Emotions, affect and social policy: austerity and Children’s Centers in the UK

Abstract

This paper considers the 'affective turn' within social sciences, alongside the shift to a more emotional public and political sphere, and the implications of these shifts for the study of social policy. A context of austerity cuts and reforms to welfare services contributes to heightened and unstable emotions surrounding services. A case study of Sure Start Children's Centers in the UK is presented, in two areas where centers were threatened with closure. Interview and ethnographic material with both staff and service users is presented to show how emotions became heightened and politicized in this context. Both staff and service users articulated the values of the centers in new ways, drawing on intimate and emotional registers of experience. Overall, the material shows how in this context, emotions can be understood as place-based, relational and politicized, potentially producing different values and visions of welfare services.

Loneliness is a feminist issue

“…Austerity measures in Britain have resulted in the closing down of spaces of vital social infrastructure: with cuts to local authority budgets leading to closures of public libraries, parks, community centres and care services. Austerity has resulted in the closure of vital spaces of connection, especially for those isolated and cut off in other ways, such as the closure of Sure Start children's centres for new mothers (see : Jupp, 2021). Thus, as Hitchen (2019) notes, '[t]he loss of such urban commons embodies a grinding loss of world […] our collective worlds begin to shrink, slip, and slide away'.…”

Why Teachers Do Not Take Child Sick Leave? Emotional Strategies, Micropolitics, and the Self-Conception of Teachers with Small Children in a Pandemic

“…Zde navazujeme na akademickou tradici zkoumání emocí v kontextu veřejných politik [např. Durnová 2019;Jupp 2021 ad.] a rozšiřujeme ji o rozměr mikropolitik na úrovni organizací.…”

“…Význam emotivní dimenze politiky v tomto pojetí zdůrazňují ve svých pracích např. Durnová [2019Durnová [ , 2013, Pain [2009], Pain a Steaheli [2014]; emotivní rovina veřejných politik je skloňována i v souvislosti s pandemií covidu-19 [Jupp 2021;Weible et al 2020].…”

Shadow care infrastructures: Sustaining life in post-welfare cities

“…Economic restructuring and deregulation in global north cities have given rise to new forms of urban poverty associated with housing and labour precarity, unemployment and underemployment (Strauss, 2018). Concurrently, welfare state restructuring has produced a changing urban welfare and care landscape, shaped through austerity cuts in welfare funding (Jupp, 2021; Power and Hall, 2018), tightened eligibility for social security (Morris and Wilson, 2014), diversification of state and non-state welfare providers (DeVerteuil, 2015, 2017; Wolch, 1990), and an ongoing shift towards individualised and marketised welfare models (Baker et al, 2020). Gaps in welfare provision are growing in the wake of reforms, with those in need experiencing an increasingly fractured service landscape (DeVerteuil, 2015; Parsell et al, 2022).…”