010; Sánchez Martínez 2008;
Smart and Lee 2003).
SECOND. Offers new conceptual insight and empirical nuance to
studies on financialisation and subjectification
(Marazzi 2007; Langley 2006 2007 2008; Lazzarato 2012; French and Kneale 2012; Hall 2011;
Kear 2013; Martin 2002; Soederberg 2014; Kaika and Ruggiero 2013 2015; Benito 2007; Crouch
2009; Doling and Elsinga 2013; Lowe et al. 2012; Case et al. 2005; Castles and Ferrera 1996;
Ivanova 2011;Toussaint and Elsinga 2009;Aron et al. 2012; Forrest and Hirayama 2009; Malpass
2008; Powell 2008; Crouch 2009; Smith and Searle 2010; Finlayson 2009; Regan and Paxton
2001; Watson 2009; Vatter 2009; Rossi 2013).
THIRD. Enhances availability of qualitative data on Spain’s
mortgage crisis
MORTGAGED
LIVES

52. ONWARDS
Expanding methodology (debt diaries)
Expanding empirical field of inquiry
Athens,
Sao Paolo (Raquel Rolnik),
Mexico City (Susanne Soederberg)
Funding applications submitted
1| British Academy Research Grant (awaiting decision)
Funding applications in preparation
13 international partners plus 3 Co-Pis:
1) Susanne Soederberg, Canada Research Chair in Political Studies, Queen’s University;
2) Raquel Rolnik UN Housing Rapporteur (2010-15) Lab Cidade Sao Paulo;
3) Anne Haila, Professor of Urban studies, University of Helsinki.
-- SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. (November 2016 competition $200K).
-- SSHRC larger Partnership Grants of up to $2.5 mill, (November 2017 competition).
Involves:larger (UN-HABITAT; Habitat for Humanity; FEANTSA (European Federation of
National Organisations for the Homeless).
-- Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie -Innovative Training Networks (MSC-ITN)
January 2017 competition, approx. 2 million.
Confirmed Partners:
UCLA (A. Roy),
University of Barcelona (G Kallis);
Univ of Hamburg (M Grubbauer);
National Technical University of Athens (D Vaiou).

53. Maria Kaïka
MORTGAGED
LIVES

54. Expanding Empirical field of inquiry
Athens,
Sao Paolo (Raquel Rolnik),
Mexico City (Susanne Soederberg)
MORTGAGED
LIVES

55. http://pahbarcelona.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/cropped-azagracolorprueba.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikk22j5zLiM
PAH Challenging Indebted Livelihoods

56. The violence of financial capitalism
(Marazzi 2007)

57. “[I]n material and housing-class terms,
barely distinguishable from renters…simply
paying rent to the new landlord”
(Wyly et al. 2009, 338), )

58. http://pahbarcelona.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/cropped-azagracolorprueba.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikk22j5zLiM
PAH Challenging Indebted Livelihoods

59. Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH):
Challenging Indebted Livelihoods
Occupying
empty bank-
owned
buildings
Source: PAH
Cerdanyola
Weekly assemblies: organising & collective advising Source: E. Giné (PAHC Sabadell)
Blocking
evictions
Copyright: Melissa
Garcia Lamarca

60. LIBERALISATION OF MORTGAGE FINANCING SYSTEMS
AND LAND DEVELOPMENT REGULATION
1981: Mortgage Market Regulation Act
•Enabled private operators to enter mortgage market
•Increased mortgage loan-to-value ratio and introduced variable
interest rates
1992: Act on Securitisation Vehicles
1998: Planning and Land Act
•Declared “all land not yet incorporated into the urban process as
eligible for development” (Act 6/1998, Exposition of Motives cited in Roca
Cladera& Burns 2000, 548)
1999: Spain enters European Monetary Union

61. 2 KEY CONTRIBUTIONS TO URBAN
STUDIES
MORTGAGED
LIVES

62. - Empirically documenting how mortgages are not simply “an
extraction of financial profit directly out of personal income”
(Lapavistas 2009, 114).
Does so by:
- Empirically documenting how mortgage contracts, that promised
to become the means for turning citizens into ‘leveraged
investors’ (Langely 2006), became in effect tools for turning
citizens into indebted objects, - subjected to debt servicing
practices – for a period that in many cases can last for the
duration of their lifetime.
MORTGAGED
LIVES

63. For the people who Ada Colau describes as
living in a contemporary regime of “slavery” in
the opening quote of this article, dignity,
welfare, self-esteem, family/community
belonging, health and wellbeing have become
heavily dependent on their ability to fulfil their
mortgage repayment obligations under
increasingly volatile market and labour
conditions. It is a situation where an
unscrupulous manipulation of lives and bodies
lies at the heart of economic and political
strategies and decision-making (Rose 2007).

64. “I did not even have to go to a bank to ask for
a mortgage (in 2000). Everything was made
easy for me. People came to you and offered
[mortgages] with conditions that you never in
your life thought you would be offered….They
came to my house, to my workplace….If you
went to an estate agent they would send a
sales agent to your house, he ate you up, he
told you many things, he described it in a
lovely, wonderful way, that this was your life’s
dream, many things. You get excited, and you
end up falling in their web” (personal
communication, N., 40 year-old male: 11 June
2014).

65. “I did not even have to go to a bank to ask for
a mortgage (in 2000). Everything was made
easy for me. People came to you and offered
[mortgages] with conditions that you never in
your life thought you would be offered….They
came to my house, to my workplace….If you
went to an estate agent they would send a
sales agent to your house, he ate you up, he
told you many things, he described it in a
lovely, wonderful way, that this was your life’s
dream, many things. You get excited, and you
end up falling in their web”
(N., 40 year-old male: 11 June 2014).

69. MORTGAGING
LIVES

70. MORTGAGING
LIVES

71. Maria Kaïka
MORTGAGED
LIVES

72. DEBT DISGUISED AS WEALTH
Total outstanding Mortgage debt in 2008 = 674 billion Euros
Household indebtedness rose from 55 to 130 % of disposable income
Source: Naredo et. al. (2007: 82)

73. “We shall continue being your slaves
anyway; paying for a lifetime. But at
least don’t take away our homes; let us
breathe a bit. Like a dog; we are
waiting for them to toss us something.;
if you have a debt and you are a
defaulter, you can’t even buy a second
hand washing machine”
(M., Female, 32, 25 July 2014).

74. Empirically grounded on Spain (Athens, Sao Paolo and Mexico City) .
KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1) What are the processes and everyday practices through which
the expansion of global capital markets through the promise of
homeownership, forged an Intimate relation between the
production of urban futures and the reproduction of biological
lives?
2) What are the processes and everyday practices though which
mortgages become not only a rent extraction mechanism, but
also a disciplinary mechanism that subjected life itself to debt
servicing practices and produced a new subjectivity, the
“Indebted Man and Woman” (Lazzarato, 2012)?
MORTGAGED
LIVES

75. Household
mortgage debt to
GDP (%)
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
2004 2005 2006 2007
2008 2009
Belgium 26.5 27.6 27.7 26.7 27.8 30.1 30.7 33.4 35.9 37.7 39.8 43.3
Denmark (%) 67.5 68.6 67.7 71.1 74.0 78.4 79.7 84.9 89.1 93.1 95.4 103.8
Finland 29.7 30.5 30.3 31.2 32.7 35.1 38.2 41.9 44.5 45.7 48.0 58.0
France 20.0 20.8 21.2 21.7 22.6 24.2 26.0 29.2 32.0 34.4 36.4 38.0
Greece 5.8 6.7 8.2 10.7 13.6 15.5 18.3 23.2 27.2 30.6 32.5 33.9
Ireland 26.5 29.0 31.0 32.8 36.2 42.5 51.7 61.0 69.7 73.7 81.5 90.3
Italy 7.8 9.0 9.8 9.9 11.0 13.0 14.8 17.0 18.6 19.7 19.6 21.7
Netherlands (%) 55.3 60.7 68.2 73.0 80.2 83.9 88.2 93.5 96.7 98.3 98.9 105.6
Poland 1.5 1.7 2.1 2.7 3.4 4.5 4.7 6.0 8.4 11.6 15.6 18.2
Portugal (%) n/a 36.9 41.5 44.4 47.9 47.8 49.3 53.3 59.1 62.0 63.2 67.5
Spain 23.9 26.7 29.9 32.5 35.9 40.0 45.7 52.3 58.1 61.4 62.0 64.6
Sweden 43.9 45.8 44.6 46.1 47.0 48.5 57.0 59.4 64.8 66.9 66.7 82.0
UK 49.8 55.1 55.8 58.0 62.1 67.4 71.2 77.5 82.4 85.4 80.3 87.6
Source: Compiled from data from the: EMF
(2009, 70); OECD (2009); INE (2014) .
HOUSEHOLD MORTGAGE DEBT TO GDP (%)