The distortions of the Irish ‘recovery’

Coulter, Colin; Arqueros-Fernández, Francisco

doi:10.1177/0261018319838912

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This organizing, while not explicitly feminist, focused several disparate groups to harmonize discursive strategies to analyze the legacy of austerity and marketization of public services. These campaigns faced a strong discourse and political grammar of "economic recovery" in Ireland (Coulter & Arqueros-Fernández, 2020) that supported political party consensus to continue a low tax and low social investment approach.…”

Section: Feminist Responses To Austerity In Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responses to the COVID‐19 crisis in Ireland: From feminized to feminist

Cullen

Murphy

2020

Gender Work & Organization

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In this study, we conceptualize feminist engagement with neo-liberalism, austerity, and crisis management and analyze potential to advance a feminist "recovery" political agenda. Feminist discursive analysis of crisis and a focus on narrative enables analysis of continuity and change in feminist responses to the pandemic and exposes the nature of opportunities and constraints for mobilization on gender equality. A case study of responses to the pandemic in Ireland and empirical data in areas of care, income support and domestic violence is presented to reflect on gendered analysis of austerity and feminist responses to same, on gendered effects of COVID-19 and feminist responses to pandemic crisis management. The case studies allow us to interrogate feminist's use of crisis to advance social transformation. We discuss whether and how feminist actors in Ireland built on learning from previous crises to generate opportunity to advance feminist demands, to break continuities by reframing old problems and to mobilize in relation to COVID-19. We find some continuity over time, but also greater awareness of connective tissues of multiple crises, making overall strategies of feminist actors and organizations less reactive, more innovative, inclusive and independent than the previous crisis with greater potential for social transformation.

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Section: Feminist Responses To Austerity In Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responses to the COVID‐19 crisis in Ireland: From feminized to feminist

Cullen

Murphy

2020

Gender Work & Organization

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“…Since officially exiting the EU bailout in 2013 Ireland has experienced economic “recovery”, mostly the result of budget surpluses linked to corporate tax payments from multinational businesses based in Ireland (Burke Kennedy 2019). However, Coulter and Arqueros-Fernández (2020, 103) have carefully detailed how soaring rents, low incomes, and welfare service reductions have meant that “a substantial minority of the population. .…”

Section: Mediating Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A decade of deregulated banking excess, high levels of personal debt and the construction sector’s overnight collapse meant the global economic recession of 2008 had both an immediate and long-term impact on the Irish state. Following the demise of the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom, from the early 1990s to 2007, there have been several distinct periods of transition with little respite (in real terms) from the uncertainties of the crash (Coulter and Arqueros-Fernández 2020). In 2008, as the extent of Ireland’s banking crisis became apparent, the government took the decision to guarantee Irish bank debts in a “dramatic socialization of private debt” which would eventually total €64 billion (Coulter et al 2019, 699).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Solidarity and Generational Exchange in Post-Celtic Tiger Reality Television

O’Leary

2020

Television & New Media

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An after effect of the 2008 global financial crisis was a significant generational divide, fuelled by growing inequality, that limited access to necessities such as secure work and housing for the post-crash generation in Ireland. Faced with issues including political upheaval, climate crisis, and austerity, young people in Ireland and elsewhere have recently organized themselves online and on the streets as social, environmental, and political activists. This article examines recent Irish reality television texts that encourage intergenerational cooperation and solidarity, offering visions of mutual reliance and positive relationships between young and old that dissipate any notion of “generation wars.” Familial and community structures are thus reinstated as a safety net for current uncertainties. This article proposes that these programmes reflect a desire that the cohesion and transformation gained through intergenerational exchange and cooperation on social issues in Ireland might also be leveraged towards addressing the more stubbornly divisive economic inequalities.

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“…This time frame was chosen as it encapsulated a period of severe austerity after which the Irish economy started showing signs of ‘recovery’, albeit a recovery not felt by many. 32 Although published before the research time frame, Ireland’s ‘newspaper of record’ The Irish Times began on the 4th February 2012 a week-long series of articles on the theme and, because of this concentrated focus, it was also decided to include these articles ( n = 14) in the sample. We used the same words (‘squeezed’ and ‘middle’) to review the online Irish parliamentary discussions and debates in the same period.…”

Section: Who and Where Was This ‘Squeezed Middle’?mentioning

confidence: 99%

(Neo)Liberal populism and Ireland’s ‘squeezed middle’

Meade¹,

Kiely²

2020

Race & Class

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Acknowledging definitional problems associated with the concept of ‘populism’, this article shifts the analytic gaze away from actors or politics that are conventionally characterised as populist, on to an analysis of the doing of populism by those who typically evade the populist label. Tracing the discursive construction of the ‘squeezed middle’ in Irish mainstream media and parliamentary debates between January 2014 and March 2019, the authors analyse how this signifier was mobilised to fuel and foment ressentiment among middle-earning taxpayers. This article analyses how the discourses of the ‘squeezed middle’ functioned ideologically, as a form of anti-welfare populism, redirecting blame for middle-class ontological and material insecurities on to unemployed welfare recipients who were depicted as immoral, lazy and insulated from hardship. This article highlights how populism operates from the so-called moderate centres of liberal democracy and not exclusively from the political margins. Irish political and media narratives of the ‘squeezed middle’ are seen as part of a larger project whereby damaging myths about the unemployed are propagated in service of ideological class warfare; legitimising neoliberal austerity and normalising unequal economic relations.

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The distortions of the Irish ‘recovery’

Cited by 10 publications

References 11 publications

Responses to the COVID‐19 crisis in Ireland: From feminized to feminist

Responses to the COVID‐19 crisis in Ireland: From feminized to feminist

Social Solidarity and Generational Exchange in Post-Celtic Tiger Reality Television

(Neo)Liberal populism and Ireland’s ‘squeezed middle’

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