The result of the United Kingdom's EU referendum has been interpreted as evidence of a “culture war” between proponents of liberal cosmopolitanism and defenders of socially conservative values. According to this interpretation, voters on both sides are seen as driven by identity‐based politics. But on a council estate (social‐housing project) in England, what made the EU referendum different from an ordinary election was that citizens perceived it as an opportunity to reject government as they know it. Citizens’ engagements with the referendum constitute attempts to insert everyday moralities into electoral processes. They provide an opening into alternative, if yet unknown, futures that go beyond any singular narratives that divide the electorate into camps of so‐called Leavers and Remainers.

Struggles over housing are one of the most pressing social, economic and political issues of our time. Yet questions over access to, plus the redistribution and maintenance of secure housing have only recently begun to be considered anthropologically. Drawing on E.P. Thompson's concept of moral economy, this special issue addresses these questions and considers how contemporary moral economies of housing play out. Citizens try to make their demands for adequate and safe housing heard, but such aspirations are often undermined by, political rhetoric, state officials, loan terms and the law. People claim allegiances to particular moral communities, thus (re)constituting themselves as deserving of secure tenure and proper homes, often in the face of stigma, laws or policies that construct them as the very reverse. By placing fine-grained ethnographic analysis in conversation with the political economy of housing, we redefine housing as an essentially contested domain where competing understandings of citizenship are constructed, fought over and acted out.

Despite evidence of widespread disenchantment with formal politics among England's impoverished sectors, people on the margins continue to engage with elected representatives on their own terms. On English council estates (housing projects), residents mediate their experiences of an alien and distant political system by drawing local politicians into localized networks of support and care. While this allows residents to voice demands for “bread and butter,” personalized alliances with politicians rarely translate into collective action. The limits of one political party's bread‐and‐butter strategy highlight the precariousness of working‐class movements at a time when the political Left has largely been dismantled. They also demonstrate the need to account for the lived realities of social class in aspirational narratives for “alternative” democratic futures. [democratic crisis, neoliberalism, voting, working‐class movements, council estates, alternative democracies, United Kingdom]

Recent commentary on the punitive turn has focused on the repressive nature of criminal justice policy. Yet, on a marginalised council estate (social housing project) in England, residents appropriate the state in ways that do not always align with the law. What is more, where the state fails to provide residents with the protection they need, residents mobilise informal violence that is condemned by the state. An ethnographic analysis of personalised uses of criminal justice questions the state-centric assumptions of order that have informed recent narratives of the punitive turn. It also calls for a reassessment of the relationship between democratic politics and criminal justice by drawing attention to popular demands that are not captured by a focus on punishment alone.

Dealing with excess death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the question of a ‘good or bad death’ into sharp relief as countries across the globe have grappled with multiple peaks of cases and mortality; and communities mourn those lost. In the UK, these challenges have included the fact that mortality has adversely affected minority communities. Corpse disposal and social distancing guidelines do not allow a process of mourning in which families and communities can be involved in the dying process. This study aimed to examine the main concerns of faith and non-faith communities across the UK in relation to death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team used rapid ethnographic methods to examine the adaptations to the dying process prior to hospital admission, during admission, during the disposal and release of the body, during funerals and mourning. The study revealed that communities were experiencing collective loss, were making necessary adaptations to rituals that surrounded death, dying and mourning and would benefit from clear and compassionate communication and consultation with authorities.

Ongoing processes of ‘austerity localism’, including the state’s withdrawal from local communities, have created heightened pressures at the frontline. Sitting in local authorities, third sector bodies and community organisations, frontline workers come to act as the de facto guardians of a much-diminished welfare state. Yet, in a situation where needs outweigh resources, they also allocate support based on moral hierarchies of deservingness. This Janus-faced role of frontline workers as both a bulwark against, and an enabler of, neo-liberal welfare control is examined through the framework of a moral economy of frontline work. I argue that the tensions reflect a deeper struggle over competing notions of citizenship, and of the state’s responsibilities towards its citizens, in austerity Britain today.

Contemporary attempts to govern 'the state of the welfare state' are as much about moral endeavours as they are about political and economic imperatives. Such is the argument put forward in this Introduction, which focuses on the work that advisers perform in settings of austerity across Europe. Advisers are often the last call for help for their clients/dependents who find themselves increasingly at the mercy of local authorities, immigration regimes, landlords, banks and debt collection agencies. But competing visions of moral worth and social justice continue to permeate the everyday deliberations of those who administer, support and advocate advice. Struggles and dilemmas over how best to provide assistance and balance individuals' moral judgments against the collective good frequently occur. We explore both the dovetailing of and divergence between domains and roles, in disrupting as well as reproducing dominant logics of extraction and accumulation.

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