Author: vguarn01

The austerity-security symbiosis

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There are different ways in which austerity and security come hand in hand in contemporary political affairs. Three examples include Greece’s financial crisis and the socio-economic and political insecurity generated from the ideological disputes on whether to carry on with neoliberal driven polices promoted by the Troika; the British austerity narrative promoted by the Conservatives alongside policies and bills preventing terrorism (i.e. Government’s Draft Investigatory Power Bill) and narratives of human rights which, while aiming to provide an environment of welfare and wellbeing for all, tend to be driven by mechanisms that authorise state actors to use force and repression (i.e. housing eviction officers) on the one hand, and to facilitate (or control) citizen participation initiatives (i.e. neighbourhood renewal partnerships in the UK and the US or citizen security programmes across Latin America where police are a key partner on the other.

I argue that security and austerity are two different narratives whose convergence has consolidated in the 21st century.  Their symbiosis cuts across different dimensions of analysis: from the macro to the micro level and from the remote sphere of the global financial system to the concrete sphere of people’s daily lives. We cannot assert that one depends on the other in a unidirectional way. Instead, they feed into one another and they reinforce and benefit from one another. Three premises help me to explain this symbiosis.

I will borrow the phrase by Owen Worth to explain the first premise: austerity as a defence of neoliberalism. This premise sets the foundation of power differences between the powerful (protector) and vulnerable (in need of protection), which are implicit in the relationships developed behind any understanding of security.  This premise has been helpful to insert fear of the social instability that a fiscal/financial crisis may bring about, especially if irresponsible public or private debt is not restrained. The 2015 elections in Greece to stay in or out of the European Union or the Cameron-Osborne decision to incur in policies of fiscal austerity (low taxation and budget cuts, followed by an accentuated retreat of state services) are good examples that portray that if austerity is not pursued chaos, collapse and disorder will rule society instead. Therefore, austerity becomes a weapon to defend the middle and lower-income groups of the population from the undesired consequences of a fiscal/financial crisis that if untackled, in a later stage, contributes to political and social anxiety -as people begin to fear losing their jobs, savings, and welfare support (which they lose anyway)- while encountering protests and social revolts that increase perceptions of insecurity.

The second premise states that ‘austerity needs of security’; it derives from debates on the legacies of authoritarianism co-existing alongside neoliberalisation. The Latin American case is a good example to develop this point. In the 1980s, after neoliberal economic reforms were introduced in the region (characterised initially by a long-term fiscal austerity period), several governments began losing legitimacy as the safety nets that the state provided to specific sections of the population (i.e. trade unions or peasant confederations) began to withdraw. As a result, protests, dissident groups and social mobilisations emerged throughout the region. The governments, who introduced neoliberal economic reforms, responded through violence and repression by using tactics of the authoritarian past to maintain social control and national security. Thirty years afterwards, the term ‘neoliberal authoritarianism’ has cropped up to describe the political state of affairs of two of the region’s economic powers – Brazil and Mexico: nepotism and impunity, collusion with transnational corporations and violation of human rights by state armed forces and police (in many cases these abuses are carried out in the name of security over the fight against drug-trafficking).  To this scenario, a new wave of fiscal austerity hitting the region since autumn 2015 has to be factored in. It is too early to tell the extent to which security tactics will fare, but it is indeed an arena that deserves attention. Its contrast with Europe is of equal interest given that governments have tended to enhance repressive and invasive strategies as austerity becomes normalised.

Finally, the third premise contends that the ‘development of security narratives need their austerity counterpart’. It derives from the academic work by Bourdieusian scholars who argue that neoliberal policies do not only repress, but also recreate repression through mundane, daily living practices carried out by both governmental and non-governmental actors. Applied to contexts in western Europe and the Americas, narratives of security are formed by a continuous investment (or co-investment with businesses) in penalisation (i.e. respect of the rule of law, development of penitentiary-probation systems and of armed forces and police), while traditional welfare policies retreat and new ones contribute to deepening flexibility and individual responsibility across the population, in particular addressing the poor. Through the promotion of different forms of work (in the formal or informal economy; as an employee or self-employed) citizens have to learn to provide for themselves (housing, education, leisure). This gradual self-provision requires security measures to ensure that social order is maintained. Security takes a multi-varied form that may range from omnipresent surveillance systems to the management of unintended effects of individualisation and privatisation, such as vigilante groups (which state actors either aim to supress or reintegrate into the system to regain social control).

Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza is a core member of the CURA team as well as Lecturer in Public Policy at the Department of Politics and Public Policy at DMU.

CURA’s Launch Conference: some reflections

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Valeria Guarneros-Meza and Adrian Bua report on CURA’s inaugural conference

Last week we held our two day launch conference. Throughout the four panels there were significant discussions that we need to consider in developing our understanding and study of austerity. Many of these ideas were circulated via twitter (@CURA2015) but we think it is worth expanding on 140 character-selling headlines. The points listed below are not exhaustive; they are our impressions of issues that drew people’s attention and therefore worth considering in developing CURA’s future events and research agenda.

Austerity and Urban Boosterism

Urban infrastructures such as Heathrow’s proposed third runway (addressed by papers delivered by David Howarth and Steven Griggs), nuclear plants (Francis Chateauraynaud), HS2 in London (Daniel Durrant) and Medellin’s Teleferico and Reyes de España Library (Kate Maclean) were the examples addressed by the speakers. In the case of London it is striking to see estate development and the type of urban infrastructures mentioned above while the great majority of the city’s population are struggling to make ends meet. In Medellin the concept of ‘social urbanism’ was developed in an era of financial extravagance. Extra spending was targeting national and foreign investment into the city while addressing  basic service needs (access to water and electricity) that marginalised neighbourhoods required. Kate Maclean argued that although the approach had succeeded in attracting investment, upgrading urban space and integrating some marginalised neighbourhoods, urban boosterism has not been enough to tackle levels of crime and violence (measured by homicide rates) in particular pockets of the city. Moreover, it also been argued, in other work by Abello-Colak and Guarneros-Meza, that  the reintegration and disarmament programmes targeting the youth tend to favour those groups that belong to gangs as opposed to building a universal and comprehensive approach to youth development.  In other words, what Medellin’s example is showing is that social urbanism, at its best, or urban boosterism, at its worst, may help the city overcome visible spatial austerity but it will not be enough to tackle the social degradation that austerity of public welfare has caused.

Getting away with it: the socialisation of risk through technical obfuscation

This topic was raised in presentations by Daniel Durrant on HS2 in London and on the political economy of adult social care provision in the UK, by Karel Williams. Daniel’s analysis was based on the balance sheets of the HS2 corporation. He demonstrated that accounts show that cost calculations are based on the benefits for business infrastructure investment and potential business travellers, while wiping out any social costs that are related to the impact that the construction of the railway has on the destruction of community life, schools and other spill overs. Karel’s work on adult social care critiqued the financialisation of care provision by private providers. He argued that optimum returns on property speculation assured by a standardised kind of adult care home (60-80 capacity) with minimum wages and a casualised workforce with high levels of staff turnover. The requirements of quality care provision, and attention to the social and health needs of residents,  takes second place to debt and management strategies that split property ownership on the one hand and home management and operation on the other. These financial innovations provide parent corporations to extract any gain from subsidiaries passing all debt responsibility to the latter; what he called ‘malign performativity’. These two examples show the ability that corporations have in covering and disguising cost-benefit analysis by using sophisticated technicisms that reduce the ability of citizens to understand the model and ability to perceive these techniques as ‘daylight robbery’.

A similar point was made with nuclear plants in France and England (Francis Chateauraynaud), where the scientific and technical discourse of the environmental impact that these generate lead to the production of confusing and competing set of facts and narratives that disempower citizens and politicians (see also Xavier Auyero’s work).

Austerity invites ‘structural violence’

Annette Hastings’ presentation on the socioeconomic costs of local government cuts in England and Scotland argued that they constituted a clear case of ‘structural violence’ – because they put those individuals less able to exercise political agency in harm’s way, and accentuate their marginalisation in public service provision.  Drawing on findings from a recent report, Annette demonstrated the cuts to tax benefits addressing housing and social care have promoted local authorities to change their administrative processes to cope with impacts of the cuts on staff salaries and dismissals.  These practices are structural because they form part of the system that puts order and discipline to the way local authorities are organised and the relationships they build with citizen-users.

The concept of structural violence is relevant to other presentations: such as Robin Smith’s work on the role of ‘street outreach workers’ in tackling with the ambivalent pressures of caring but eradicating  homeless in cities such as Cardiff and New York, where urban boosterism is undoubtedly present as ways of ensuring urban competitiveness; and Robert Ogman’s talk on social impact bonds – another financial innovation that promote structural violence while helping local governments cope with the destabilisation of social and welfare initiatives produced by public fiscal austerity. These three presentations addressed Anglo-American cases, but it is equally interesting to see how structural violence can be found in contexts of crime and physical insecurity in cities in the United States and across different cities in Latin America (see Auyero et al ‘Violence at the Urban Margins’), whose national contexts deepen the complexity of the meaning of structural violence when enmeshed with broader debates on security and urban securitisation.  In cities, both in the north and south, the role of frontline bureaucrats was mentioned as agents caught in the cross road of the ambivalence of everyday governance practice.

Resisting and countering austerity

Both keynotes – Erik Swyngedouw and Karel Williams – addressed the need of agency by academics, insurgent social movements and organic intellectuals to enhance and speed up social innovation in the UK. Erik called for system de-stabilization through insurgency whereas Karel drew upon the concept of social innovation as a potential source of alternatives. These strategies differ in so far as one aims to engender rupture through direct confrontation, and the other pursues an agenda of interstitial change. The modality of the former is agonistic, the latter more collaborative. However, these modalities are by no means mutually exclusive. Paraphrasing Romand Coles critical social theorists should focus on the mutually enabling relationship between agonistic and collaborative forms of participation. Absent agonism, collaboration is in danger of governmentality. This much is evident, we think, in the co-optation and trivialisation of the concept by neoliberalism, resulting in constant innovation without change. On the other hand, absent collaboration, agonistic ruptures can fail to sustain the change that, in Ricardo Blaug’s words, a ‘democratic moment’ opens up opportunity for. In sum, both modalities are necessary to achieve a transformative environment. CURA has a good opportunity to start building on this through its association with the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Rachel Laurence (from the New Economies in Practice team at NEF) and Adrian Bua (NEF and CURA) explained NEF ambitions to sustain and expand activities that make the foundation a hub for research and action that delivers socio-economic change. They also highlighted some areas where CURA and NEF could join forces to shape such an agenda. This could, for example, be around current policies such as devolution and regional economic development. This is also an area which, as Matt Dykes of the Trade Unions Congress explained, is being targeted by organised Labour movements for its potential to create new government tiers that are more amenable to trade union influence. It will be important to bring in other social movements into this agenda also.

It is perhaps it is worth considering how doctoral students can become a generation of organic intellectuals as a strategy to help them find employment that academia seems increasingly incapable to provide. Building professional links between CURA and progressive policy and advocacy organisations such as NEF might be one way to proceed. This could go some way towards breaking down barriers between policy research that seeks political influence, and academic research focussed on making contributions to knowledge.

Valeria Guarneros-Meza is Lecturer in Public Policy at the Deparment of Politics and Public Policy; Adrian Bua is Research Assistant the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity