Author: Jenni Cauvain

By Dr Adriana Massidda and Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza

In this blog, Adriana Massidda (Early Career Academic Fellow in Architecture, DMU) and Valeria Guarneros-Meza (Reader in Public Policy and Politics, DMU) reflect on an international workshop that took place in Leicester, UK, in March 2020.

The presence and role of the state in spaces of urban poverty has been widely discussed for decades, and yet each question asked opens up a myriad new ones. Multifaceted, ubiquitous, and concrete while almost ungraspable, the state can be said to hold a promise of social redistribution yet at the same time it perpetuates inequalities.

In fact, on the one hand, the state may materialise itself in low-income neighbourhoods in the form of a school, housing built with council funding, a day care centre for the elderly, or (sometimes mediated) cash-transfer programmes. On the other hand, in its ambivalent monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, the state also emerges in low-income areas through the presence of the police that enforce the law as often as they depart from it, co-creating chains of illegal markets that are observed in drug trade, social and domestic abuse, and interpersonal violence.

Cutting across these issues, the work of Argentine sociologist Javier Auyero, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology, University of Texas-Austin and a key name in the sociology of urban marginality globally, addresses and articulates crucial questions when it comes to understanding why and how a certain community interacts with the state the way it does. Javier considers how communities make sense of state-induced domination, by immersing himself in the place and collaborating with local residents.

On the 3rd March 2020 a small but wide-ranging group of researchers and community activists gathered together in the Saffron Lane Neighbourhood Centre in Leicester to discuss the inter-connected themes of urban informality, environmental vulnerability/toxic uncertainty, and the ambivalent presence of the state in spaces of urban marginality. Besides Javier, the group included staff members and doctoral students from De Montfort University (full list at the end) and Neil Hodgkin, director of the Neighbourhood Centre and our host. The event was supported by the DMU Centre for Urban Research on Austerity.

Celebrating the event in Saffron Lane gave us the perfect environment to discuss urban poverty, politics and environmental design since, as highlighted by several of the attendees, the neighbourhood stands amongst one of the most deprived areas in the UK, has been strongly hit by government austerity cuts, and yet it is site of an innovative exploration of passive housing construction and the ways in which it can help residents sustain their cost of living.

In its multiple manifestations, the presence of the state in spaces of urban deprivation is ambivalent and contradictory. In the UK, central government’s grants to local government have been in decline since the 1980s and local authorities faced severe cuts after the 2008/2010 financial crisis, leaving a void that local government initiatives struggle to fill in. The decline of the manufacturing industry, combined with these austerity politics and the reluctance of city councils such as Leicester’s to openly contest this trend, have created a dire situation in areas like Saffron Lane. ‘We are looking at increasing fuel poverty, water poverty; inability to pay the rent’ explained Neil; ‘we’ve got to a point where having a washing machine and a fridge in your house is a luxury’.

In Argentina, poverty is also pressing, though it manifests itself in different ways. The recurrent problems that affect residents deeply in the peri-urban areas of the capital city, Buenos Aires, are related to interpersonal violence, drug addictions, illicit trade, and more pressingly the complicity of the police in many of these issues. ‘What if’, asked Javier, ‘violence at the urban margins is not what urban sociology is telling me – it’s not simply about rich retaliation and retribution but it takes more of the form of concatenations of violence? What if contamination is one of those aspects of durable inequality that we have not scrutinized in the way in which we should?

A counterpoint between the case of Buenos Aires , site of many of Javier’s works, and the UK, was present implicitly in our discussions as we sought to make sense of the paradoxical role of the state in the simultaneous mitigation and co-production of inequalities. Relevant questions to the British case included: to what extent the state in the UK participates in illicit markets? Is it the case in the UK that violence concentrates where the urban poor dwell? What types of violences can be found in the UK? What is the role of the state in the lowest-income neighbourhoods? To what extent does urban marginality change the parameters of legitimacy of the state?

‘The state [in both global north and south] has played an important role in manufacturing forms of informality, in housing, planning, infrastructure and the other areas of life […] albeit in complex and contradictory ways’ argue Valeria Guarneros-Meza and Adam Fishwick in an earlier post. The same could be said of unemployment, illicit trade networks, resource depletion and modern slavery addressed by the presenters throughout this workshop. Cities like Leicester struggle with poverty. The discourse on multiculturalism has been part of an official narrative where the City Council seeks to adapt to a pressing scenario of austerity by highlighting people’s entrepreneurship. In spite of the obvious differences, this position is not that far off in its neoliberal underpinnings from what writers like Hernando de Soto recommended, back in the 1990s, for Peruvian shantytowns: promote residents’ enterprise so that the state does not need to intervene. The twofold problem is that the structural differences faced by the residents are unchallenged; and that with little support, political power, and perhaps even knowledge, individuals left alone to resolve such large issues remain in an extremely vulnerable situation.

This constructed vulnerability sets the conditions for what Laura described as modern slavery, and for the ghastly working situations and social demobilisation analysed by Jonathan Davies. Building upon his research on austerity and the work of Nik Hammer on the fashion industry in Leicester, Jonathan at the start of his talk said, ‘This presentation is not so much about the clandestine hand of the state as it is about how deregulation creates illicit markets’. His presentation provided a thorough contextualisation of how local state policy ultimately creates a clandestine economy in Leicester through fiscal austerity and deregulation of employment practices. In the aggregate the city’s policies envelope practices of modern slavery, while depoliticising (organised) work and informalising the city’s economy.

In a city such as Leicester, poverty is arguably less visible than in Buenos Aires, yet it leaves residents with enormous problems. ‘Even though [Saffron Lane] has the most affordable homes in the city’ stated Neil ‘95% have rent arrears. It does not look like a poverty-stricken place, but most people here have less income than they have outgoings. But what if a house could pay you to live in it?’ he continued; ‘it’s quite futuristic but this is the biggest issue for people here.’ In Mark Lemon’s words: ‘What are the possibilities for scaling up? If you over-spec a house, you should be able to have excess energy, excess heat, excess food.’

The Saffron Lane Neighbourhood Centre partnered with DMU IESD since 2018 to design the Living Labs; a pilot attempt to create a community able to overcome state-induced inequalities. In addition to social concerns, the interest of DMU in the project stems from its multipartnered nature: ‘Living Labs seem to be the flavour of the year’ explained Mark Lemon, ‘but most of them are located in campuses. Our intention, with Neil, has always been that this Lab is located within, and merges with, the community. We’re working beyond the household level.’ In working off campus and beyond the household level, the Living Lab is opening opportunities to explore the questions that Javier’s work has provocatively posed during the workshop. We intend to begin materialising some of these ideas in the next couple of years.

About the contributors:

Adriana Laura Massidda is an architect and academic researcher currently based at the Institute of Architecture, De Montfort University. Her previous work looked at the spatial, social and ecological history of southwest Buenos Aires, Argentina, a landscape of wetlands with rich wild vegetation which was transformed into urban space through the contested actions of shantytown communities and municipal departments (1956-1972). Her most recent work looked at female leaderships in Lima’s pueblos jóvenes in the context of internal violence and rising neoliberalism. She is currently outlining a new research project to explore the potentialities and limitations of phyto- and bio-remediation to mitigate contamination through co-design with low-income communities.

Valeria Guarneros-Meza is Deputy Director of CURA and has an interest in exploring the term ‘informality’ as an analytical tool for understanding local governance under contexts of violence, securitisation and extractivism.

Workshop Participants

Javier Auyero, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas-Austin
Jonathan Davies, Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, De Montfort University
Valeria Guarneros Meza, Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, De Montfort University
Ibrahim Has, Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, De Montfort University
Neil Hodgkin, Saffron Lane Neighbourhood Centre
Daniel Kerr, Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University
Mark Lemon, Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University
Adriana Laura Massidda, Institute of Architecture, De Montfort University
Birgit Painter, Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University
Laura Pajón, De Montfort University Leicester and Leicestershire and Rutland Modern Slavery Action Group
Mahnoor Shoaib, Institute of Architecture, De Montfort University

By Leon Rosa Reichle

PhD Candidate, Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, DeMontfort University, Leicester UK

My PhD research was interrupted by a pandemic. In this blogpost, I reflect on how my fieldwork in Leipzig, Eastern Germany, is changing due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and according social and political restrictions in April 2020.

The third research phase of my project dedicated to understanding how tenants’ relations change in a restructuring city, happened to be interrupted by a pandemic, that disrupts not just global economic production, but also the entire modes of social reproduction (in homes and communities) (Harvey, 2020; Mezzadra, 2020). The respective state of emergency with curfews, strict rules on social distancing, the stopping of entire industries and daily shift of discourses and emotions towards the spreading pandemic, affects not only my practical fieldwork, but also my subject of analysis. Observers from different places in the world witness different relational manifestations of the disease; economic polarization, the stratification of safety, fear and egoism as well as smiles and new ways of socializing, caring and expressing community (Bude, 2020; Harvey 2020; Mezzadra, 2020; Sennett, 2020). Witnessing a historical and completely unplannable moment in time, I am dedicating this research phase to witnessing how tenants’ relations change in a restructuring city in pandemic times.

Departing from my previous research on a restructuring neighbourhood in which current developments exacerbate post-shrinkage processes of the post-socialist city of Leipzig, this research phase should explore existing and emerging tenants’ relations in a state of emergency. I use my preliminary analysis of Post-Shrinkage-Dialectics as a description of economic and geo-political patterns of urban restructuring in Leipzig before the outbreak of COVID-19. In this context of departure, I have gathered initial findings on tenants’ experiences of urban restructuring in daily life, both within the own home, and within the neighbourhood. My understanding tenants’ perception of their role in the process of restructuring, is so far quite limited. The pre-COVID-19 data gives some glimpses at tenants’ self-perception through reactions to experiences within the home and indicates that the perception of their role in restructuring in the wider neighbourhood is strongly mediated by emerging and existing relations.

The current research phase was initially intended to provide an in-depth analysis of tenants’ perception of their role in urban restructuring – in their flats and in their neighbourhood; defining and analysing existing and emerging tenants’ relations in this context of restructuring and illuminating how existing relations of solidarity and divisions/exclusions between tenants mediate their experience of and relational reaction to urban restructuring and urban society. What changes now, is that another independent variable, an external influence has made its appearance: the outbreak and spreading of COVID-19 and the respective regulations of all social interaction. This requires a revisiting of a previous analysis of experiences of urban restructuring: How are experiences of urban restructuring manifesting under a state of pandemic exception? Furthermore, all following research questions will be adapted: How do tenants perceive their role in urban restructuring during pandemic times? What types of tenants’ solidarities and divisions are existent and emerging on a micro- and meso level in a politically polarized city during pandemic times? Why and how do relations emerge in this moment? How do existing relations change with polarized and selective physical proximity during the pandemic? And: How do existing relations and divisions (before COVID-19) mediate their pre-COVID-19 and current experience of (and relational reaction to) urban restructuring?

Experiences of Urban Restructuring

Most experiences of urban restructuring that have come up in my research so far, have been related to different forms of displacement: few cases of direct displacement, exclusionary displacement either causing people to either be stuck in (partly unfavourable) conditions, or leading to segregation and polarization, related anxieties and pressure caused often by neglect. Whereas direct displacements are officially paused by the German Government currently, and tenants are legally enabled to postpone their rent payments (tagesschau 2020), this will undoubtedly lead to piling up of rental debt for some tenants. How does this affect feelings of security versus anxiety and pressure? How does it affect relations to landlords and other tenants?

The consequences of exclusionary displacement might materialize to a more drastic extent now, that leaving the house is highly regulated and limited. What are the consequences of a quasi-curfew for families in overcrowded flats? For seniors in too large flats? How do tendencies of segregation mediate the experience of the curfew? To what extent are distancing, isolation, shielding and quarantine feasible, and for whom? And lastly, living in (strategically) neglected housing could become much more noticeable in times, where more time than ever is spent at home. How do quarantine and curfew influence the experience of neglected housing?

Tenants’ solidarities and divisions

An open-ended list of existing and emerging relational goods and evils (Donati, Archer, 2015) so far entails: friendly encounters; friendships; a dense network of institutional neighbourliness; Hausgemeinschaften (house-communities); mutual help networks on the side of relational goods; the analogy with a village somewhere between a relational good and evil, and an increasing lack of time and space; territorial stigma and racism; competitive racism; language barriers between tenants; shame; a history of denunciation; generational changes hand in hand with fluctuation and anonymization; (resulting) loneliness; conflicts between long-term tenants and newcomers and competing economic interests of different tenants on the side of relational evils.

Some of these might be directly mediated by the outbreak and spreading of COVID-19 and/or the resulting restrictions of social life. How does a network of institutional neighbourliness react to a pandemic and with what effects? How do house-communities change? Which mutual help networks change, break or emerge? Does territorial stigma and different forms of racism interplay with the disease at all? How are language barriers reinforced or overcome? How is the lack of time and space changing? What role does shame play these days? Does a history of denunciation mediate people’s response to the pandemic? Which role do generational changes in the neighbourhood play now and are the divisions resulting from fluctuation and anonymization exacerbated, continued or overcome? How is loneliness changing, increasing or interrupted and with what consequences? How do conflicts between long-term tenants and newcomers mediate relations in the neighbourhood now? How do they influence the efficiency of self-help networks? Can they be overcome? And lastly: how do different economic interests play out in the entire scenario? This is just an incipient list of questions resulting from the current material, but it will be inductively sorted, tidied out and complemented with the messy material that is bound to come up in the following weeks.

My research project has a strong focus on temporality defined by its main question on change, disruption and emergence. Now it is complemented with an unexpected, very distinct temporal marker, which might turn out to indicate radical change, continuity, reinforcement or breaks – for the world and for housing relationships in a restructuring city.

Methods

Methodologically, my research project is based on the critical realist principle of retroduction (Belfrage, Hauf, 2017), which indicates both a research motivation of producing critical knowledge on an observed social problem, and a specific practice of research. The practice describes a spiral from de- to induction and back and forth again, hence from theoretical deskwork and initial critical sensitizing theories to open-minded fieldwork and from there on back and forth between fallible existing theories, inductive analysis and theory building. As a supportive friend in my feminist colloquium reminded me in a state of slight panic over the consequences of COVID-19 for the world and my research, this research practice is ideal for my situation, as it permits me to embrace the changing priorities in the field and analyse them critically to complement existing theories.

Yet whereas my research design usually envisages a careful planning of each following state of fieldwork following the analysis of the previous one, this historical moment of potential constant change and unforeseeable consequences demands a certain flexibility and messiness. The following outlines a brief research design which is likely to undergo changes every day. Initially, this research phase designed to conduct interviews and focus group discussions with different types of tenants rendered socially or economically vulnerable. I have classified these so far into financially precarious students or young academics (a); unemployed or working poor long-term residents – of which many are or are becoming “key workers” (b); elderly or retired tenants (c); and tenants with a biography marked by international migration (d).

The biggest challenge of my research under a pandemic state of exception, besides not being able to physically meet people, is just an exacerbation of a general challenge: a lack of existing relationships, which now is much harder to overcome, as physical spaces of encounter are minimized. This permits two practical consequences: using existing relations for research and finding creative methods to build new ones.

Building on existing relations…

… Permits me to reschedule planned interviews as phone interviews and have casual conversations over the phone. This will be my first method. Considering the relations, I already have, this permits me access to tenants of different groups:
(a) financially precarious students and young academics – through my personal friend- and activist networks in the neighbourhood, the access to students is quite easy.
(c) elderly or retired tenants – luckily, a time-line focus group with retired tenants physically took place just before the outbreak of COVID-19. I am now in direct contact with social workers in a seniors’ social centre and have put up a small notification on the website of the centre with my phone number and some lines on my research. Additionally, I have been included on a phone-chain initiated by the centre, meaning that I might be called once or twice per week by an unknown senior tenant informing me on their physical and emotional situation and needs and passing the call on to another elderly tenant. This could be a promising example of emerging neighbourhood relations. Outside of this network, I am planning to ask other future interview partners for contacts to elderly tenants in their houses.
(d) tenants with a biography marked by international migration – potentially, after rescheduling a group interview with three social workers working in different neighbourhood centres from and for international girls and women into a video-call group interview, I could find ways to talk to tenants with a migration-biography. Yet here, I imagine language to be an even bigger barrier, then in person. I will keep this open thread in mind.

… Has encouraged phone conversations with befriended activists in a variety of neighbourhood-initiatives, which then in turn have tilted my intention to not engage in activist scholarship during my PhD. As a result of the current state of exception, I have organized a video conference to discuss the political implications, consequences and chances of the current moment for neighbourhood organizing. A second meeting is about to follow.

… Permits me to engage in virtual spaces, that I already have access to. This mainly centres around chat groups in my neighbourhood. An existing one is “sharing is caring East”, where currently 5765 people are discussing and sharing random stuff. Furthermore, several self-help groups and channels have emerged. I believe, that in terms of groups of interest, these are mainly used by (a) students and young academics. I am already engaging and in a process of participant observation in these groups and have used one of them to advertise the video conference. They can be both spaces to find new interview partners and potential connecting points for further discussion and organizing.

… Has, so far, permitted me to talk to my neighbours both just before and right after my recent move. In both houses many tenants are (b) unemployed or working poor long-term residents, with whom I have had and still have chats (with safe distance) when we meet in the hallways, or when I offered them support for shopping. In my old house I put up my phone number, in case somebody gets quarantined and needs help. So far, I have engaged in informal conversations with old and new neighbours and it is uncertain how these will continue.

Finding creative methods to build new relations…

… Is something I have started diving into, as my contact to (b) unemployed or working poor long-term residents is limited. A means of communication that is currently spreading quickly in the neighbourhood is written communication. Little posters, notes and signs, on doors of supermarkets, residential houses, lanterns complement posters by the city, online adverts for governmental information on COVID-19 and newspapers releasing daily updates. They contain advice, help-offers, cheery messages, translations of the new legal restrictions, scientific information and so on. I have decided to join into this method of communicating, hence also testing how well it works, through posting 100 letters with an invitation to a phone call in randomized letter boxes. My current knowledge on the neighbourhood permitted me to make a rough selection of houses worth considering within certain areas, based on rent prices (and landlords), the state of buildings, previous statements of interviewees and everyday observations. This selection raises the probability of reaching tenants that rely on transfer-incomes, as this determines where people can still afford to live (KDU-segregation). So far, I have received 3 calls from tenants, resulting in short semi-structured interviews, roughly following a previously prepared schedule. In one case this interview permitted me to snowball to another interviewee.

Ethnography

As before, all these methods will be complemented by a critical ethnography of neighbourhood life. This can contain walks, excursions to the supermarkets and online (chat group) observations. Probably the best way to keep track of the constantly shifting circumstances, and maintaining a distance to the field, is a continuous dedication to writing field notes.

Literature

Bude, H. (2020) Die Leute passen aufeinander auf. Frankfurter Rundschau, 18 Mar.
Donati, P. and Archer, M.S. (2015) The Relational Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harvey, D. (2020) ANTI-CAPITALIST POLITICS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 (Revised version, March 22, 2020). [Online] Urban Front. Available from : https://www.urban-front.com/articles [Accessed 23/03/20].

Mezzadra, S. (2020) Eine Politik der Kämpfe in Zeiten der Pandemie. [Online] de.indymedia.org. Available from : https://de.indymedia.org/node/72570 [Accessed 25/03/20].

Sennett, R. (2020) „Wir müssen wachsam sein“. tagesspiegel, 19 Mar.
tagesschau (2020) Corona-Krise: Regierung plant Schutzmaßnahmen für Mieter. [Online] tagesschau.de. Available from : https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/miete-corona-101.html.

By Leon Rosa Reichle, PhD Researcher at the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA), DeMontfort University. Twitter: @leonrrei

Introduction

The Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide is published online in English and Spanish. The Resource Guide is an outcome of the 2019 Summer Institute on Methodologies for Housing Justice, convened by the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin (part of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network). During the Summer Institute, we, a group of movement and university-based scholars from different cities around the world, collectively learned about, worked on and exchanged experiences with methodologies as political tools.

Instructors from different cities

In a row of inspiring sessions, we heard from different (activist) scholars from around the world: From Raquel Rolnik (University of São Paulo) on São Paulo’s Eviction Observatory, from Melissa García-Lamarca (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) on debt diaries in Barcelona and Athens, from Terra Graziani, Elana Eden, and Erin McElroy on the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project on the US west and east coast, from Pete White (LA Community Action Network, LA CAN) and Hamid Khan (Stop LAPD Spying) on people’s audits in Los Angeles, from Shayla Myers (Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles) on mapping and analyzing court records, from Amy Ritterbusch (UCLA) on participatory action research and the dangers of extractivist activism and scholarship, from Yusef Omowale (Southern California Library) on dominant discourses in dangerous methods (that serve to justify displacement, and create historical frames that blame local residents for harm), from Andrea Roberts (Texas A&M University) on participatory memory work and from Benjamin Dulchin (Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development) on displacement alert maps and speculation watch lists in New York.

What is the Guide about?

Based on our respective experiences in different movements and with different kinds of research, we formed working groups, to disseminate outcomes of our productive discussions and open up the collectively built spaces of knowledge in the Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide. The guide is intended as an inspiration and open tool for movements fighting for housing justice. At its heart is the question: “can the “master’s tools” – Lorde’s famous phrasing – be used for purposes of building another world?” (Lorde in Rolnik, Roy, 2020 – introduction to the Guide). As critical housing and urban scholars inside and outside of academia we have tried to assemble a resource that proposes not just methods, but methodologies that take a partisan standpoint against hegemonic knowledge production.

“From and for movements, this guide is based on a political conception of methodology for housing justice, and not only criticizes but proposes tools to fight dominant methodologies which legitimize the violence of housing financialization, banishment and many other housing injustices of the outgrowths of racial capitalism.“

Acknowledgements

It was incredibly inspiring to work on this, all my thanks goes to everyone who made this possible, the editors Ananya Roy, Raquel Rolnik, Terra Graziani and Hilary Malson, all the wonderful colleagues, comrades and friends I met in the process and the great team I worked with: Amee Chew, Lauren Ilano, Tolu Lanrewaju-Kadri and Albert Lowe.

You find the guide here in English:

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/41g6f5cj

And here in Spanish:

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3v76q8q5

Jonathan Payne, Professor of Work, Employment and Skills, and Director of the People, Organisations and Work Institute (POWI) at DMU[i]

The fall-out from the coronavirus crisis is likely to be devastating and long lasting, and will have a major impact on local economies. The worst-case scenario is of something akin to a ‘Great Depression’, but even if that is avoided we can still expect a long-term negative hit to the economy which, on one recent estimate, could last 7 years.[ii] When the economy does bounce back, there is also a good chance that it will do so in a particular way. There is a very real danger that in a ‘flexible’ (weakly regulated) labour market, many employers will respond by cost minimisation and look to rapidly scale down labour costs. This could lead to an explosion in casual and precarious work, including gig work, agency work and hourly paid forms of employment. There is already evidence that for many young people these are often the only jobs they can get access to, in terms of a springboard into the labour market, as employers use ‘precarity’ as a ‘screening mechanism’ to select for more secure positions.[iii]

Much of course depends on how central government responds. However, we can anticipate that one of the most pressing challenges will be rising unemployment. At present, with central government in immediate ‘crisis-response’ mode, it is unclear how much thought the DWP and DfE have given to this. Much of the detail surrounding the UK’s ‘Shared Prosperity Fund’ (designed to replace European Structural and Investment Funds) is also lacking in terms of how much funding will be available for local actors, and how this will be devolved.[iv] So the big question for local government is: ‘what resources will we have to work with?’ While this makes planning difficult for local government, it cannot simply wait on central government to work out what it is going to do, before considering how it might respond.

The first point to be clear on is that if a future of large-scale unemployment does beckon, then this a problem on the ‘demand-side’ of the labour market, or, put simply, too few jobs. ‘Supply-side’ re-skilling and re-training measures have only limited traction in dealing with such problems. However, tackling demand-side issues (i.e. job creation) is going to be very difficult for local government without concerted action from central government. So how should local government respond? Or what might it practically do in a very difficult situation?

A useful starting point would be to track which groups in the labour market are going to be hardest hit. There are already strong indications that certain areas such as retailing and hospitality will be among them, and that young people without a university education will also suffer disproportionately (although this is not to say that some graduates will not also be adversely affected). One possible scenario is that apprenticeships for young people quickly start to dry up as employers think how they can recoup the costs of the government’s apprenticeship levy in ‘hard times’ by focusing provision on training their existing adult workforce. If that happens, the old problem of ‘deadweight’ and the state subsidising employers’ training grows ever bigger, with young people losing out. We could see a drying up of apprenticeships at the same time as youth unemployment goes through the roof.

While supply-side measures have their limitations, it may, however, be one of the few areas where local government can do something practicable in a context where there are no snap-the-fingers, game changing interventions available locally. A key question therefore is: how can Leicester help prepare its young people for a challenging labour market going forwards? The group to focus on here is NEETs, young people ‘not in employment, education or training’, a group which the DWP tends not to deal with as it lacks the infrastructure. Tracking young people who become NEET will therefore be extremely important. There is a lot of evidence from research on NEETs over many years that indicates they can benefit from tailored and bespoke, one-to-one coaching and support from dedicated ‘key workers’. Indeed, Leicester already has some useful third sector provision in this area.[v] Much of this is currently underpinned by European Social Funding, and there are clearly capacity issues in terms of the number of key workers who could provide such assistance beyond existing levels. The question would be whether this could be supported and ramped up. Thought could also be given to the role of local FE colleges in terms of providing decent and relevant special training options for NEETs. Good quality ‘information, advice and guidance’ on local training and employment opportunities has always been important and will become even more so.

It will also be critical to provide young people with good quality work experience opportunities that can strengthen their position in the labour market. Employer engagement in this arena has been a perennial challenge but some employers have always been, and are, willing to contribute. Proactively working with employers to develop this ‘offer’ would also be really important. At a time of crisis when business groups are talking about a new ‘social contract’ for business[vi], which embraces corporate social responsibilities (‘what can we now give back for state/taxpayer support?’), there may be scope to pull more employers into this kind of an agenda. There are suggestions that local government could lead on developing local ‘Back to Work’ partnerships involving local stakeholders, building on existing local partnerships where possible (e.g. Skills Advisory Panels).[vii] Employers could be asked to sign up to local ‘Back to Work Charters’ setting out clear expectations around supporting people into work [viii] and notions of ‘fair work’.

Equally important is developing support mechanisms to help young people who find work to stay in work. Again, ‘key workers’ who are part of the support journey into work can also be part of this by providing in-work guidance and support.

Given the economic challenges and financial constraints that are likely to exist, it may be that local councils are faced with some very hard choices in terms of where to prioritise resources and provision. Ideally, support should also be ramped up for the long-term unemployed.[ix] Moving the long-term unemployed into work is often a really tough, although important, task. However, this is difficult enough in a tight labour market, and will become only harder still as unemployment rises. Tough decisions may have to be made about what can be done to help young people at risk of becoming long-term unemployed so that they can avoid the well-documented ‘scarring effects’ of unemployment on future employability.

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[i] I am grateful to my conversations with Professor Ewart Keep, Director of SKOPE at Oxford University, and his thoughts around these challenges which have helped to formulate this blog.

[ii] See the IES 2020 report, ‘Getting Back to Work; Dealing with the labour market impacts of the Covid-19 recession’, https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/getting-back-work-0

[iii] See Purcell et al (2017), https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/pathways/presenttensefutureimperfect__final.pdf

[iv] https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2019-07-09%20-%20LGA%20briefing%20-%20UKSPF-%20HoC%20110719.pdf

[v] See Leicester’s Yes project, https://yesproject.org/who-we-are/

[vi] See http://www.smf.co.uk/publications/returning-favour/

[vii] https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/getting-back-work-0

[viii] https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/getting-back-work-0

[ix] https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/getting-back-work-0