Utilities-based indebtedness: Living and surviving the crisis in social reproduction in Greece

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Up until the recent European energy crisis, it was low-income groups falling short on energy bill payments or constantly worrying about doing so. However, we are currently witnessing a proliferation of worrying about energy costs in public discourse across the continent as well as within households with an increasing number of people falling into utility bill arrears. The proposed research cuts across these pertinent issues as it is the first comprehensive study of indebtedness accumulated via unpaid water and energy household bills, i.e., utilities-based indebtedness (UI). This type of indebtedness is under-researched not only in Greece but elsewhere too. Arrears on utility bills are considered an indicator of energy poverty (Petrova, 2018). They are also commonly considered as an aspect of over-indebtedness, a type of debt burdening households already servicing loans, mortgages and credit cards (Alleweldt et al., 2013; Kempson, 2015). Yet, considering them as 'excessive' unmet obligations or as an indicator of insufficient energy usage still begs a question: Is the inability of households to pay their utility bills and the hardship they experience in their daily lives contingent to their personal circumstances or is it rooted to a broader systemic issue signalling the deteriorating capacities of the world's population to meet their basic needs on a daily and intergenerational basis? Moving beyond arguments on personal contingencies, my project adopts a feminist political economy perspective which centres on how the day-to-day reproduction of humans and daily life is shaped by politico-economic and gendered structures of power. Through document analysis and interviews with people who experienced UI in Thessaloniki, I argue that households fell into UI because the austerity policies introduced during the Greek debt crisis reduced their monetary resources and increased their social reproductive costs. In foregrounding household agency, I elucidate how UI deepens the social reproduction crisis, thereby advancing work on social reproduction and indebtedness. I analyse how UI further deteriorates living standards by instilling a creeping economic logic, which forces households to rework their daily reproductive and financial strategies and to prioritise debt payments over bodily integrity and future wellbeing. I also demonstrate how UI makes social reproduction unsustainable by reproducing class and gender inequalities and foreground how kinship and friendship networks - often overlooked by political economists - become indispensable axes of solidarity for the everyday survival of the indebted.The Fellowship will allow me to rework my PhD thesis into a monograph and a journal article, advancing a novel interdisciplinary and intersectional approach that contributes to a critical understanding of daily life with indebtedness in Greece through the linkages between processes of economic restructuring and shifts in the organisation of social reproduction with a specific focus on the role non-market reproductive relations, such as kinship and friendship. This will bring the discipline of political economy into dialogue with sociology and human geography at the interface of gender relations, debt as well as energy poverty and affordability. Moreover, I will develop a new project, a comparative analysis between Greece and the UK investigating the gendered aspects of the current energy crisis in the context of the conflicting demands between decarbonisation and the energy scarcity induced by the Ukrainian war. The resources and expertise available at UoM (e.g., Prof MacGregor; Dr Petrova) and within the NWSSDTP (e.g., Dr Tepe Belfrage, Liverpool; Prof Skeggs, Dr Fernandez Arrigoitia, Lancaster) will be crucial to achieve both goals. Through the project, I will also expand my networks in and beyond anglophone academia and present my findings in written media formats in English and Greek for maximum reach and impact.