Austerity Across Europe

Drawing together multidisciplinary research exploring everyday life in Europe during times of economic crisis, this book explores the ways in which austerity policies are lived and experienced - often alongside other significant social, political and personal change. With attention to the inequalities produced by these processes and the measures used by individuals, families and communities to help them ‘get by’, it also envisages hopeful, affirmative socio-political futures. Arranged around the themes of intergenerational relations and exchanges, ways of coping through crises, and community, civic and state infrastructures, Austerity Across Europe will appeal to social scientists with interests in everyday life, family practices, neoliberal state policy, poverty and socio-economic inequalities.

Sarah Marie Hall is based in the Department of Geography at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research sits in the broad field of feminist political economy: understanding how socio-economic processes are shaped by gender relations, lived experience and social difference. Recent research projects focus on everyday life and economic change, including empirical work in the context of austerity, Brexit and devolution. She is currently Co-Editor of the international academic journal Area.

Helena Pimlott-Wilson is based in Geography and Environment at Loughborough University, UK. Her research focuses on the shifting importance of education and employment in the reproduction of classed power. Recent work investigates the aspirations of young people from socio-economically diverse areas in the UK, international mobility of students for higher education and work placements, and the alternative and supplementary education industries.

John Horton is based in the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Northampton, UK. His research explores the spaces, cultures, politics, playful practices and social-material exclusions of contemporary childhood and youth in diverse international contexts. He is currently Editor of the international academic journals Social & Cultural Geography and Children’s Geographies.