Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Frederick Wherry

Financial Estrangement: Debt Collection, Precarity, and Pathways to Institutional Detachment

Frederick Wherry, Princeton University

Abstract: Why are indebted Americans more likely to mistrust courts and the legal process? Drawing on an original probabilistic survey of 2,115 American adults, this project explores how indebted Americans who have been contacted by a debt collector are more likely to believe that the legal system is unfair and to feel either detached or estranged from it. These negative beliefs are more prominent for Black Americans compared to Whites, even after controlling for financial hardship, voting behaviors, and other demographic characteristics. Our results reveal that over half of Americans report that a close friend or family member has ever been contacted by a debt collector, and over a quarter report that their household has been contacted in the past year. We develop the concept of financial estrangement to explain the experience of public distrust in the context of financial precarity and how predatory inclusion leads to a growing sense of disconnection for people living in an increasingly financialized society. Our concept of financial estrangement brings together concerns from economic sociology, law and society, criminal justice, and race and inequality, and applies them to the context of the marketplace for consumer debt. The authors for this paper are Marie-Lous Laprise (PhD candidate sociology), Fred Wherry (professor of sociology), and Edward Freeland (executive director, Princeton Survey Research Center). The presentation will draw on findings from this paper and from the larger agenda of the Debt Collection Lab. 

Frederick "Fred" Wherry is the Vice-Dean for Faculty Development and Inclusion in the Office of the Dean of Faculty, and the Townsend Martin, Class of 1917 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also an affiliated faculty member in African-American Studies. He is currently finishing What We Owe: How Debt Came for All of Us and How We Get Free, a book examining the rise of mass debt—which now rivals mass incarceration in scale—and exposing the predatory tactics of debt collectors and the court system. He founded the Debt Collection Lab and is the author, editor, or co-editor of nine books, including Credit Where It’s Due: Rethinking Financial Citizenship (with Kristin Seefeldt and Anthony Alvarez), The Oxford Handbook of Consumption (with Ian Woodward), and Money Talks (with Nina Bandelj and Viviana Zelizer). He is also co-editor of the forthcoming volume to be published this year, Viral Debt: The Production and Reproduction of Economic Vulnerability (co-edited with edited by Jodi Gardner and Mia Gray). At Stanford University Press, he co-edits the book series Culture and Economic Life. Wherry has served in advisory roles to the American Law Institute, the Legal Services Corporation, the Department of Justice, and the Julian Bond Institute.