ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex journeys and coping strategies of families and young people living through austerity using a case study of a participatory action research project that employs local people as co-researchers and activists in a low-income neighbourhood in South Reading, UK. Drawing on knowledge gathered by the Whitley Researchers, it focuses on understanding how communities’ lived experiences of ‘getting by’ are entangled in complex feelings around relational poverty and place-based stigma. Starting with a snapshot of everyday austerity through a focus on the barriers to mobility that have facilitated long-term spatial isolation, the chapter explores how stigmatisation further damages the relationships and community-led capacity building that are essential for resisting neoliberal poverty discourses at the grassroots. It argues that austerity is a double-edged sword – on one edge it cuts people’s material support, and local community services disappear along with the youth club and children’s centre; on the other edge it cuts by stigmatisation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how a greater focus on co-producing knowledge with families and youth in austerity can help provide new collaborative spaces for participation and social activism that might action strategies ‘beyond coping’.
