Some of the worst effects of the global economic downturn that commenced in 2008 have been felt in Europe, and specifically in the Eurozone’s so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) and Cyprus. This edited volume is the first collection to bring together ethnographies of living with austerity inside the Eurozone, and explore how people across Southern Europe have come to understand their experiences of increased social suffering, insecurity, and material poverty. The contributors focus on how crises stimulate temporal thought (temporality), whether tilted in the direction of historicizing, presentifying, futural thought, or some combination of these possibilities. One of the themes linking diverse crisis experiences across national boundaries is how people contemplate their present conditions and potential futures in terms of the past. The studies in this collection thus supply ethnographies that journey to the source of historical production by identifying the ways in which the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and refashioned under contracting economic horizons. In times of crisis modern linear historicism is often overridden (and overwritten) by other historicities showing that in crises not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs and can be refashioned according to new rules. This book was originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.

Southern Europe has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and, as such, their welfare states have come under acute strain. Unmet need has sharply increased while significant welfare reforms and deep social spending cuts have been prominent in the crisis management solutions implemented by governments, labouring under EU constraints and the strict rescue-deal requirements for Greece and Portugal. This volume provides a systematic comparative appraisal of welfare-state reform trajectories across Southern Europe prior to and during the crisis, and traces the impact of austerity policies and wider recession upon income inequality and poverty. It brings together a number of cross-country studies on major social policy areas, raising crucial questions. What policy choices are driving reforms as Southern European economies work their way out of fiscal difficulty? Can the crisis provoke the improvement of institutional capabilities and recalibration of social? Or, instead, does structural adjustment indicate a significant policy turn towards the erosion of social rights? The contributions critically approach these issues and bring evidence to bear upon whether Southern European welfare capitalisms are becoming more dissimilar. This book was originally published as a special issue of South European Society & Politics.

The financial malaise that has affected the Eurozone countries of southern Europe – Spain, Portugal, Italy and, in its most extreme case, Greece – has been analysed using mainly macroeconomic and financial explanations. This book shifts the emphasis from macroeconomics to the relationship between uneven geographical development, financialization and politics. It deconstructs the myth that debt, both public and private, in Southern Europe is the sole outcome of the spendthrift ways of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, offering a fresh perspective on the material, social and ideological parameters of the economic crisis and the spaces where it unfolded. Featuring a range of case examples that complement and expand the main discussion, Crisis Spaces will appeal to students and scholars of human geography, economics, regional development, political science, cultural studies and social movements studies.

Austerity and structural adjustment programs are just the latest forms of neoliberal policy to have a profoundly damaging impact on the targeted populations. Yet, as the contributors to this collection argue, the recent austerity-related European crisis is not a breach of erstwhile development schemes, but a continuation of economic policies. Using historical analysis and ethnographically-grounded research, this volume shows the similarities of the European conundrum with realities outside Europe, seeing austerity in a non-Eurocentric fashion. In doing so, it offers novel insights as to how economic crises are experienced at a global level.

This volume is the first of its kind to discuss social welfare issues using case studies from a broad range of Southern European countries, both large and small, a decade after the financial crisis. It identifies similarities and differences in the ways in which Southern European countries engage with specific welfare issues and examines whether Southern European welfare is distinct from that of the rest of the continent. The book also engages with the impact of COVID-19 on the social welfare issues under investigation. The volume is divided into four sections, each examining in detail issues including employment, education, health, sexuality, globalization, social movements and migration. With its contributions from experts in the field, the volume is recommended for academics, researchers and students of sociology, social policy, economics, education, politics and social movements.

This collective volume - with contributions from experts on these regions - examines broader questions about the current crises (The Great Recession and The Commodity Crisis) and the associated changes in political representation in both regions. It provides a general overview of political representation studies in Southern Europe and Latin America and builds bridges between the two traditions of political representation studies, affording greater understanding of developments in each region and promote future research collaboration between Southern Europe and Latin America. Finally, the book addresses questions of continuity and change in patterns of political representation after the onset of the two economic crises, specifically examining issues such as changes in citizens’ democratic support and trust in political representatives and institutions, in-descriptive representation (in the sociodemographic profile of MPs) and in-substantive representation (in the link between voters and MPs in terms of ideological congruence and/or policy/issue orientations). This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, political representation, European and Latin American politics/studies, and more broadly to comparative politics.

This book is a unique exploration into the gendered politics of the economic crisis in Europe. It focuses, firstly, on the changes in the political and economic decision-making institutions and processes of the EU and their consequences for gender equality policy. Secondly, the book analyses the gendered impacts of austerity politics on member states’ gender equality policies, institutions, regimes, and debates. Finally, it addresses feminist and intersectional struggles and resistances against neoliberal, conservative and racist politics across Europe. The authors consider the gendered politics of the economic crisis from a variety of feminist approaches, shedding new light on the concept of the crisis and on questions of politics, institutions and intersectionality. The case studies included refer to different parts of Europe, from North to South and from East to West, capturing the multifaceted gendered impacts of the crisis. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, international relations, gender studies, economics, law, sociology, social policy, and European studies.