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

直到最近的欧洲能源危机之前，低收入群体要么无法支付能源账单，要么一直在担心这样做。然而，随着越来越多的人拖欠水电费，我们目前看到，在整个非洲大陆的公共话语中，以及在家庭内部，对能源成本的担忧激增。拟议的研究跨越了这些相关问题，因为这是第一次对未付水费和能源家庭账单积累的债务进行全面研究，即基于公用事业的债务(UI)。这种类型的债务不仅在希腊，在其他地方也没有得到足够的研究。拖欠水电费被认为是能源贫困的一个指标(Petrova，2018)。它们也通常被认为是过度负债的一个方面，这是一种让已经在偿还贷款、抵押贷款和信用卡的家庭背负债务的类型(Allewell等人，2013年；肯普森，2015年)。然而，将其视为“过度”的未履行义务或能源使用不足的指标，仍然引出一个问题：家庭无力支付水电费和他们在日常生活中所经历的困难，是取决于他们的个人情况，还是根源于一个更广泛的系统性问题，表明世界人口满足日常和代际基本需求的能力不断恶化？我的项目超越了关于个人偶然性的争论，采用了女权主义的政治经济学视角，重点关注政治经济和性别权力结构如何塑造人类和日常生活的日常繁衍。通过文件分析和对塞萨洛尼基经历过UI的人的采访，我认为家庭陷入UI是因为希腊债务危机期间推出的紧缩政策减少了他们的货币资源，增加了他们的社会再生产成本。在前景化的户籍代理中，我阐明了社会保险如何加深了社会再生产危机，从而推动了社会再生产和债务方面的工作。我分析了UI是如何通过灌输一种缓慢的经济逻辑来进一步恶化生活水平的，这种逻辑迫使家庭重新制定他们的日常生育和财务战略，并将偿还债务置于身体健康和未来福祉之上。我还展示了UI如何通过再现阶级和性别不平等而使社会再生产不可持续，并突出了亲情和友谊网络-经常被政治经济学家忽视-成为负债者日常生存不可或缺的团结轴心。奖学金将使我能够将我的博士论文修改为专著和期刊文章，提出一种新颖的跨学科和跨部门的方法，通过经济结构调整过程和社会再生产组织转变之间的联系，特别关注非市场生殖关系，如亲属关系和友谊，有助于批判性地理解希腊负债累累的日常生活。这将使政治经济学学科与社会学和人文地理学在性别关系、债务以及能源贫困和可负担性之间进行对话。此外，我还将开展一个新项目--希腊和英国的比较分析，在脱碳与乌克兰战争导致的能源匮乏之间相互冲突的需求背景下，调查当前能源危机的性别层面。澳门大学现有的资源和专业知识(例如，MacGregor教授、Petrova博士)和西北地区可持续发展计划(例如，利物浦的Tepe Belfrage博士、兰开斯特的Skeggs教授、Fernandez Arrigoitia博士)将是实现这两个目标的关键。通过该项目，我还将扩大我在英语学术界内外的网络，并以英语和希腊语的书面媒体格式展示我的研究成果，以最大限度地扩大影响和影响。

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.