Debt and the American Dream

Drawing on research with irregular migrants from Nepal who borrow up to $60,000 to reach the United States, this article explores what I call the invisible slow violence of debt. By focusing on how debt is embodied in cases of spirit possession, tension, and dis-ease among migrants and their families—the article demonstrates how debt can become a haunting specter that exhausts the vitality of debtors who cannot pay off loans. By following cases in which debts multiplied and became so huge as to become impossible to repay, I show how unproductive debts became destructive and haunted failed migrants. I contrast these unproductive debts with the debts of migrants who made it to the United States and were, however exploitative, productive of social relations and future possibilities beyond the here and now. Debt not only begs to be returned: it can turn into a specter haunting people, or “eating” them out, leading to bodily affliction, dis-ease, social death, or death itself.