austerity

Austerity and Food Poverty: the vicious circle of obesity, ill-health and deprivation

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In today’s post Hillary Shaw and Julia Shaw consider the links between poverty, poor diet and ill health.  In the UK, escalating food, fuel and housing costs, stagnating incomes and poor employment prospects have realised a fateful and catastrophic convergence of problems, which all serve to compound and amplify each other. Increasing social inequalities have, in turn, evidenced the rising incidence of obesity and diabetes, fuelled by nutritional poverty. In the broader context of austerity and welfare reforms, it is suggested that the urban food question – specifically in relation to accessing foods essential to a healthy diet – becomes a priority on the political agenda. The authors describe the particular challenges this poses, and argue that more comprehensive policy solutions that go beyond focussing on individual behaviour, to include regulating industry as well as creating positive food environments, are necessary.

When Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister 1979-1990, advocated a return to ‘Victorian values’; she probably did not mean the return of ‘Victorian’ diseases we are now seeing, such as gout and rickets which are closely linked to diet. Gout is caused by excess consumption of fatty food and alcohol; rickets is caused by lack of vitamin D which we get from sunlight and from oily foods, eggs and fortified breakfast cereals. Today, children in deprived areas are going to school without having had breakfast; some even return home to no supper. They may even arrive at school with lunchboxes containing cold chicken nuggets, stale toast, or last night’s leftover chips, so that in deprived areas (e.g., Lanarkshire, Scotland) there is a need for programmes such as ‘Food-365’, an initiative to provide school lunches all year round to alleviate ‘holiday hunger’ amongst the most vulnerable. The ‘health premium’ – the excess cost of eating well either in terms of money, time or knowledge acquisition – has never gone away, and rising inequality in the early 21st century has brought back the old 19th century diseases of dietary poverty. However hunger, poverty and poor diet are now commonly associated with carrying excess weight rather than being underweight.

Once the poor and malnourished were thinner than the rich; yet in modern times, uniquely, they are heavier and more likely to be obese. At age 11, the poorest British children are, on average, 2 kg heavier than those of the wealthiest families, which is the exact opposite of the figures in 1946. At the extremes of obesity the gap is even larger, with the most obese 10% from the poor weighing 4.6 kg more, on average, than the 10% most obese from the wealthy. The same reversal has occurred in developing countries. In Brazil low-income women in 1997 were 40% more likely to be obese than underweight, whereas in 1975 they were four times more likely to be underweight than obese. Once, you had to be wealthy to afford to be obese; now we have an abundance of sugary junk foods and cheap fatty meat, and you increasingly need to be wealthy to be slim.

In Victorian Britain, poor people did die of starvation. At best, undernourished children would suffer physical stunting and mental retardation. So, has the situation improved now the poor are over-consuming calories rather than under-consuming them? Perhaps not, for four reasons. Firstly, obesity stigmatises the poor whereas the sight of a starving person, especially a child, excites sympathy, provokes action and public philanthropy. Our mental attitude has not caught up with our modern socio-economic food situation, and we tend to associate obesity with self-indulgence and laziness. Secondly, obesity is harder to reverse than emaciation; our calorie-hoarding biology, inherited from prehistoric days when food could be scarce for long periods, means we are very efficient at gaining weight and strongly biologically resistant to losing it. Thirdly, obesity creates long-term health problems which cascade on from one another. Excess weight precipitates cardiovascular problems and arthritis; fat can promote cancer, and above all, type 2 diabetes is a major cause of blindness and amputations. These are all chronic and expensive conditions, and may lead to the poor being accused of consuming excess health resources and money, as if they wanted to be obese and ill, and it is their fault they are not eating healthily. Naturally the concept of the health premium is seldom mentioned here. Fourthly, obesity keeps poor people poor. Obese adults are “less likely to be hired, are lower paid, have fewer opportunities and are often outright bullied in the workplace”. This especially applies to women, who already suffer the consequences of the gender pay gap, and who also have higher expectations of ‘appearance’ placed upon them by society. Accordingly, this adds multiple reinforcing layers of prejudice and discrimination to the poverty and obesity issue.

The ‘obesity prejudice’ begins early in life, with overweight children being bullied and achieving less at school; again this may mean they attain lower qualifications and, as adults,  earn less and remain poor. In turn, the cycle of poverty means they tend to produce poor children who similarly eat unhealthily and gain excess weight. This is one crucial way in which poverty can transmit itself down the generations. Obesity also propagates poverty through sleep apnoea, causing daytime exhaustion and lower productivity. Obese schoolchildren often miss lessons as they take time off for associated medical conditions such as intensive dental treatment, and obese adults miss work days for a range of illnesses associated with poor nutrition, as noted above.

Society tends to put the burden of reversing obesity largely back on the individual; exercise more, get fitness apps, learn cooking skills, read the food labels. There is no current policy initiative aimed at stopping supermarkets from selling unhealthy foods. A sugar tax has been recently imposed, which raises costs to the consumer, but the government is not using this tax revenue to reduce the costs of healthy foods; for example, a negative VAT rate on fresh produce. Schools have restarted cookery lessons, but there is no educational provision for adults with advice on easy, cheap and healthy eating at the places where they can be easily accessed, for instance, jobcentres, food banks, citizens’ advice bureaux, housing associations or GP surgeries in deprived areas. There is also a tendency to promote a revolutionary rather than evolutionary approach to diet, as typified by Jamie Oliver’s initiative in Rotherham, straight from ‘Turkey Twizzlers’ to gourmet vegetables. This may be interesting, and even informative, for more affluent families who can afford to experiment, waste food, spend time on learning new cooking techniques, and drive to shops which sell these novel foods.

For less wealthy families, and certainly the poorest, a gradualist approach may be preferable; by, for example, introducing leafy green vegetables into ready meals, making healthier sandwiches, adding fresh fruit to processed puddings, and replacing fizzy drinks with fruit juices. A major problem is that truly breaking the vicious circle of obesity, ill-health and deprivation takes far longer than the customary five-year lifetime of a government. A climate of austerity and squeezing the already poor creates financial returns much faster. Although entrenched vicious circles such as the seemingly never-ending cycle of poverty are hard to break, and even though social returns often only materialise –as Ivan Illich almost said – ‘at the speed of a bicycle’, nevertheless social returns bring true longer-lasting benefits for all.

Julia J.A. Shaw is Professor of Social Justice and Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, as well as a member of CURA at De Montfort University.

Hillary J. Shaw is the author of many journal articles, book chapters and commissioned reports in the general areas of economics, geography, politics and the sociology of food consumption and obesity – particularly in relation to the dynamics and evolution of the food desert phenomenon within the wider context of austerity. His book The Consuming Geographies of Food: Diet, Food Deserts and Obesity (Routledge, 2014) explicates the development of the current global food system and explores how sustainable and accessible political and economic structures for feeding the future global population of ten billion can be achieved. He is currently completing a further monograph, Corporate Social Responsibility and the Global Food Chain (Routledge, forthcoming 2019) which explores corporate social responsibility in relation to government policy and the food retailing industry.

 

PhD Opportunity at CURA

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The Centre for Urban Research on Austerity is looking for prospective PhD students interested in developing innovative, interdisciplinary research projects in any field related to cities, urbanism and austerity.

Candidates shall submit a one-page draft proposal to Dr Adam Fishwick (adam.fishwick@dmu.ac.uk) in the first instance. Final submission date for a full application is 17th May. Please note, Full Bursary Scholarships are available only to UK/EU applicants. Fee Waiver Scholarships are open to UK, EU and overseas students.

Austerity Diasporas: Brexit, Portugal and Looking to the Future

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With the following post Lisa Rodan completes the four-part series on “Austerity Diasporas”, which is related to her ongoing PhD research onthe experience of Portuguese migrants affected by the 2008 crash and ensuing austerity. The first post focussed on social changes in Portugal leading up to the 2011 austerity measures. In the second post, Lisa described how migration has shaped Portuguese history up to today. Part three dealt with the experience of Portuguese migrants in London under austerity. Finally, in part four, Lisa discusses the predictions of her research participants for life after Brexit.

The Brexit vote gave an unexpected jump-start to my PhD fieldwork. I had just begun identifying potential respondents for a year-long anthropological examination of how the 2011 austerity measures around Southern Europe had affected the outlook, identity and long-term social imagination of millennial Portuguese migrants in London. They were a group that would eventually become defined within my research by their access to higher education during the more prosperous 1990s.

After the initial shock that it had actually happened, the attitude amongst many of my interlocutors was defiant. “What are they going to do, chuck us all out?” said Mariana, 26, a nurse, “The economy would collapse. They can’t do without us.” Jose, 32, an engineer, was not worried either. “For people like me, there are always lots of opportunities. If they are so short-sighted to make us leave, I’ll go to Germany. But they won’t. I don’t know about outside of London but here at least I know we’ll be OK.”

Not everyone felt as confident though, and the feelings of betrayal caused by the vote were often expressed with resentment and suspicion. Olivia, a 34-year-old waitress who trained as a teacher in Portugal, grimly welcomed Brexit as a, “Necessary evil to keep out those who come for benefits, layabouts… unlike us who have come here to work and contribute.” Her words were echoed by those who resented the harsh living conditions they were exposed to in London. They framed Brexit as a necessary change to a status quo which enabled exploitation of people like them. For Guilherme, 32, an ambitious potential businessman who was feeling burnt-out after two years of working in various catering businesses, “Politics is a sham,” and he welcomed a shake-up of the whole system.  “I came here to work hard and make something of myself,” he told me bitterly, “and am treated worse than a dog. There are too many people here and something has to change.” Marco, a 39 year-old teaching assistant, is determined to stay until he gets the experience that will allow him to establish himself in a permanent teaching career but is resentful of the decision for symbolic reasons. “Portugal is Britain’s oldest ally, right? And I come here, the Spanish, the Italians, we respect the culture, we have a common, western culture. Why is it us they want to stop coming? Me, I never asked for benefits in my life, there’s something wrong, isn’t there? Rather than asking us all to leave, they should stop the benefits, make the people work!”

Over the course of my fieldwork these initial reactions to Brexit became part of a wider reflection from my respondents on plans for the future. Many started to increasingly refer to Portugal as no longer a ‘country in crisis’ but rather somewhere with potential. Returning home was presented as a ‘lifestyle choice’ and a chance for a ‘good life’ with frequent references to accepting and adapting to a new way of being. “People are a bit humbler now” says Andreia, 35, a former pharmacist turned medical student in Porto. “People’s expectations of how things ‘should’ be done are different, it’s no longer go to university, get a job, have a family. People have changed their mentality and learned to adapt to the way things are now. Especially those whose degrees saturated the labour market, like me.”

Part of this ‘learning to adapt’ is harnessing new sources of income generation which will enable a ‘good life’ in Portugal. The intertwined pillars of the post-crisis world in the Portuguese context, from my respondents’ point of view, are digitalisation of careers and tourism. These are dominated

by educated members of the millennial generation and a global outlook achieved through their experience abroad. Ines, 33, a nurse, plans to go back to Portugal but not to work in healthcare. “Long-term I want to change, something with tourism. That’s where the future is. The hospital I worked before, noooo, never. Terrible place! My idea is I’d like to get a two bed flat and rent one bed out on Airbnb. But I have to figure out how.” Like many of my respondents, she had multiple success stories of people who had done just that and achieved the perfect balance of a salary that enabled a global lifestyle and local images of a ‘good life’ represented by the weather, food, and cultural and family connections of Portugal. A friend of a friend, she told me, had quit his prestigious banking job in London four years earlier and moved back to Porto with his wife and baby. He now had a business running food tours, supplemented by freelance financial consultancy. “You see? That’s the dream!”

Who is able to access this dream depends as much on professional and educational capital as on the changing nature of working practices. The digitalisation of a transnational ‘gig economy’ in Portugal has its roots in a generation who consider themselves ‘European’ as well as ‘Portuguese’. They have experience abroad and are now returning wielding their bilingualism and globally recognised skill sets, which allow them to stand out from the crowd. Within such experiences and imaginations are a whole spectrum of potential success stories, ranging from teaching Portuguese via skype, to online jewellery business and international brand consultancy.

The Portuguese cultural imagination has long honoured the trait of ‘making do’ via the concept of ‘desenrascanço’– which loosely translates as “the act of disentangling yourself from a difficult situation using available means.” The Portugueseness of such responses to its’ local crisis is nevertheless embedded in a post-austerity global political economy where reduced state services have placed the onus on the individual to engage in work which can be simultaneously empowering and precarious. Offering digital services allows freedom of movement whilst at the same time removing long-term stability. Whether this diversion of domestic work practices in Portugal will exacerbate existing inequality amongst those who had the opportunity to leave and are now returning and those who had no choice but to stay remains to be seen.

Lisa Rodan is a third year PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent where she is working with three colleagues on an ESRC funded project entitled Household Survival in Crisis: Austerity and Relatedness in Greece and Portugal.

 

The Future of Capitalism with Wolfgang Streeck

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In this special edition of the CURA podcast we talk to Wolfgang Streeck, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, about his works “Buying Time” (2013) and “How Will Capitalism End?” (2016). You can listen and download the podcast here , on soundcloud, itunes, and most major podcast platforms.

Drawing widely on classics from Schumpeter, Polanyi and Marx, Streeck offers an account of the lineage of democracy, capitalism and the state since the post-war period, identifying the deeply de-democratising and self-destructive trajectory in contemporary capitalist development. Against liberal received wisdom, Streeck argues that democracy and capitalism are anything but natural partners or easy bedfellows, but have in fact been in constant historical tension. The post-war social democratic settlement represents an unusual “fix” to this tension that was relatively favourable to the popular classes, or “wage dependent”, parts of the population. However, this fix unravelled in the 70’s as the capitalist, or “profit-dependent”, class rediscovered its agency and, with neo-liberal globalisation and financialisation, began to shape a world in its interests.

Streeck argues that these processes are putting in danger not only the existence of democratic politics, which is increasingly circumscribed by the need for states to appease financial markets, but also the future of capitalism itself. Streeck’s vision for what is to come is gloomy. Capitalism continues to erode the social foundations necessary for its own sustenance, as well as the resources needed to collectively construct an alternative order. Institutional and policy fixes to capitalist contradictions are running out. We can expect the result to be the development of an increasingly uncertain and under-institutionalised social order, reminiscent of a Hobbesian state of nature, where individual agency and creativity becomes fundamental to meet basic needs and achieve even minimal goals. Politics offers hope of rupture, but is itself increasingly constrained and defiled by capitalist development and rationality.

In this podcast CURA‘s Adrian Bua talks to Wolfgang about his work on the trajectory of capitalism and democracy.

Austerity Diasporas: Portuguese-British Identity

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Lisa Rodan continues our “Austerity Diasporas” series, with a third post related to her ongoing PhD research into the experiences of Portuguese migrants affected by the 2008 crash and ensuing austerity. The first post focused on social changes leading up to the 2011 Austerity measures. In the second post, Lisa described the influence of migration on Portuguese culture and history, sharing some of the main messages emerging from her fieldwork with migrants in the UK. This post focuses on some of the challenges of living in London, and its impact upon migrant’s identities.

Sitting in the parents’ room of the paediatric intensive care ward at Kings College Hospital in south London, I was only dimly aware of the irony that my first week of fieldwork on Portuguese migrants in London had been indefinitely postponed whilst a Portuguese surgeon operated on my son’s spine. I had left my baby with a Jamaican nurse, Irish anaesthetist, Indian plastic surgeon and Portuguese and Lebanese neurosurgeons and gone upstairs to wait whilst Nigerian cleaners tidied up around me and a small family of anxious looking Ecuadorians murmured amongst themselves. One of the cleaners brought cups of water over for both me and the trembling woman opposite and squeezed our hands. Any differences in our backgrounds, languages and histories seemed suspended far above the more relevant shared experience of why we were all in that small room on that muggy summer’s day.

The normality of this multicultural existence became an overarching theme throughout my subsequent year of fieldwork (which went ahead as planned thanks to Dr José and his colleagues). The Portuguese graduates of the EU generation, arriving with degrees and career aspirations, inhabited multinational, multi-ethnic and multilingual workplaces, house-shares and friendship groups. Their lives were different in many ways from earlier generations of Portuguese migrants to London who had created what one new arrival described to me as “my grandmother’s village trapped in time”.

That is not to say there is a lack of common experiences and references between the university- educated, cosmopolitan millennials and the long-established Portuguese communities of Stockwell, who socialise in Portuguese cafes and shop in Portuguese supermarkets. Many of the former group also have family within the latter community. Yet by virtue of their educational attainments and a certain value-set formed out of the relative prosperity of Portugal in the 1990s have made a conscious decision to pursue the career opportunities which are the most seductive element of London living. The desire to use their educations to achieve recognition of their professional skills as well as a certain quality of life they once hoped for back home is still a possibility in London.

The price is high: loneliness and struggle are constant demons. Everyone knows somebody who ‘couldn’t hack it’ and went home. But for those who are still here, whether they are part of the initial wave of post-austerity refugees who have managed to carve out a niche in their chosen sector, or newer arrivals for whom London remains a land of opportunities, there is a certain pride in having learned how to handle the pace of life- they have become Londoners.

Becoming a ‘Londoner’ in this sense doesn’t mean becoming less Portuguese- the importance of seeking out spaces of ‘Portugueseness’ is an essential part of their lives. Many frame it as a need to escape the ‘coldness’ of the English character. This perception is worthy of a blog post in itself. For now, perhaps things can be more easily understood by looking at it as a longing for familiar cultural references. Regular meetups with Portuguese friends (the majority made since arriving in London or via old acquaintances and friends of friends pulled together by Facebook) are regularly set up and the Little Portugal enclave in Stockwell plays a major role. Even those who describe it as a ‘different world’ from their own occasionally pop in, whether for enormous group feasting in the restaurants or to watch the Portuguese national team play a big match. Nevertheless, a frequent refrain is the realisation of a feeling that one is increasingly more at home within the Portuguese expat community than in Stockwell or with the Portuguese back home who make them realise how English they have become.

It would be an injustice to suggest that life for educated Portuguese migrants does not have the difficulties of London life in general. Struggles with finding affordable housing, housemate conflicts and unscrupulous and exploitative agencies and employers are part of parcel of life here, especially for those who arrived with nothing more than their degree certificate and were attempting to work up to the job of their dreams via the counters of the chain coffee shops of central London. Those who were determined to stay in their area of study often ended up disillusioned by the challenge in finding a job which in Portugal would be have been beneath their skill-set.

As any parent knows, life completely changes with a new addition to the family. For new Portuguese parents, as for any new parent across London, comes the realisation that, whatever your story and hopes for the future, the arrival of a baby restricts access to many of the extra-curricular parts of the city that make the frantic lifestyle worth it and seem to throw conceptions of what exactly a ‘good life’ consists of into a new light. The lack of grandparents and family nearby suddenly is thrown into sharp focus and longings to go back increase. Taking the international experience gained in the hectic London career bubble and channelling it into a life of digital nomadism is a dream expressed by many people I met, especially those with young children.

Throughout my fieldwork the initial impact of Brexit lingered like an uninvited guest. It didn’t change anyone’s short-term plans but, like most Londoners, the overwhelming feeling was that of wait and see and have a plan B. After all, who was more aware of the importance EU citizens to the capital than those who have propped up the city’s economy? Be that as it may, the risk of whatever the fall-out might be can only add to the burnout already felt by many existing in the relentless consumerist cycle of working and living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Nevertheless, many of my Portuguese colleagues have made a life here no less than any other Londoner of diverse and varied background, especially those who have partnered up with people from other nationalities. Some may return but many are planning to stay and weather the storm.

Lisa Rodan is a third year PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent where she is working with three colleagues on an ESRC funded project entitled Household Survival in Crisis: Austerity and Relatedness in Greece and Portugal.

For the past 12 months Lisa has been carrying out ethnographic interviews with university educated, Portuguese people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s in London, supplemented by time spent in Portugal where she has been lucky to meet some of their families. In a series of posts Lisa will share her initial analysis of some key themes arising from her fieldwork data, which she began to collect in June 2016 just after the Brexit vote. These encounters have ranged from one-off interviews to valued friendships and time spent with each other’s families. The content of the series will be a very close reading of fieldwork notes in their raw form. Lisa welcomes any input and suggestions from interested parties.

Portugal and austerity: what European model?

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In today’s blog post, Roberto Falanga and Simone Tulumello describe the trajectory of Portuguese austerity politics, from the post-crash bailout. Portugal is often held up as an example of anti-austerity politics, especially by the left in other countries. Roberto and Simone argue while it is correct that the left coalition is reverting austerity policies, it does so under contradictory conditions that call for a broader rethinking of the European model if the approach taken until now is to be sustainable.

The Memorandum of Understanding for the 3-year economic adjustment programme in Portugal was signed in May 2011 under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund, European Commission, and European Central Bank (the so-called Troika). The bailout package of 78€ million provided to the country was agreed by the three mainstream parties – the majority made up of the Social Democratic and Popular parties, and the Socialist party in the minority – to consolidate domestic finances and improve international competitiveness against the increasing vulnerability of the country to the effects of the global crisis.

Preceded by preliminary rounds of austerity (the Programmes of Stability and Growth, Programas de Estabilidade e Crescimento) imposed by the European Union to the socialist government led by José Socrates, the intervention of the Troika between 2011 and 2014 imposed significant pro-cyclical fiscal consolidation measures (like in Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain, where similar Memoranda were signed in the same period). At the local level, for instance, fiscal retrenchment entailed a reduction of administrative units, state grants (about 60% of local revenue), municipal staff, municipally-owned enterprises, while decreasing local debt and enhancing new mechanisms for risk management control, reporting and monitoring (Teles, 2016).

Against the negative effects of the austerity measures on social, economic and political life (economic recession, increasing unemployment, impoverishment of large sectors of civil society, emigration of young and high-skill generation, private housing speculation, etc.), protests and social mobilisation erupted in the peak of the crisis between 2011 and 2012. Labour unions and political parties at the end of the left spectrum tended to support movements (e.g. ‘Indignados’, ‘Que se lixe a Troika’, etc.) and civic networks (e.g. the ‘Congresso Democrático das Alternativas’ composed of people from trade unions, left-wing parties, academics and social movements). In this period, public interest over large payroll tax increases – and more broadly austerity measures – grew and key institutional actors like the Constitutional Court directly challenged the government and pushed the suspension of austerity measures, like Labour Code amendments.

Portuguese mobilisation spread after decades of low participation in political life and within a global scenario in motion, with the ‘Arab Spring’ and the Spanish occupations in Madrid rising interest and concern worldwide. This notwithstanding, when compared to countries like Spain and Greece, protests, occupations and strikes in Portugal attracted less public than expected and did not produce new ‘anti-system’ groups. According to Caldas (2012), this was due to an increasing alienation from politics and representatives, perceived as corrupt and dishonest, which exacerbated historical trends of disaffection with political institutions and representatives (De Sousa et al., 2014). Moury and Standring (2017) explain that alienation of grassroots movements and self-organised groups was the result of the government attitude against social partners and professional bodies, placed before austerity as a fait accompli.

The reasons behind the growing mistrust towards the political class, as well as towards protests at occasion perceived as controlled by labour unions and political parties (Observatory for the Quality of Democracy report 2012), should be searched in the way the adjustment programme was implemented. Disaffection in civil society was coupled by discontent among business sectors (for instance, due to the rise of the valued added tax), and within party ranks of both government coalition and opposition. The major mainstream party at the opposition, the Socialist party, decided to stop supporting the government in 2012 by voting against amendments to the 2012 budget and the 2013 budget, in a time when pools on voting intentions gave it an edge over the centre-right coalition (De Giorgi et al., 2015).

Despite the attempts to persuade society on the need of austerity through the TINA (‘There Is No Alternative’) rhetoric and blame shifting communication strategy on previous administrations (Fonseca and Ferreira, 2015), confidence on government dropped-off. Alienation from the political sphere reached the highest abstention rates since 1979 in the 2013 local elections (47.4 %; preceded by 41.9% in 2011 and followed by 44.1% of abstention in 2015 in legislative elections). Noticeably, abstention resulted positively associated to lower socioeconomic resources and educational skills, furthering the exclusion of the most vulnerable groups from public decision (OECD, 2015).

It is worth noting that the blurring borders between institutional and non-institutional spheres have always characterised political life in the country. If compared to neighbouring countries social mobilisation was weaker, this may have been compensated by easier transfer of ideas and instances between movements and parties, as the same actors often played multiple roles. As a result, in contrast to the growth of anti-system groups, like in Spain and Greece, political parties tended to incorporate social claims, taking ahead political strategies that eventually prepared the field for the ‘Geringonça’ to be in power from 2015.

The term Geringonça means something with an unstable structure (and few chances to be durable in time), and is informally used to describe the coalition between the Socialist, the Communist, and the Left Block parties that is currently governing the country. The coalition, emerged from the initial impasse for the formation of the national government after the legislative elections in 2015, has a peculiar character: the left-wing parties do not take part in the government, but form, together with the governing Socialist party, the parliamentary majority. This situation has brought the parliament back into the core of political action, in that every governmental proposal needs to go through the negotiation with the Communist and Left Block parties – and in some cases with the centre-right parties, in the name of ‘large agreements’ and ‘stability’.

Amid the deep recessionary effects of the austerity policies, the dismantling of the welfare regime, the crisis of corporatist traditions and the interruption of secular trends of greater equality and inclusion, the new majority declared its intention to reverse the austerity agenda implemented between 2011 and 2014 – though with significant contradictions. The priority has been restoring the purchasing power of workers and civil servants – for instance, by reversing the tax increases and the extension of the work week from 35 to 40 hours put in place by the previous government. Though some economists and experts have been criticising these measures,[1] 2016 and 2017 have seen a fast economic growth, giving the government the possibility to keep up with the expansionary agenda as well as maintaining good financial fundamentals.[2]

However, some fundamental contradictions persist. On the one hand, the economic growth is based on exportations and, expressively, the boom of tourism, and doubts persist on its sustainability in the long run. On the other hand, amid the Socialist will to not break up with European conditionality, the investment in purchasing power has meant that virtually no action has been put in place so far to revert the dismantling of the welfare state of the previous years – the national health system, housing policy and public transport are possibly the fields where austerity hit the hardest. While ongoing discussions for the 2018 budget seem to signal a renewed attention to the welfare state, particularly in the field of health[3] and housing (a ‘New Generation of Housing Policies is ongoing public discussion), it seems to us that the potential for consolidating a different path to development lies exactly in the engagement with the contradictions we highlighted, which is quite unlikely in absence of a more general rethinking of European institutions and mainstreams.

While many in Europe are pointing at Portugal as the evidence that the austerity (and neoliberal) hegemony may start their path to decline, we believe Portuguese successes and contradictions point toward the need for a deeper questioning of the European model of development.

Roberto Falanga and Simone Tulumello, are Postdoctoral Research Fellows, at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa

[1] The Post-Programme of Surveillance initiated in May 2014 in order to monitor economic, fiscal and financial policies in Portugal stress spread weakness in labour market, public administration, and judicial system inter alia. The programme also critically observes the reverse of some previous reforms, as the return to the 35 hours working week in civil service; the increase of public employment via new hiring policies; the reduction of VAT for food at restaurants; backtracking in reforming state-owned enterprises and concessions negatively affecting the capacity to attract foreign direct investment.

[2] The Ministry of Finances, Mario Centeno, has even been included among the potential leaders of the Eurogroup.

[3] See http://expresso.sapo.pt/sociedade/2017-10-14-Orcamento-para-a-saude-aumenta-44.

Austerity Diasporas – Portugal and Migration

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Lisa Rodan continues our “Austerity Diasporas” series, with a second post related to her ongoing PhD research into the experiences of Portuguese migrants affected by the 2008 crash and ensuing austerity. The first post focused on social changes leading up to the 2011 Austerity measures. In this post, Lisa describes the influence of migration on Portuguese culture and history, sharing some of the main messages emerging from her fieldwork with migrants in the UK.

Mass migration is a concept that has shaped Portugal since the 15th century. The cultural sentiment of saudade for that which is missing or lost echoes within literature, discourse and the very soul of the Portuguese. According to any Portuguese you will ever meet, saudade is untranslatable to those whose country has not been shaped by chronic partings and longings to return.

So what’s different now? Throughout my research, my respondents have all been quick to point out the answer. Of the 110,000 Portuguese who left their homeland in 2013, a third now had degrees. Graduate migration was double what it was 10 years earlier. According to Joana, 35, a molecular biologist who did her PhD in Spain before moving to London where she has just had her first child, this was a structural problem born during the golden years of early EU membership – “that explosion of university education was short-sighted,” she says, “the labour market couldn’t cope with all the graduates. For me, I love my country but what would I do there? There is nothing for me there professionally.”

“The middle class is dead” says the father of another of my respondents. A 60-year old doctor with two jobs and three children studying and working abroad, in his opinion it all started going wrong with the Euro. “This is no longer a localised crisis, where you can just migrate and establish new communities, it’s a global one and where is it felt most? In the same countries who only a generation ago were welcomed into the European ‘family’ with open arms.”

Levels of cynicism vary according to the individuals behind those statistics. Carrying values inherited from post-EU prosperity, they don’t talk of ‘migration’, which is associated with rural, uneducated movement, but ‘adventure’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘choice’. In some cases, historical class divisions are noticeable- about a quarter of my respondents claim “no-one had migrated before”. Further probing revealed they meant “no-one like me”. These are the descendants of factory owners, landowners or the long-standing urban middle classes. In other words, a section of Portuguese society that had generally left travelling abroad for work to poorer country folk. For most of my respondents however, migration is a vibrant part of their family history. Many have parents or grandparents who had travelled to work in French hotels or Swiss construction sites, often commuting between there and their families back in the villages of (mainly) northern Portugal.

Regardless of family background, what the current generation have in common is the expectation of a standard of living based on the model their parents were able to provide for them growing up. Plentiful opportunities for work, eating out, travel. “Not luxurious, but a good life” is the common refrain. The Erasmus university exchange scheme is often mentioned as a rite of passage, following a childhood of holidays around Europe. “We are children of the EU” says Nuno, 32, an architect with an Italian wife, “it feels more natural to make a life here in London than anywhere else.” He presents the crisis as a positive thing, facilitating his decision to leave.  Susana, 34, a nurse, agrees. “I didn’t have to come, I had a job. I just wanted a better one! One where I could grow, start my life. It’s not like it was in my father’s day, he had no education and had to leave just to find work so he could support us.”

Dancing around claims “it’s not about work” however, professional success is the narrative that dominates and is interwoven with frustration at the lack of opportunities to progress and have a comparative standard of living back home. Despite initially being firm to differentiate their experience of migration as distinct from earlier generations, as I got to know my respondents I began to note a continuity of experiences. Many people referred me to a cultural concept known as desenrascar– another of those enigmatic Portuguese expressions which is variously described as ‘getting by’, ‘making do’ or ‘hustling’. Nearly three quarters of the people I spoke to had parents who had worked outside of Portugal at some point in their lives. Of these, many of them were also the children of retornados– the name given to the three quarters of a million Portuguese who were repatriated from Portugal’s African colonies after her empire crumbled in the 1970s. “Angola, Mozambique…those countries were all part of Portugal at the time,” they tell me, “so it wasn’t really migration. It was just going somewhere else in Portugal to try your luck.” Even Joana with her PhD and criticism of Portugal’s unrealistic expectations of the 1990s later tells me about her family’s route from Guinea-Bissau and her siblings now scattered around the world, adding “that’s just the way it is in my family, you are expected to migrate…it’s more unusual if you don’t!”

I did not meet a single person who came to the UK without knowing of someone already here. Sometimes a distant cousin or a long-lost childhood friend, reunited through Facebook, but in several cases a close family member. The social, financial or practical support of existing communities in both London and Portugal established a form of transnational movement equally, or perhaps even more, connected to each other than at any time in the past. Digital communications, a product of the same raging technological progress that crippled economies and crushed social systems have enabled deeper continuities with home and more extensive local networks in the latest chapter in a long history of movement out of a periphery country towards the global centres of power.

Lisa Rodan is a third year PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent where she is working with three colleagues on an ESRC funded project entitled Household Survival in Crisis: Austerity and Relatedness in Greece and Portugal.

For the past 12 months Lisa has been carrying out ethnographic interviews with university educated, Portuguese people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s in London, supplemented by time spent in Portugal where she has been lucky to meet some of their families. In a series of posts Lisa will share her initial analysis of some key themes arising from her fieldwork data, which she began to collect in June 2016 just after the Brexit vote. These encounters have ranged from one-off interviews to valued friendships and time spent with each other’s families. The content of the series will be a very close reading of  fieldwork notes in their raw form. Lisa welcomes any input and suggestions from interested parties.

Austerity Diasporas – Households in Crisis: Austerity, Migration and Family in Portuguese London

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In today’s post Lisa Rodan introduces a series of publications on her ongoing PhD research into how Portuguese migrants understand their lives and experiences in relation to the political and social changes wrought by the 2008 financial crisis and the austerity measures that followed. For the past 12 months Lisa has been carrying out ethnographic interviews with university educated, Portuguese people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s in London, supplemented by time spent in Portugal where she has been lucky to meet some of their families. In a series of posts Lisa will share her initial analysis of some key themes arising from her fieldwork data, which she began to collect in June 2016 just after the Brexit vote. These encounters have ranged from one-off interviews to valued friendships and time spent with each other’s families. The content of the series will be a very close reading of  fieldwork notes in their raw form. Lisa welcomes any input and suggestions from interested parties.

Today’s blog, the first in a four-part series, will focus on social changes in Portugal leading up to the 2011 austerity measures. I will continue next month by reviewing how migration has shaped Portuguese history and what makes this latest wave different. Part three will look at London and how Portuguese migrants exist within it as a changing, global city in a time of European-wide austerity. Finally, I will discuss predictions for life after Brexit and how my research participants view recent positive changes in Portugal in terms of their own futures.

The following blog post is the first in the series on austerity and family – on the theme of “the changing role of the family / state in Portugal”.

“Things were going well, there was so much to do in Portugal, people were positive about their lives, their futures and then the crisis happened.” Carlos, 45

Carlos, 45, Lisbon, teacher turned IT consultant. Cecilia, 26, Vila Real, nurse. Sofia, 35, Porto, scientist[1]. Different worlds and stories but there is one thing they can all agree on- that they are a product of a ‘golden age’ of social and economic expansion in Portugal throughout the 1980s and 90s that no longer exists. These are the children of Europe, making their way in a very different world from the one their parents aspired to on their behalf. This was a world defined by prosperity, with education- via a proliferation of new universities all over the country- at its centre. The graduates of this expanded educational system form the backbone of a new middle class who found themselves with no place in the Portugal during the first decade of the 21st century.

Changing expectations is the key concept here. Values had transformed from the days of the Salazar dictatorship (1926-1974), and in the years following Portugal’s 1986 admission to the EU. Education was the key to an exciting new world where, for the first time, a ‘good life’ was accessible within Portugal, as long as one worked and studied hard for it. A long tradition of migration in search of a better standard of living, albeit through low paying jobs, was being turned on its head in favour of a prosperous future at home.

This new middle class, many of them the children of migrants who had returned to Portugal during the ‘golden years’, saw their expectations for a life different to that of their parents diminish before their eyes when austerity measures crippled the Portuguese economy in 2011. The industries worst hit were represented by thousands of unemployed graduates in nursing, teaching and construction- graduates who would now join the traditionally less educated migrant groups in seeking their fortune elsewhere.

The older ones I’ve spoken to are still angry. They remember what life was like before, although their anger has significantly diminished in the six years since the hardest repercussions of austerity were felt. However, it is the under 40s who have crossed my path more, and they define their experience as fleeing the prospect rather than experience of unemployment or stagnant careers. Expectations have once again changed in the ten years following the financial crash and again and again I am confronted by stoicism, a confidence in their ability as Europeans to find a way around the challenges of Brexit, but most of all a hope for the future rooted in trust in the same educational capital that prompted them to seek a world away from family and friends back home.

These graduates in their 20s and 30s encompass the values of a generation raised with Erasmus exchanges, travel opportunities and an affinity for the English language that, they explain, contrasts them to their parents, whose clinging to job security above all else is alien to what they have been brought up to believe. Nevertheless, the two sets of values are inexorably linked, not just through the obvious affective family bonds but through ongoing support networks. These networks are both financial, allowing young people to undertake internships, language classes or simply the space to save and figure out what to do next, and emotional, communication technology offering an opportunity for transnational connectivity in a way hitherto unexperienced by previous generations of migrants.

But what are the main differences between the EU generation in London and their parents, the children of the dictatorship? The former overwhelmingly present their experience as providing hope, meaning and pride through success (or the potential to succeed) in a career which is both internationally transferable and offers recognition of the individual’s talents. The irony at work here is the root of such hopes in the earlier prosperity wrought by neoliberal expansion which could only temporarily mask the inability of the economic and political framework of periphery countries to support the excesses of global finance and failures of the monetary union. What we are seeing now are the social repercussions of expectations of access to global consumerist comforts and existential fulfilment without the need to migrate. For many, this is now only attainable through planning a future outside Portugal.

Those Portuguese who recall pre-EU days defined by lack of both consumerism and the welfare state claim the younger generation don’t know the truth of how hard life can be and undervalue security. Those who have migrated and remained abroad describe their home country lovingly but as being devoid of opportunities befitting their qualifications and experience- a country mired in a system based on nepotism that undermined ‘EU values’ of efficiency, prosperity and merit. The young people I have spoken to refer to a favours system based on pre-revolution mentalities where contacts, rather than ability, are the key to getting ahead and have led to a country stuck in the past, where aspirational and intelligent young people migrate, leaving the same old names in charge.

Lisa Rodan is a third year PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent where she is working with three colleagues on an ESRC funded project entitled Household Survival in Crisis: Austerity and Relatedness in Greece and Portugal.

[1] All names have been changed

How the world’s first Social Impact Bond drained public resources, and why the market model fails forward

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In today’s blog, Robert Ogman argues that success stories on the social investment market are hiding inconvenient truths, and require honest rethink about such risky and expensive policy experiments

In 2009, when governments took on enormous debts to rescue the crumbling financial sector, they sought to address the fiscal crisis by slashing funding to the public sector in the turn to austerity. The conservatives called for a “Big Society” to fill the gap for scaled-back social protections, but quickly realising that nothing comes for free, sought to link the resource-weak social sector to capital markets ‘awash with liquidity’ (IMF), through the Cabinet Office’s new “social investment bank”, Big Society Capital. Private surpluses, could be ‘mobilised’ to offset government funding gaps, through loans to civil society groups coping with deepening social crises. In the ‘age of austerity’ (Cameron), the Social Investment Market is a magic bullet: It should offset fiscal problems by securing new pools of capital, address social problems by expanding the social sector, and make capitalism responsible by directing investors towards products with societal benefit. So were the praises sung by the father of venture capitalism, Sir Ronald Cohen, now involved in Big Society Capital, the Social Finance organization, and a host of ‘impact’-oriented initiatives.

Central to this broad policy initiative is the Social Impact Bond, a mechanism to address three interlinked problems, namely, to create ‘inclusive growth’ and ‘shared value’ as a new economic model, to offset public fiscal deficits with private investment, and to ‘solve society’s most intractable social problems’ by expanding preventative services. This experiment was tested in Peterborough as the world’s first SIB, bringing together market, government, and societal actors seeking to ‘break the cycle of reincarceration’. Investors provided £5 million as working capital for organisations, who adapted an anti-recidivism programme by St. Giles Trust , to reduce reconvictions of people released from short-term sentences at the local prison. If it reduced reconviction by 7.5% compared to a control group, the Ministry of Justice anticipated related reductions in its budget. It hoped that lower court, police, prison, and other criminal justice expenses could amount to up to £90m. If the project succeeds, a portion of these savings would be used to repay investors plus dividend. If it missed its mark, investors risked losing their capital. The idea was that this would “transfer the [financial] risk to the investors”, as Social Finance writes.

A central pillar of SIBs is the fiscal argument. As project manager of the Peterborough project and major driver of U.K. SIBs, Social Finance describes as a “precondition of a successful [SIB]”, that the savings are larger than the service intervention costs. In a time of fiscal constraint, the SIBs were meant to ‘do more with less’, downsizing prisons, and in doing so, ‘paying for themselves’. They were sold to the electorate under the mantra of presenting “no risk to the taxpayer”. In fact, without such fiscal pressures, one might ask whether this policy would have gotten off the ground at all, let alone accelerate an international diffusion of nearly 90 projects in 19 countries in the value of £300, according to Social Finance.

The final results for the Peterborough project came in this week achieving a 9% reduction in recidivism among its 2,000 person target group. In their statement, Social Finance praised the reductions in reoffending and the repayment of investors. The Ministry of Justice played the same tune and Gordon Brown praised the project in the same manner. Yet, as advocates were patting themselves on the backs, they were also moving the goal posts, with negative implications for the public. The new storyline neglected any reference to fiscal issues. This covered up the inconvenient truth that the Peterborough project would not pay for itself, as Rand wrote in a report for the Ministry of Justice. Absent savings, investors would effectually be paid through new expenditure, from tax payer dollars in the Ministry of Justice’s budget, and public money from the Big Lottery Fund, who rescued the project with a multi-million pound subsidy. While the project was supposed to allow government to ‘mobilise private capital for public good’, the Peterborough experiment appears to inverse this, compelling the government to “fill the funding gap for UK social impact bonds”, when they fail to create expected savings. This fiasco is just the latest example of a blunders associated with the uncritical approach to market-style governance.

While mistakes are common in policy innovations, there appears little concern to reassess the project. Instead, new efforts are being made to shore up the model despite its problems. Anticipating future failures, the Cabinet Office and the Big Lottery Fund conjured up £60 million of special “outcome funds” to subsidise investor returns when SIBs fail to create anticipated efficiency gains.

But now one really has to ask what the fiscal logic is for these projects. If SIBs were partially designed to help government out of a fiscal jam, now they’re placing more pressure on the budget, simply to pay investor returns on projects they’ve contributed no social value to. One wonders why the government should continue a project meant to reduce fiscal pressure, when it is now increasing expenditure with no added value?

So long as the government continues to cut public resources, and refuses to draw in revenue through taxation of concentrated private wealth, we’ll likely see more of such unhelpful market governance schemes, with attractive language but poor outcomes.

While many supporters of SIBs view them sympathetically, they do so because they would like to see more investment in social protections, more market actor involvement in societally beneficial endeavors, and more private contribution to the rebalancing of public finances. But the Peterborough problems show that joining market governance to ‘public responsibility’ are a weak compromise, they can inhibit these goals, and may produce contradictory results. The shortcomings of the Peterborough pilot require more than a tinkering with existing market governance models, and instead an honest rethinking of broader policy directions, asking how the economy may be more adequately ‘re-embedded’ in structures of public accountability.

Robert Ogman is a member of CURA and a doctoral researcher at the Department of Politics and Public Policy at De Montfort University.

Dissemination Report: Governing in and Against Austerity

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We are delighted to publish our dissemination report for the Austerity Governance project. It is titled Governing in and Against Austerity and provides an overview and reports initial findings from our eight case studies of austerity governance in Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal and Nantes.

We warmly welcome comments and feedback, you can download the document on the hyperlink above.