Lorena Pérez-Roa She is an assistant professor of Social Work at the University of Chile and an associate researcher for the Chilean Millennium Initiative on Authority and Asymmetries of Power. She has a doctorate in Human Sciences from the University of Montreal, a master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Chile and a degree in Social Work from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on socioeconomic relationships, household financial practices, and the financialization of everyday life.

Temáticas

Get along, resist and adjust: partner negotiations to manage debts and make ends meet

  • Lorena Pérez-Roa

Keywords: indebtedness, financialization of daily life, young adults, negotiations, couples.

In a context of rising cost of living and wage stagnation, indebtedness of Chilean households has increased to unprecedented levels. In this context, the article explores the economic arrangements of young adult and professional couples in the face of the high economic pressure caused by debt. We understand that in couple relationships the acquisition, uses and strategies of debt payment are constructed, discussed and negotiated. To this end, based on the analysis of 34 semi-structured interviews with young couples and debtors, we explore three types of negotiations: (i) those that seek to congenialize inheritances or previous financial learning; (ii) the financial strategies of resistance that couples assume in order to be able to sustain themselves financially; (iii) adjustments to future projects based on the projection of payment of their assumed commitments.