After the 2008 financial crisis, Ireland implemented a severe austerity programme, which drastically reshaped the opportunities and constraints experienced by youth living in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Rising unemployment, reduced social welfare, and funding cuts for support organisations limited the opportunities of urban life for disadvantaged urban youth. This article uses the experience of austerity urbanism of young adults from Ballymun (Dublin) and Knocknaheeny (Cork), both among the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods of their cities, to argue that austerity, through time-space expansion, removes services, facilities and opportunities from deprived urban neighbourhoods, thus reinforcing and intensifying socio-spatial inequalities. In an effort to bring State finances under control and to revitalise the economy the whole urban fabric, and the urban population, is managed for the purpose of economic recovery. Urban life becomes restricted as disadvantaged urban youth becomes socially and spatially excluded from vital urban opportunities and amenities
To cite this article: Sander van Lanen (2020): 'My room is the kitchen': lived experience of homemaking, home-unmaking and emerging housing strategies of disadvantaged urban youth in austerity Ireland, Social & Cultural Geography,
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This paper explores what anticipated futures of disadvantaged urban youth can reveal about the contemporary and future consequences of austerity. As austerity has disrupted several transitions associated with adulthood, such as finding work and moving out of the parental home, it affects how young adults imagine their future. Young adults living in neighbourhoods of concentrated deprivation were particularly vulnerable to such disruptions. Therefore, this paper builds on semi-structured interviews with youth from Knocknaheeny (Cork) and Ballymun (Dublin) in Ireland to present two vignettes reflecting dominant narratives on anticipated futures. First, a narrative that embraces neoliberal logic, where young adulthood is the basis for future success through dedicated hard work rather than a phase of exploration of possible futures. Second, a narrative of “acceptance” where youth imagines the future to “go on” from the present and becomes a source of anxiety or resignation. This paper shows that combining vignettes with interview data presents two benefits. First, they illuminate the complex and sometimes contradictory stories of youth making sense of their present, past and future. Second, comparing and contrasting the vignettes to multiple participant stories can disentangle roles of location, class, gender and other differentiations. In conclusion, the paper stresses the importance of imagined futures for understanding everyday geographies of austerity as anticipated futures surface in everyday practices, behaviour, and attitudes.
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