Abstract

In this article, I discuss the impact of student debt on the lives of young adults who attend school in Montreal, Canada. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with eleven young people who sought help from family economy cooperatives (ACEF). The main results reveal a strong sense of individual responsibility induced by the experience of being in debt. At the same time, participants experienced a sense of ambivalence towards indebtedness because of the cultural representations of and their families' inherited relationship to debts.