Municipal Socialism in the 21st century – Call for contributions

We are delighted to announce that on Wednesday 27th June, we will host a 1 day conference on the theme of Municipal Socialism in the 21st century. This will take the form of a dialogue between researchers, policy actors and urban activists. We expect to organise round-table discussions over the course of the day around a cluster of themes, including:

  • Whither municipal socialism in the 21st century?
  • The feminisation of urban power and resistance (especially in the aftermath of 8-M)
  • The return of the left: implications for community organising and coproduction
  • The local state as agent of resistance and transformation
  • Trade unions: bringing the organised working class back into urban politics.

We will have only a small number of slots for panellists, but if you are interested in speaking on one of these themes, please email adrian.bua@dmu.ac.uk with a brief description of your contribution.  We will send out further details, and information about registration in due course.

Thinking Differently About Peri-urban Infrastructures

In today’s post, Valeria Gaurneros-Meza dn Steven Griggs report on the results of a two day workshop on peri-urban infrastructures hosted by CURA at DMU on May 2017.

Whether we are travelling to work on a train, flushing a toilet, turning on a light, or sending an email, our daily lives depend upon repeated interactions with multiple and complex systems of infrastructure. Yet few of us regularly stop to consider our reliance on such infrastructure and how it shapes our daily life – unless it is one of those days when these complex systems break down and we are immediately exposed to the costs and frustrations of their absence.

But, as we are only too aware, many communities pay such costs every day. Some live next to airports or under flight paths, or experience the ‘threat’ of development to their quality of life. Others live without access to water or sanitation, often forced to develop their own informal practices to substitute for poor or lack of provision. In fact, it is often these very communities that pay the costs for the provision of infrastructure, as they are uprooted to make way for the likes of international airports, or suffer the environmental costs of the new mining practices upon which infrastructure development relies.

This unequal politics of infrastructure provision has been widely recognised. Infrastructures are far from neutral tools or technologies. They are governing instruments that shape collective and individual behaviour. They are the products of social struggles, exercises of power and forms of resistance. Their governance cannot therefore be divorced from questions of democracy, citizenship, social justice and economic equality, as well as rival claims to knowledge and expertise.

With this in mind, shouldn’t we all think a little more about the infrastructure that inhabits our everyday lives? And if so, how? How do we think beyond the debates over the economic and engineering value of infrastructural investment that abound?

These questions formed part of the agenda of a two-day workshop held in May 2017 on governance and conflict in urban and peri-urban infrastructures, sponsored by CURA and the British Academy. Of course, many have grappled with such questions. Here we set out the potential avenues of inquiry that emerged in the course of discussions between participants at the workshop.

Learning from difference

The two-day workshop brought together scholars based in Britain and Mexico to exchange their experiences of researching in and around infrastructure projects in Europe and Latin America. Its starting point was the importance of comparison and exploring how we might learn by comparing difference – how different scales, contexts, histories and framings of issues may shed light on what we take for granted or force us to reconsider our ways of thinking.

Recognising complexity

Much of our discussion underlined the need to grapple with complexity. Complexity comes in different shapes and forms. It was identified in the varied relationships between citizen groups and state agencies which cut across different levels of government and local and international non-governmental organisations and social networks. It comes with different histories and the need to understand legal and other institutional traditions (such as ethnicity and identity) in shaping the forms taken by contestation and resistance. Finally, it is to be found in the mechanisms and strategies used to withhold power by elites and by grassroots groups in challenging those centres of power. Grappling with complexity has to be intrinsic in any understanding of communication mechanisms (i.e. dialogue, consultation, diffusion of ideas/knowledge, resistance), where simultaneous practices are undertaken by individuals and groups to maintain or fight domination without recourse to coercion and repression.

Exploring conflict

The study of conflict through its myriad forms exposes critical junctures in the investment in new infrastructures. We need a broad understanding, from the development of knowledge and expertise as a form of control to the barbarism of violence and repression prompted by state actors in collusion with big national and transnational corporations. Indeed, the role and value of legal knowledge was foregrounded not only as a vehicle to study conflict between capital elites and local communities, but also the capacities of resistance, the redistribution of power in infrastructural investments (if any), and their broader interrelationship with the environment and climate change.

Investigating spatial geographies

The spatialisation of politics is widely recognised. Processes of infrastructure development bring into being new political spaces. But to what extent does infrastructural investment enhance or blur the linkages between the rural-urban divide? Although there have been important debates on land use, production, and circulation of goods and services to define urbanism, one pressing area of inquiry is the interrelationship between urban-rural actors in their contestation and resistance to landscapes impacted by urbanisation.

Everyday practices

Infrastructures can provoke moments of conflict and crisis. But we should not ignore the everyday practices that surround infrastructures or compensate for them. These practices impact upon changes in production, consumption and the political institutions of localities experiencing major infrastructures. This focus on everyday practice and knowledge may well open up alternative opportunities for local tiers of government to challenge national decisions that have been overridden by global economic interests and for social mobilizations to potentially connect with broader environmental and social justice demands vis-à-vis economic compensations.

A new research agenda: infrastructures as political objects

Each of these new directions or avenues suggest the importance of viewing infrastructures as ‘political objects’ (to borrow from the recent study from Cole and Payre of ‘cities as political objects’). ‘Seeing’ infrastructure investment in this way leads us to spend time exploring the political discourse of infrastructures to understand: the contextualised rationales behind ethics, corruption and illicitness; governmental decisions and the simultaneous use of informal arrangements alongside expert knowledge; and the type of relationships and spaces built between social mobilisations, the state and the private sector. This offers us a future research agenda that cuts across global north and south dichotomies – an agenda that this network of researchers would like to pursue in the next few years.

The Workshop Participants

Vanesa Castan-Broto (Sheffield University)

Mercè Cortina-Oriol (DMU)

Dan Durrant (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL)

Jonathan Davies (DMU)

Adam Fishwick (DMU)

Armelle Gouritin (FLACSO-Mexico)

Steven Griggs (DMU)

Valeria Guarneros-Meza (DMU)

Graeme Hayes (Aston University)

Ibrahim Has (DMU)

David Howarth (Essex University)

Ernesto Isunza (CIESAS-Golfo)

Marcela Torres (FLACSO-Mexico)

Gisela Zaremberg (FLACSO-Mexico)

This blogpost was written by Valeria Guarneros-Meza and Steven Griggs, CURA members. The authors are grateful to the workshop participants for their contribution to the ideas developed in this post. All interpretations are of course the responsibility of the authors.

Urban Futures Podcast – Tackling City Decline with Andy Pike

In this second edition of the Urban Futures podcast we talk to Andy Pike, Professor of Local and Regional Development and Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development studies, at Newcastle University about recent work he and his colleagues have carried out into city decline in the UK.

You can download the podcast on soundcloud and itunes.

The Declining Cities report, analyses city decline in the UK and reviews international experience for learning. The research seeks to address a gap in urban research agendas that have tended to focus on successful, thriving cities rather than the situation of and policies needed in cities coping with relative decline. The report develops an index of city decline and a typology of relatively declining cities which is used to measure the scale and nature of city decline in the UK. It also includes a review of UK and international literature on policy responses to city decline as well as an assessment of the implications of the evidence for declining UK cities.

Workshop: Governance and conflict in urban/peri-urban infrastructures in Europe and Latin America

workshopSince mid-2000s theories of network governance in public policy have been criticised for overlooking power relations and conflict in everyday practice. The workshop seeks to build upon these criticisms through the discussion on urban/peri-urban infrastructures. This topic is timely as several world regions are facing continuous pressure generated from clashes between global capitalism and the environment across urban and quasi-urban localities and which involve continuous relationships between state and non-state actors throughout several stages of the policymaking process. However, local specificities have rendered these relationships diverse despite the first impressions of similarity that global contextual factors portray.

Building upon debates from an interdisciplinary perspective (public policy, geography, anthropology, law, sociology), the discussion of the workshop will depart from a methodological framework that touches upon issues on participation and human rights, conflict, social movements, expertise-depoliticization and the role of the state. The workshop aims to bring together academics who study these topics in Latin America and Europe.

The workshop has two main objectives, to:

  1. Analyse critically the current practices of governance in contexts of infrastructural investment in Europe (urban infrastructures) and Latin America (peri-urban, neo-extractivist infrastructures).
  2. Exchange methodologies and methods of data collection which could tease out the study of the complexities, scales and dimensions involved in participation and conflict that may result from, or are comparable to, the implementation of infrastructures.

The workshop’s speakers aim to create a novel dialogue based not on the comparison of similarity but on the potential learning from comparing difference. Some questions which may be guiding discussion are:

  • How are (large) infrastructures coexisting alongside inequality and conflict/ violence?
  • How do types/scales of conflict between state, businesses and community groups develop?
  • Through what practices, connections or bridges are the urban and peri-urban (semi-rural) interweaving? Are these characterised by multi-scalarity?
  • Are ideas and meanings the way forward to understand why states in the global south and north favour a corporatist agenda?
  • Is situated agency the way forward to address the problems or working solutions that infrastructural investment underline across the north-south and urban-rural divides? What are its limitations?
  • What are the meanings and values that frame environmental governance alongside (large) infrastructures?

To book a place please contact Valeria Guarneros-Meza valeria.guarneros@dmu.ac.uk by 1 May 2017. Catering will be provided on both days.

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
Thursday 11th May Location: Hugh Aston 2.32 & 2.33, DMU
2.30pm – 2.45pm Welcome/Registration

 

2.45pm – 4.45pm Session 1: Knowledge creation and infrastructures
Discursive constructions of noise and air:  the environmental politics of airport expansion in France and the UK Prof. David Howarth (University of Essex) and Prof. Stephen Griggs (De Montfort University)
Energy landscapes in peri-urban areas: notes on Concepción, Chile Dr. Vanesa Castán Broto (University College London)

 

4.45pm – 5.30 Wine reception
Friday 12th May Location: Hugh Aston 2.32 & 2.33, DMU
9.30am – 11.00am Session 2: Re-politicisation and citizen participation in urban infrastructures
Re-politicisation and civil society expertise in the UK’s high speed rail megaproject, HS2  Dr Dan Durrant (University College London)
Impact of citizen participation on drinking water and basic sanitation governance and management: Regional Analysis of Four Case Studies in Latin America Dr Ernesto Isunza Vera (CIESAS-Mexico/Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona)
11:.30am – 1.00pm Session 3: Disobedience, conflict and violence (Chair: TBC)
Performing democratic engagement in climate disobedience actions in Europe Dr. Graeme Hays (Aston University)
Conversing with Goliath: Participation, mobilisation and repression in neo-extractivist infrastructures, Mexico Dr.Gisela Zaremberg and team (Facultad Lationoamericana de Ciensas Sociales, Mexico)
1.00pm – 2.00pm Lunch

 

 

From Protest to Resistance: Fighting Back in Hard Times

4742984963_af87fbac31_bOn Wednesday 3rd May 2017, the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity will be hosting a public roundtable entitled ‘From Protest to Resistance: Fighting Back in Hard Times’. This builds on our successful workshop last year – ‘Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity’ – bringing together speakers and contributors to our forthcoming volume, From Protest to Resistance: Fighting Back in Hard Times, with Rowman and Littlefield International.

There is a seemingly unstoppable consolidation of austerity, intensification of surveillance and exploitation at work, and creeping authoritarianism in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. In this roundtable, we observe new, radical forms of mobilisation directly confronting these new trends. It will bring together research from across a range of sites and spaces, including workplace occupations in Argentina and Spain, grassroots mobilisation in the UK and Ireland, migrant workers in trade unions in France and Italy, and new spaces of digital and virtual work. The aim is to draw out possible links across this range of sites, to identify the innovations emerging from a range of ostensibly ‘new’ actors and movements, and to ask what can be learned collectively from these diverse practices of protest and resistance.

Focusing on local, micro-level, and often hidden forms of resistance, this roundtable is an attempt to understand and to show how the new actors, sites, and struggles of resistance we have identified are central to constructing not only new ways of organising and of mobilising, but also of surviving and creating new ways of living in the face of what we identify as these ‘hard times’. In exploring new forms of workplace resistance and alternative workplace organisation, the role of migrant workers in resisting their exploitation, the significance of new and innovative forms of digitalised resistance, and alternative forms of grassroots mobilisation, our contributors aim to place the agency of the marginalised and the actions of the oppressed at the forefront of understanding the (re)construction of the world around us.

The roundtable will be held in Hugh Aston 3.95 from 14.00 – 17.00 and speakers include: Lisa McKenzie (LSE), David Bailey (Birmingham), Saori Shibata (Leiden), Nicholas Kiersey (Ohio), Phoebe Moore (Middlesex), Sylvie Contrepois (London Met); Rossana Cillo (Venice), Adam Fishwick (DMU), Heather Connolly (DMU)

All welcome please register in advance with Nisha Solanki (nisha.solanki@dmu.ac.uk).

For more information contact Dr Adam Fishwick (adam.fishwick@dmu.ac.uk) or Dr Heather Connolly (hconnolly@dmu.ac.uk).

SOURCE: A Network for Change

In this post Federico Guerrieri introduces SOURCE, an online network coordinated by the New Economics Foundation, that is designed to catalyse collaboration between academics, policy professionals and civil society organisers from across Europe committed to tackling the biggest economic, environmental and social challenges we face today.

From solving the tragedy of the commons, to building a financial system fit for purpose, or shaping the future of work to tackling climate change, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current system is incapable of addressing the interlinked crises of environmental unsustainability, economic instability, and social inequality.

There are a number of emerging approaches that offer insights into how an economy could operate differently, but we urgently need an inspiring public narrative that outlines how an economy that delivers economic wellbeing for all within environmental limits would work – and the intellectual thinking that is necessary to get to this point.

The Source network identifies issues and looks for tipping points where systemic change can be created. By collaborating with campaigners and policy makers, Source aims to support the development of an economy that delivers economic wellbeing for all within environmental limits.

The network brings together in one place a diverse range of inspirational voices from the worlds of academia, civil society, and grassroots organisations. This platform provides an online space for discussion and constructive debate, but it is also a meeting point to forge new working collaborations across Europe. The Source platform also provides members with the opportunity to exchange information about relevant activities, initiatives, and events taking place all over Europe, and to build key relationships with new research partners.

Source’s approach is summarised as follows

  • Align – Source has created an online community of academics, policy professionals and civil society organisers committed to systemic change. Although diversity is actively pursued and valued, so is the fact that all those in the network share the view that transforming the economy for planet and people is critical and to be achieved requires an organised systemic approach. In this way we will be more effective at developing proposals and actions that tackle the big, interconnected economic, environmental and social challenges we face today.
  • Generate cultural debate – Economic transformation always involves raising big moral questions about how the economy operates and our aim is no different. Every month the network identifies issues and looks for tipping points where systemic change can be created. Discussions are hosted via the network’s online platform giving every member the opportunity to be involved, and to exchange thoughts with leading academics, policy professionals and civil society organisers.
  • Take a systemic approach – Focusing on short-term impacts and running issue-based campaigns will always be important but to deliver far-reaching change then on its own it is simply not enough. Following each online debate, a Briefing Paper will synthesize the findings of the online discussion, aiming at outlining the current economic system’s dysfunctionalities. The Briefing Paper informs the formulation of a Base Research Paper, which develops and shares the alternative solutions and supporting evidence. Collectively, this series of research papers will form the building blocks of a new economic narrative that is shaped by all participants.

By collaborating with campaigners, academics, policy makers, and other civil society organisations, Source acts as a catalyst and aims to:

  • Demonstrate that an alternative exists: Theories and reasoned argument have an important role to play but critically so does making things real. Source supports the development of pan-European initiatives by collaborating with progressive civil society organisations across Europe;
  • Organise: Just because more research is being done, campaigns being run and local initiatives developed does mean necessarily that something bigger is being achieved. Strategy wins and the aim of transformational change demands requires strategy and alignment. by collaborating with campaigners, Source develops toolkits and materials to support civil society groups committed to systemic change;
  • Popularise the transformation: If we do not make the systemic approach and the big moral questions relevant to people we will not see the transformation we are aiming for. Source will collaborate with media partners from across Europe to disseminate and promote its proposals;
  • Achieve policy impact: Source ultimately aims to influence the policy process at the local, national and European levels by collaborating with policy makers and policy professionals all across Europe.

If you are interested in joining Source, please visit www.sourcenetwork.org, or get in touch with Federico Guerrieri, federico.guerrieri@neweconomics.org

Federico Guerrieri is European Co-ordinator at the New Economics Foundation

Follow the Protest: Exploring the Limits and Torsions of Collaborative Governance in Nantes

GIF RGB 150 Pixels with Border

In this post Steven Griggs, David Howarth and Andrés Feandeiro  report the findings from the exploratory research in Nantes, carried out as part of the collaborative governance under austerity project, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Urban Transformations Network, and led by Prof. Jonathan Davies.

Referendum watchers in June 2016 may have been rightly fixated on the Brexit vote, which led to the people of the United Kingdom choosing to leave the European Union. But there was another referendum that took place just three days later, even if its political legitimacy as a referendum or consultation was more open to question. On Sunday June 26, in the French department of Loire Atlantique, local citizens voted on whether to give a green light to the construction of a new international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. The new airport, some 20 kilometres to the north-west of Nantes, would replace the existing Nantes Atlantique airport.

Roughly half of the electorate turned out to vote (51.08 per cent) in the referendum, with a little over 55 per cent of the local residents (55.17 per cent) voting in favour of the construction of the new airport. However, this overall victory masks a fragmented electorate, with villages and towns close to the proposed site for the new airport voting against the project. In the city of Nantes itself, opponents and supporters of the new airport were divided by only 100 votes, with the ‘yes’ vote winning just 50.05 per cent of the share of the vote.

Plans to build a new airport were first mooted in the 1960s. They dropped off the political agenda in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis. But they reappeared in the early 2000s, driven in part by the lobbying of the then Mayor of Nantes, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and his particular brand of urban boosterism. Renewed interest in the airport also served to re-ignite opposition to the proposed development. Campaigners brought together farmers, local residents, politicians, and environmental activists, thus giving a voice to a counter-expertise throughout the legal and planning processes, while drawing in support from across France and Europe. Protesters set up camps and took over vacant compulsory-purchased farms on the proposed site of the airport, transforming the government purchased ‘zone to develop’ into the ‘zone to defend’, where they pursued alternative forms of social organisation. Indeed, their expulsion from the proposed site in 2012 attracted national and international media attention as protesters clashed with riot police.

What, if anything, does this mean for the study of austerity and collaboration in Nantes? At first glance, it may appear that this story of the airport development operates outside of – or parallel to – the everyday practices of governance in the city. After all, it is, despite claims to the contrary, a national infrastructure project, which is subject to national planning practices. Indeed, the decision to hold a referendum was presented as an initiative of François Hollande, the French president. Here, however, we argue that the construction of the airport has come to act as a symbolic issue for protest and contestation across the city of Nantes. It has brought together a broad coalition of groups and campaigns, and poses a challenge to the dominant model of collaborative governance and the Nantes project of urban regeneration and economic boosterism. In other words, it has (potentially) come to define the very limits of collaborative governance and the Nantes model of participatory engagement.

Nantes has arguably not suffered the vagaries of austerity associated with other cities in France. The city continues to attract people and investment; it has reasserted its status as the capital of the west of France, transforming its workforce in the process. Since the closure of its shipyards in the 1980s, the city has been associated with a series of urban renewal initiatives, for example the development of its tram system, the regeneration of the Malakoff neighbourhood and the Ile de Nantes. Successive municipal leaders, not least Jean-Marc Ayrault, have sought to position Nantes at the forefront of European cities, developing its international reputation and attractiveness for its practices of innovation, culture and the environment. In 2015, Nantes was the European Green Capital.

This is not to deny the existence of deprivation across many neighbourhoods of the city. One of the key challenges facing politicians and policymakers in Nantes, repeatedly expressed in interviews, is the increasing number of people in various communities who were deemed to be at risk of falling off the back of the economic growth motor of Nantes. Yet, this risk of social exclusion was not constructed by local officials as a simple consequence of austerity. Budgetary constraints were clearly recognized. But viewed against the backdrop of a city that continues to grow and broaden its local tax base, Nantes was seen as facing a triple crisis. Economic constraints were interwoven with political challenges, as French citizens turn away from traditional politics, and social challenges were discerned in the form of the weakening of established community networks; all of which have prompted demands for new forms of service delivery and governance.

Much of the policy and political response to this triple crisis comes firmly under the rubric of collaborative governance. On the one hand, Nantes has embraced inter-communal collaboration, which has led to the sharing and coordinating of services with its local municipal partners in the inter-communal organisation that is Nantes Métropole. Nantes has indeed become one of the new metropolitan areas recently established by the French state. On the other hand, Nantes city council has invested markedly in moves towards citizen dialogue and co-governance. Like many other developments, this tradition within the city dates back at least to the mayoral term of Jean-Marc Ayrault. But it has become the defining policy commitment of the current Mayor Johanna Rolland. Indeed, building on its neighbourhood forums across the new urban space, the city has engaged in a number of ‘big conversations’, most notably its nine-month consultation on the management of the Loire river, which flows through the city and its region.

However, what are the limits of this collaborative governance in addressing this triple crisis? To answer this question, let us return to the plan to build an international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. In many ways, this issue has become a mobilising or “nodal” issue for a number of demands against both national and local policies, in which protesters against the airport have also contested the dominant narrative of urban boosterism which has underpinned the official discourses of Nantes. At the end of February 2016, demonstrators against the new airport linked the campaign against the airport to a number of adjacent grievances and demands.

Such articulations were captured in a statement from Christine Poupin, one of the national leaders of the New AntiCapitalist  Party, who participating at the February 2016 anti-airport protest in Nantes claimed that ‘there is a moment when it becomes necessary to say “STOP” … STOP to the airport obviously, but also STOP to its world, and its world is the same as that as the state of emergency as that of the destruction of the employment law…’ Students protesting in Nantes against the reform of labour rights made similar equivalences between struggles, with the regional newspaper, Ouest-France reporting: ‘they shout against police violence, the airport, capitalism, government, bosses.’. Indeed, the project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes has come to be seen as an ‘ideological battle’, in which there is a challenge both to the entire growth model, which many commentators have suggested is a key motif of the Nantes project, and to the very legitimacy of the French state. As expected, the referendum, which François Hollande publicly constructed as putting an end once and for all to debate over the airport has clearly failed to do so.  Local residents have vowed to continue their campaign, with judicial reviews still in place over environmental impacts of the planned infrastructure on water and on rare species. Moreover, as we suggested above, protesters on the ZAD, the renamed  ‘zone to defend’, which covers the proposed airport site, have established their own camps; they have built spaces in which to develop and showcase new ways of living, as well as exhibiting new forms of relationships. They are also preparing to defend another attempt to evict them forcibly from the site.

Such protests and campaigns, coupled with the painful creation of alternative spaces, evoke the limits of new forms of collaborative governance, while exposing various techniques and forms of depoliticisation. The latter might be seen as endeavours to exclude potential alternatives to the current regimes and models of governance under the guise of ‘pragmatic politics’ and the reaching of a rational consensus. Our intuition in this regard is that certain forms of protest and alienation may be rendered invisible or displaced by the dominant discourse of integration and community cohesion (as was arguably the case in the UK as part of the Third Way discourse). It is also possible in this regard that the local and national media focus on the overt and intense protests against the building of a new international airport in Nantes may serve unwittingly to conceal other sets of underlying tensions and cleavages. The protests against the airport have been largely spearheaded by middle-class environmentalists, peasants and anarchists, whereas the troubled neighbourhoods affected by the financial crisis tend to reflect class and ethnic divisions. By ‘following the protest’, while remaining attentive to the way in which ‘political resistance discloses the true operation of power’, our future fieldwork will focus on these related issues.

Steven Griggs is Professor of Public Policy at De Montfort University, David Howarth is Professor in Social and Political Theory at the University of Essex, and Dr. Andrés Feandeiro is a research assistant on the Collaborative Governance under Austerity project at De Montfort University.

Workshop: Local Economic Development and Skills Under Austerity

In this post, Jonathan Payne reports back on a two day workshop on local economic development (LED) and skills policy under austerity held by the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) in May.

The workshop brought together leading UK academics in the areas of LED, governance and skills to debate the changing institutional landscape around LED in England and the opportunities and constraints afforded by policy commitments to ‘localism’. This afforded a rare opportunity for academics interested in economic geography, local governance and skills to come together and discuss how the ‘localisation’ agenda is playing out in practice.

As Ewart Keep argued, for the last thirty years skills policy in England has tended to be a national project, focused on generalised workforce upskilling in pursuit of government targets. With government now promising to devolve more of the adult skills budget to local areas, there are questions around how much autonomy local areas will have and what level of resource they might draw on. Furthermore, past experience would suggest that a narrow focus upon education and training, or boosting the supply of skills, runs up against problems of weak employer demand for skill, linked to the way many firms in the UK compete, design jobs and manage staff. This is reflected in a high proportion of low skill, low wage jobs compared with many other advanced European countries, relatively low productivity, and problems of ‘over-qualification’ and ‘under-utilisation of skills’ within the workplace. As the UK Commission for Employment and Skills has argued, there are limits to what boosting skills supply can achieve on its own without wider measures to influence the ‘demand side’. The latter requires effective measures such as industrial policy, economic development and business improvement to grow the proportion of high skill jobs and upgrade the skill content of work more generally. Skills policy might work better if integrated and joined up with such activity.

The role of local enterprise partnerships, city-deals and combined authorities is clearly of relevance here for a number of reasons. First, government is promising to ‘empower’ local communities through these mechanisms to drive LED. Second, skills policy is being localised and skills often figure prominently within this agenda. These claims are controversial, particularly in terms of how ‘real’ localism is at time of funding cuts. However, localism is also a moving picture, and if skills and economic development are to be integrated as part of a more holistic approach, then this is one of the few areas where we might look for examples of progress (or not).

Many issues came to the fore during these discussions: the tendency for LED governance to bounce back and forth between different scales and for policy to ‘keep failing forwards’; the uneven capacity of LEPs; the role of power in devolving ‘risk’; the need to understand how local actors comprehend their situation and what motivates their engagement; the tendency for policy to eschew interventions inside the ‘black box’ of the firm; and the question of what ‘localism’ can tell us about the ‘neo-liberal state’ in a period of crisis management and the narratives it constructs. What is clear, however, is that research will be better placed to address such issues where academics work across disciplinary boundaries. LED, governance and skills are an example of one such interface where collaboration is likely to prove particularly fruitful.

Jonathan Payne is Reader in Employment Studies at De Montfort University and a member of CURA (Centre for Urban Research on Austerity) as well as CROWE (Contemporary Research on Organisations, Work and Employment

Workshop: Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity

Adam Fishwick and Heather Connolly report back on a workshop they convened for CURA on Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity.

On 18th May CURA hosted our one day workshop on ‘Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity’ engaging with a range of distinctive – and innovative – strategies that have emerged in Europe and Latin America that are challenging the dominant turn to austerity. Papers delivered during the panel sessions were grouped around three key themes on workplace occupations, migrant workers’ protest, and alternative ‘grassroots’ mobilisation. The day ended with keynote presentations from Lisa McKenzie and Phoebe Moore that illustrated the sheer range of opposition that the workshop presenters touched upon – from working class neighbourhoods in the UK to the tensions over technology in the workplace.

The panels generated lively debate from participants and speakers (some of which was broadcast on social media via #CURAresistance) with debates centring on the viability of bottom-up forms of resistance, on the role of institutional actors and the state, and the possibilities for developing new subjectivities and forms of agency.

In the first panel, David Bailey and Saori Shibata presented findings from their research in ‘low-resistance’ societies of the UK and Japan and argued that only with what they termed ‘militant refusal’ were austerity measures successfully challenged and reversed. Lucia Pradella discussed the centrality of new migrants in resistance within and against the traditional trade unions in the logistics sector in Italy – highlighting the dynamism of new actors in a sector crucial to global capitalism. Nick Kiersey, finally, drawing on his research into anti-austerity protests in Ireland challenged us to think about the possibilities of developing a ‘left governmentality’ in the ‘slow exit’ from neoliberalism and austerity.

In the second panel, Heather Connolly returned to the theme of migrant workers within and against traditional trade unions in France, presenting her research on the Sans Papiers movement in France and the innovative models of resistance it adopted. Adam Fishwick argued that, despite the return of a bleak period of austerity in Argentina, resistance could still be found in what Ana Dinerstein has termed the ‘concrete utopias’ in the country. Focusing on the recuperated factories, he showed how they offered a distinct alternative beyond the constraints of state. To close the panels, Stuart Price presented some of his findings of a workplace occupation in Spain, discussing tensions between the closing of space for protest and the potential/limitations of new, seemingly spontaneous forms of resistance.

Lisa McKenzie – alongside Stuart Price – brought a powerful visual component to the day, combining images collected in the course of her fieldwork and everyday life in Nottingham and London with ethnographic narratives on working class life under austerity. Her keynote presentation demonstrated the lived realities of austerity from navigating unemployment, to homelessness, to the pervasive class stigmatisation that, in her words, ‘does the work of the policies of austerity’. Running through her talk was a sense of the need to think concretely about the impacts of austerity in order to confront it – to engage directly with the lived, everyday impacts of the assault on the most marginalised and stigmatised communities and individuals. Closing her presentation, two resonant images of young working class men on top of the roof of an elite private school in Nottingham during the 2011 riots and a homeless man under a new luxury development in London neatly captured this sentiment.

Phoebe Moore took us in a different, but related, direction with a vision of the new workplace and the role of technology in reinforcing the lived conditions of austerity, but also in potentially offering ways to confront and resist in uniquely innovative ways. In her presentation, the new techniques in the measurement and management of working life – from worn technologies to new monitoring and surveillance devices – were shown to be a central component of the micro-level practices overseeing workplaces across a range of sectors. But her work also highlighted the means by which this key component of the new discipline of austerity can be confronted. Technology – as much as it represents a mechanism of control in the workplace – was also shown to provide mechanisms for overcoming that control. From the everyday challenging of its use in the workplace, to re-purposing it in practice, to the development of more organised forms of resistance, the potential for subversion was clear.

Overall, the presentations and discussions throughout the day made clear that if austerity is to proceed, it will not continue unchallenged. Drawing on research and expertise in a variety of settings and contexts, the speakers and participants offered a clear sense that the precarious, impoverished futures proposed and practiced by advocates of austerity are not the only future available. Moving forward, the plan from this workshop is to develop a published collection of the papers that consolidates these themes of resistance to the increasingly pervasive practices of resistance, with the aim of continuing collaboration in to resisting austerity.

Dr. Adam Fishwick is Lecturer in Urban Studies and Public Policy and Dr. Heather Connolly Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at De Montfort University, both are core members of CURA.

Local Enterprise Partnerships, Skills Strategies and Austerity

In this post Jonathan Payne introduces a CURA-funded scoping study that he is carrying out with Phil Almond and Jonathan Davies into the role of local enterprise partnerships in developing skills strategies in a context of austerity

Many commentators on skills policy in England have long argued that the approach has been too narrowly focused on boosting the supply of skills without paying sufficient attention to employer demand for skill and the need to ensure that skills are put to productive use in the workplace.  The approach reached its height during the New Labour years when government set national skills targets and tried to use the power of the public purse to boost skills supply. By 2010, this approach was clearly running into problems, with major issues around ‘over-qualification’ and the ‘under-utilisation of skills’. Indeed, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills has argued that unless these problems are addressed, the UK will struggle to address its ‘productivity problem’.  Put simply, skills policies are likely to work better if ways can be found to integrate skills supply, demand and utilisation. This means linking skills supply with economic development and business improvement.

Progress has been very slow, and it might be argued that austerity only makes matters more difficult. However, the fact that government now has little money to throw at the ‘skills problem’ may open up opportunities for new thinking and approaches. The current government also wants to develop ‘employer ownership of skills’, which really means getting employers to pay more for training rather than relying on government support. Again, however, substantive progress is unlikely to be made unless ways can be found to raise employer ambition around skills. This essentially means impacting on local economic development as well as the way employers compete and design jobs which shape their actual skill requirements.

Enter local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), the new kid on the block when it comes to sub-regional economic development. LEPs bring together local councils and businesses around a wide ranging agenda, which includes economic development and skills, and occupy a complex institutional landscape involving Combined Authorities, City Deals, City-Regions, Enterprise Zones and more.

Amongst other things, LEPs are grappling with the challenge of developing more locally responsive, ‘demand-led’ skills strategies which feed into their strategic economic plans. However, they have courted controversy in terms of whether they are locally accountable, and whether they have sufficient powers and resources at their disposal to make a difference. What local actors understand by a ‘demand-led’ approach to skills is also unclear. Is it about responding to employer needs through better skills matching or is about raising employer demand for skill? How can ‘employer demand’ and ‘learner demand’ be combined, and does the current funding regime for skills help or hinder matters? For example, more adult funding is being routed through LEPs, while adult loans prioritise individual choice, with labour market intelligence and careers advice expected to square the circle. National targets and priorities also remain, in terms of the number of apprenticeships for example, while the new ‘apprenticeship levy’ is national rather than local in approach.

Policy has responded to criticisms around LEP capacity by boosting their core funding and is seemingly prepared to devolve more to ‘city-regions’ if they can make a strong case and satisfy certain government criteria. The question is whether this is a real step forward and if it goes far enough? Is central government serious about decentralisation and localism, or is it just handing local actors a set of problems without the means to really address them? Are we talking about the devolution of power or the offloading of responsibility? Local actors, with varying capacities, however, may try to run with this and see what can be done. An important question for research then is what progress can they make in developing an integrated, demand-led approach to skills which is long overdue, given the current policy dispensation?

Jonathan Payne, Jonathan Davies and Phil Almond are currently exploring these issues through a CURA-funded research project looking at the skills agenda for LEPs in the Midlands. Scoping interviews are currently being conducted with LEPs, local authorities, further education colleges and employer bodies with a view to understanding the issues on the ground, what progress is being made and the challenges local actors are coming up against.

On the 16th and 17th of May CURA will be hosting a workshop on Local Economic Development to discuss research agendas around local economic development and skills in England, if you are interested in attending please email Suzanne Walker swalker@dmu.ac.uk to register your place.

Jonathan Payne is a CURA member and Reader in employment studies at De Montfort University.