Introduction

This chapter moves away from considering individual trajectories of activists, and focuses on the substantive issues that are made visible during processes of austerity activism. In so doing the focus here also moves away from ‘horizontal’ forms of local activism that involve community connection and support, to more conventional ‘resistance’ or ‘vertical’ practices that directly address those in power, within repertoires of anti-austerity activism (Craddock, 2020). Nonetheless, in line with my sense of interwoven processes of ‘resilience, resistance and re-working’ (MacLeavy et al, 2021), I do not see these forms of activism as forming opposing categories, but rather as inter-related articulations of citizenship and political subjectivity (Martin et al, 2007).

In particular, as discussed in Chapter 1, I am interested in what may be made visible during processes of anti-austerity activism, in how these might be seen as politically productive interventions that can bring matters of care into politics in new ways, even when planned-for cuts go ahead. This is significant given the taken-for-granted nature of care, the ways in which it is entangled with everyday lives and experiences (Hall, 2019a). As already discussed, changes affecting care wrought by austerity, from reduced household budgets to benefit changes and service reductions, do not necessarily result in visible ‘crises’, but more often are coped with, managed and absorbed into everyday lives (Jupp et al, 2019).

Furthermore, the ways in which welfare services and forms of support are reduced under austerity tends to be a process rather than a dramatic event, which can also function to render changes invisible over time (Kiely, 2021). Opening hours of spaces, funding and staffing may be reduced over a considerable period of years via repeated cutbacks and reorganisations, resulting in gradual declines that may nonetheless add up to dramatic changes overall (Hitchen, 2016; Horton, 2016). Particular examples of areas of such cuts would include youth services, library services and parks (Shaw, 2019; Layton and Latham, 2021; Smith, 2021). Davidson (2019) describes this process, in relation to cuts to library services, as a gradual ‘chipping away’ of services which also exhaust capacities of resistance among staff and service users. However, despite this, the moment when a space providing services shuts completely is still a dramatic moment, and a juncture at which the loss of services may become public and visible.