Following field work on agents selling home credit I have published two papers with two collaborators and two RAs. One article in Work, Employment and Society and one in Gender Work and Organization. They both focus on the agents who are either directly employed or self-employed to act as brokers between lending companies and those with low credit. They continue a tradition of home credit that dates to the industrial revolution and is idiosyncratic in having exceptionally high interest rates, high default rates and home collection of loans. One further paper on credit scoring under uncertainty is in advanced draft.
We have focused on an often ignored segment of the financial system serving an estimated 10 million UK residents that either lack a credit record or have records of bad debts and defaults. Agents are a critical ingredient for providing credit to what are vulnerable segments of society.
Abstracts below.
Emotional Labour and the Autonomy of Dependent Self-Employed Workers: The Limitations of Digital Managerial Control in the Home Credit Sector
Esme Terry, Abigail Marks, […], and Dimitris Christopoulos
Changes to the labour process in the home credit sector have exposed the industry’s agency workforce to increased levels of digital managerial control through the introduction of lending applications and algorithmic decision-making techniques. This article highlights the heterogeneous nature of the impact of digitalisation on the labour process and worker autonomy – specifically, in terms of workers’ engagement in unquantified emotional labour. By considering the limitations of digital control in relation to qualitative elements of the labour process, it becomes evident that emotional labour has the scope to be a source of autonomy for dependent self-employed workers when set against a backdrop of heightened digital control. This article therefore contributes to ongoing labour process debates surrounding digitalisation, quantified workers and digital managerial control.
Feminized cultural capital at work in the moral economy: Home credit and working-class women
Abigail Marks, Esme Terry, Jesus Canduela, Arek Dakessian, Dimitris Christopoulos
One of the defining features of the home credit sector is the role played by its agents—workers who act as intermediaries between lending companies and borrowers to facilitate lending and collect repayments. There is a prevailing and pervasive narrative in the sector that women make superior agents, largely based on the belief that female agents can manage relationships with borrowers more successfully than their male counterparts. This article analyzes data from 349,078 home credit accounts (loans), as well as 71 interviews with home credit agents and lending company managers, to evaluate both the myths and realities of women’s roles in home credit. The data is also used to explore the opportunities for—and potential constraints on—women’s career progression in home credit work, based on an understanding of the moral economy in which they operate. By exploring the moral economy of low-income communities, the article highlights the role of working-class women’s cultural capital within the labor market. Despite women forming the majority of the agent workforce in home credit, women’s capital is undervalued in comparison with their male counterparts’ capital. The analysis within this article allows a greater understanding of the highly classed and gendered nature of the moral economy of low-income communities and the exchange value of women’s capital within the labor market.
Policy Complexity 
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