Theorisations of state violence under austerity have been criticised for their imprecision. In response, this article introduces the concept of institutional neglect: a specific modality of structural violence. We argue that institutional neglect occurs when state services deny care to eligible clients. This is a normative claim which locates an obligation to care in the body of the state. Through case studies of two local authority-run care services in the UK, we identify three banal, quotidian techniques of neglect: delay, deferral, and diversion. We emphasise that care is not necessarily an antidote to violence; instead, care and violence are increasingly entangled within state bureaucracies under austerity.

Questions of paying research participants have taken on a new urgency as contemporary geographies of precarity, inequality and austerity affect both potential participants and, to varying extents, early‐career researchers, while universities place greater emphasis on public engagement and research impact. Here, we offer reflections and recommendations that come from our experiences as PhD students in London, as precarious researchers researching precarious lives. We make a case for paying participants based on ethics of care and readings of precarity informed by feminist political economy. We discuss how and how much to pay. We recommend changes to institutional norms that have treated payments with suspicion, to research design and funding, and to ethical approval procedures and publishing practices.

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