Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Focusing on three interviews with people who were in debt and participated in the collective debt mediation program of the Belgian social services, I study the way these interviewees negotiate their identities. In spite of the diversity of their stories, which were framed as accounts, all interviewees shift the blame for their current situation and put forward their membership of an alternative category, namely that of the responsible parent. As such, they — in co-construction with the interviewer — counter the theme of personal blame and construct an identity that is ‘recipient designed’ and acceptable both from a local and a global contextual point of view.
Source: Discourse & Society
Author: Dorien Van De Mieroop
Institution: KU Leuven
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2102055738