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This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and commercialized backstreet feminized affectual relationships between borrowers and lenders. The extent to which their success was dependent on the decline of pawnbroking and mail order agency (and the limitations of the government's Social Fund) is explained. The motivations and limited options of moneylenders' customers are explored as are accusations of ‘predatory lending’ and exploitation. Moneylenders fought PR battles to exclude themselves from the label ‘loan shark’, as images of criminal moneylenders increasingly replaced ones of ‘Shylocks’. The chapter examines the role of violent loan sharks, explaining their small but significant market. Particularly important was the fact that government resisted calls for interest rate caps because it feared legal lenders would abandon their riskiest borrowers, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks.

Chapter 2 examines the origins and consequences of the 1898 Bankruptcy Act. The authors of the law were business owners who wanted an efficient procedure to deal with the failure of other businesses. They gave little thought to personal bankruptcy, and the law that they designed for businesses erected no substantial obstacle to the discharge of consumer debt. As access to consumer credit expanded, personal bankruptcy grew both relative to business bankruptcy and in absolute terms. However, personal bankruptcy did not grow evenly across the U.S. Households sought the protection of bankruptcy law mainly in states where garnishment of wages was easy. The growth in personal bankruptcy led to a shift in beliefs about the causes of bankruptcy and the purpose of bankruptcy law. Initially, creditors, debtors, legislators, judges and other legal professionals agreed that the purpose was to satisfy the claims of creditors efficiently. By the end of the 1920s, many interested parties stressed the importance of providing relief to debtors, who were portrayed as victims of unscrupulous creditors such as loan sharks. The increase in bankruptcy also led to changes in organized interest groups. Legal professionals began to work alongside creditors to try to shape the law.

The history of credit from ancient to modern times, parties involved and media used: (1)Ancient world—Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. Penalties for non-payment were significant, and could result in slavery of self/family, or death. (2)Mediaeval world—religious belief caused restrictions. Many modern-day practices had their origins in this era, including the use of bills of exchange, mortgages, pawn shops and merchant banking. (3)Credit evolution—the expansion of trade and personal credit, both unscrupulous {loan sharks, pawn shops} and scrupulous {philanthropic societies, industrial lenders}. Motor vehicle finance drove instalment credit. (4)Credit vendors—credit drapers, tallymen, and travelling salesmen, department stores, mail order—to promote goods’ sales. More recent are mobile-network operators and Internet service providers. (5)Credit media and Assets Financed—tools used to extend extent credit and transact {cheques, credit cards}, and major instalment finance classes {motor vehicle, consumer durables, home loans}.

This chapter analyzes how aspiring migrants navigate the world of document fixers, loan sharks, travel agents, lawyers, and state bureaucrats—including consular staff and U.S. immigration officials—in preparation for international migration. It presents accounts of the institutions, technologies, social and cultural forms, and relationships that shape and constrain migrants' efforts. Migrants of provincial and lower-class backgrounds often extend themselves through objects, technologies, and embodied skills to realize their migration projects; they do so with guidance from tramitadores (document fixers) and other service providers in Peru's growing migration industry. The chapter also discusses the complex politics of race and class that underline the historically unequal access to mobility in Peru, and in turn intersects with U.S. racialization of Latin American migrants that begins with their first encounters with U.S. consular staff in Lima.