Encountering austerity in deprived urban neighbourhoods: Local geographies and the emergence of austerity in the lifeworld of urban youth

Abstract

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‘My room is the kitchen’: lived experience of home-making, home-unmaking and emerging housing strategies of disadvantaged urban youth in austerity Ireland

“…As interviews with young adults from Knocknaheeny and Ballymun show, the impacts of austerity reach beyond a housing crisis and shape various processes of slow and protracted home-unmaking (Baxter & Brickell, 2014). As austerity affects the houses, neighbourhoods, and cities in which youth dwell or might dwell (Shaw, 2019;van Lanen, 2020a), the gradual unmaking of home is one way in which crisis and austerity linger on in everyday life (Raynor, 2017). Home brings together the material and immaterial consequences of austerity which create the affective and personal crises through which austerity is lived and felt (Hitchen, 2019;Hall, 2019a).…”

“…First, home is a site of intimate care and relations (Blunt & Dowling, 2006), where family and friends can provide care in absence of state support, where intergenerational cohabitation occurs, where families move in and offspring cannot move out, all with consequences for relationships of care (Hall, 2019a(Hall, , 2019b. Second, the household within home a connects the economic and cultural networks of its members (Smith & Stenning, 2006;van Lanen, 2020a), which can transform homes into places of financial stress-management, material negotiations of poverty, or everyday relational care (Hall, 2018). Third, home joins together people's living place, living partners, and their potential inability to change these (Hall, 2019b;.…”

Imagining a future in the austerity city: Anticipated futures and the formation of neoliberal subjectivities of youth in Ireland

“…She described this as “the best thing that ever happened”. This opportunity was available to her because she lived in Ballymun, where the scheme was piloted and which benefited from a deeper institutional penetration of support services than Knocknaheeny (van Lanen, 2020a). During this internship, she proved her employability through hard work and the organisation offered her full-time employment.…”

“…However, within such narratives, it becomes possible to frame marginalised individuals as maladapted (Rose, 1999). Austerity is a disruptive force in everyday life and youth transitions (Hitchen, 2016; van Lanen, 2020a), and it reassembles relationships between the past, present and future (Hall, 2019a; Hitchen, 2021). In this context of transforming restraints and possibilities in the spaces of everyday life (van Lanen, 2017), this paper aims to explore how austerity is becoming a part of youth's imagined futures and the types of subjectivities that emerge from it.…”

“…However, associations of working-class masculinity as challenges to service and care work might hinder his professional opportunities (McDowell, 2012; McDowell et al, 2020). Furthermore, fewer support services in Knocknaheeny and a slower economic recovery in Cork might have hampered Brendan's options to find paid and fulfilling employment (van Lanen, 2020a). Nonetheless, he enthusiastically hoped his current training would improve his employment opportunities.…”