Debt, Distress, and Defiance

Global debt distress is a crisis of unprecedented severity, affecting fifty-four countries and 3.2 billion people. United Nations agencies estimate that interest payments on external debt far exceed public expenditure on health and education. During this catalytic moment, this special issue presents feminist political economy perspectives linking debt at the national level to the household level, and both to the unequal architecture of international finance capital. The multiplication of predatory forms of careless lending – the other side of “financial inclusion” – emerges as a key mechanism through which crises facing capital are converted into crises of social reproduction for labor, displaced from capitalist center to periphery, and onto the bodies of women, men, and children. This special issue illuminates how debt, distress, and defiance sit on a continuum offering political hope and the will from “below” to visibilize the invisible: namely, the colonial, ecological, and reproductive debts underpinning financial capitalism.HIGHLIGHTSDebt crises in the Global South reflect inequalities in global finance.Feminist analysis highlights the gendered and unequal burdens of sovereign debt.Debt drives financial flows from the Global South to the Global North.Reform must move beyond debt cancellation to address colonial, ecological, and reproductive debts.