Från skuldsatt till skuldfri Processer, strategier och påverkande faktorer

Sammanfattning: Title: From being in debt to being out of debt. A study of processes, strategies and impacting factors.The aim of the study is to gain a greater understanding and knowledge about the ways to get into and out of debt, why people find themselves in serious debt, how the problems are coped with and how they are experienced. The starting point for studying this issue is people with experience of debts and the Debt Relief Act. The study focuses on the relationship between formal, informal and intrapersonal factors. The empirical data is based on 32 semi-structured narrative interviews with people having experience of the Debt Relief Act in three different ways: either having just applied for debt relief, being in the process of receiving debt relief or having been out of debt for two years. The data is analyzed in terms of three aspects; processes, strategies and impacting factors. The debts can have been incurred either over a long period of time or have arisen suddenly and unexpectedly. The reasons can be the result of individual and structural factors combining together. Both strategies and impacting factors can be changed depending on where in the debt relief process a person finds him/herself. The results shows that the strategies can vary from an active to a passive, open or closed approach where the decisive factors are mainly how one is received, health, age, reasons for getting into debt and social relationships. The conclusion is that serious debt problems are not only incurred by a certain group of people but that anyone can find themselves in this situation. It is evident that there is not just one way into and out of debt but several where both individual and structural factors are of major significance. Even if the Debt Relief Act provides a way out of a serious debt problem the results show that it is a long-term solution, which has considerable consequences for both the individual and society.