ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the identities and strategies imposed upon and adopted by a group of disabled people in debt. The transformative effects of problem debt on people's lives and identities take place within a range of circumstances and relationships created by debt. Debt is often the inevitable outcome of long-term poverty, with all its well-documented, negative consequences for people's lives. The chapter argues that qualitative research which explored the experience of living with debt and the circumstances surrounding and leading to debt amongst a broad range of disabled people and people with long-term chronic health problems. Providing additional support to disabled people to enter the labour market is on the face of it a positive policy proposal. The policy would also deny disabled people control over their spending; it would prevent them from exercising the spending options available to the population in general. Research reveals that disabled people in work tend to be concentrated in low paid, low status jobs.
