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Grassroots responses and alternatives to austerity that have emerged in Athens and Greece call for a re-thinking of the recent neoliberal crisis through articulations of contestation 'from below'. This paper addresses this yet nascent theoretical debate through the notion of 'urban solidarity spaces', focusing on the spatiality of counter-austerity politics that emerges in and out of places and expands across urban space and beyond. From survival tactics grounded in Athenian neighbourhoods, such as local solidarity initiatives; to solidarity structures and cooperatives; and broader strategies of transformation and alternatives, such as the formation of a solidarity economy. These aim to constitute an empowering process of solidarity-making 'from below', and open up spaces for the practice of bottom-up democratic politics vis-à-vis austerity, a 'politics of fear' and crisis. The arguments raised here methodologically draw on activist ethnographic research in the 'Athens of crisis', between 2012 and 2013.

Background To analyse the impact of austerity measures taken by European governments as a response to the 2008 economic and financial crisis on social determinants on child health (SDCH), and child health outcomes (CHO). Methods A systematic literature review was carried out in Medline (Ovid), Embase, Web of Science, PsycInfo, and Sociological abstracts in the last 5 years from European countries. Studies aimed at analysing the Great Recession, governments’ responses to the crisis, and its impact on SDCH were included. A narrative synthesis of the results was carried out. The risk of bias was assessed using the STROBE and EPICURE tools. Results Fourteen studies were included, most of them with a low to intermediate risk of bias (average score 72.1%). Government responses to the crisis varied, although there was general agreement that Greece, Spain, Ireland and the United Kingdom applied higher levels of austerity. High austerity periods, compared to pre-austerity periods were associated with increased material deprivation, child poverty rates, and low birth weight. Increasing child poverty subsequent to austerity measures was associated with deterioration of child health. High austerity was also related to poorer access and quality of services provided to disabled children. An annual reduction of 1% on public health expenditure was associated to 0.5% reduction on Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccination coverage in Italy. Conclusions Countries that applied high level of austerity showed worse trends on SDCH and CHO, demonstrating the importance that economic policy may have for equity in child health and development. European governments must act urgently and reverse these austerity policy measures that are detrimental to family benefits and child protection.

Background The programme for fiscal consolidation in Greece has led to income decrease and several changes in health policy. In this context, this study aims to assess how economic crisis affected unmet healthcare needs in Greece. Methods Time series analysis was performed for the years 2004 through 2011 using the EU-SILC database. The dependent variable was the percentage of people who had medical needs but did not use healthcare services. Median income, unemployment and time period were used as independent variables. We also compared self-reported unmet healthcare needs drawn from a national survey conducted in pre-crisis 2006 with a similar survey from 2011 (after the onset of the crisis). A common questionnaire was used in both years to assess unmet healthcare needs, including year of survey, gender, age, health status, chronic disease, educational level, income, employment, health insurance status, and prefecture. The outcome of interest was unmet healthcare needs due to financial reasons. Ordinary least squares, as well as logistic regression analysis were conducted to analyze the results. Results Unmet healthcare needs increased after the enactment of austerity measures, while the year of participation in the survey was significantly associated with unmet healthcare needs. Income, educational level, employment status, and having insurance, private or public, were also significant determinants of unmet healthcare needs due to financial reasons. Conclusions The adverse economic environment has significantly affected unmet health needs. Therefore health policy actions and social policy measures are essential in order to mitigate the negative impact on access to healthcare services and health status.

This paper contributes to critical discussions of austerity by examining the constructions of scarcity that underpin it. Specifically, it shows how notions of scarcity (re) emergent in a period of austerity have shaped materially insufficient and stigmatising welfare systems. We do this through the example of UK food banks. We suggest that under austerity a particular moral economy of scarcity has become embedded at the level of common sense, including in the common sense of many of those distributing food aid. In UK food banks this moral economy is shaped by images of the “empty cupboard” and discourses of absolute hunger which normalise practices of (self) rationing and exacerbate food insecurity. Tracing attempts by some food bank managers and volunteers to challenge this moral economy, we conclude with a critical agenda for academics and practitioners to rethink relationships between welfare, austerity, and scarcity.

This paper brings together key ideas from across economic and social theory to expand geographical understandings of crisis at the personal scale. Drawing on ethnographic research with families in Greater Manchester, UK, together with literatures on the geographies of crises and conjunctures, I argue that economic crises, such as austerity, can be revealing of the fragilities within familial and personal relationships and as such constitute a very personal crisis. In times of austerity and economic crisis, questions are raised about how people imagine themselves, and the relationships, spaces, and times in which they situate their lives - previously, presently, and prospectively. I advance conceptualisations of the ways austerity and economic crisis \"play out\" to illustrate how everyday life is punctuated and disrupted by crises and conjunctures of various types. Personal conditions of austerity are knotted within personal inventories of important life experiences, relational comparators, and memories, of social, emotional, or financial hardship, which resonate strongly. Furthermore, I identify the way in which crises are woven within imaginarles of the future, personal biographies, and lifecourse trajectories, whereby economic crises and austerity can be felt as life crises. Providing added depth to current geographical literature focused on the personal scale, in this paper economic crises and austerity are shown to be personally affective, having lasting impacts on social relationships. Ultimately, I make the case for how an economic crisis is almost always and inevitable felt as a personal crisis; a vital conjuncture, the crescendo of circumstance, opening up the sores of memories and creating new ones, compromising familial and financial fragility.

PurposeStudies on how accounting is involved in financial crises and austerity are limited. The context of austerity provides an interesting opportunity to explore the role of accounting in shaping governmental financial resilience, i.e. the capacity of governments to cope with shocks affecting their financial conditions.Design/methodology/approachBased on a multiple case analysis of eight Italian municipalities, this paper explores how accounting contributes to the government capacities which are used to anticipate and respond to shocks affecting public finances.FindingsMunicipalities cope with financial shocks differently; accounting can support self–regulation and can affect internally-led or externally-led adaptation. Different combinations of anticipatory and coping capacities lead to different responses to shocks.Practical implicationsThe findings can be useful for public managers, policymakers and oversight bodies for strengthening governmental financial resilience in the face of crises and austerity.Originality/valueThe results provide evidence of the conditions, contexts, processes under which accounting becomes a medium which can support both anticipation of and coping with financial shocks, supporting cuts in some cases and resistance in the short run or driving long-term changes intended to maintain public services as much intact as possible. This highlights the existence of different patterns of governmental financial resilience and thus indicates ways of best preserving the service of the public interest.

During the Great Recession, governments across the continent implemented austerity policies. A large literature claims that such policies are surprisingly popular and have few electoral costs. This article revisits this question by studying the popularity of governments during the economic crisis. The authors assemble a pooled time-series data set for monthly support for ruling parties from fifteen European countries and treat austerity packages as intervention variables to the underlying popularity series. Using time-series analysis, this permits the careful tracking of the impact of austerity packages over time. The main empirical contributions are twofold. First, the study shows that, on average, austerity packages hurt incumbent parties in opinion polls. Secondly, it demonstrates that the magnitude of this electoral punishment is contingent on the economic and political context: in instances of rising unemployment, the involvement of external creditors and high protest intensity, the cumulative impact of austerity on government popularity becomes considerable.

This article examines lived experiences of food insecurity in the United Kingdom as a liminal phenomenon. Our research is set within the context of austerity measures, welfare reform and the precarity experienced by increasing numbers of individuals. Drawing on original qualitative data, we highlight diverse food insecurity experiences as transitional, oscillating between phases of everyday food access to requiring supplementary food, which are both empowering and reinforcing of food insecurity. We make three original contributions to existing research on food insecurity. First, we expand the scope of empirical research by conceptualising food insecurity as liminal. Second, we illuminate shared social processes and practices that intersect individual agency and structure, co-constructing people’s experiences of food insecurity. Third, we extend liminality theory by conceptualising paraliminality, a hybrid of liminal and liminoid phenomena that co-generates a persistent liminal state. Finally, we highlight policy implications that go beyond short-term emergency food access measures.

This paper considers some key impacts of public sector neoliberalisation and austerity measures for everyday geographies of childhood and youth in England. The paper develops three claims, with reference to qualitative research conducted at a youth group in 2007, 2009 and 2013. First, I outline a range of ways in which long-run processes of public sector neoliberalisation, and more abrupt cuts to public sector expenditure 'in the current climate' of austerity politics, have substantially transformed geographies of childhood and youth in many minority world contexts. However, I argue that extant research on these transformations has tended to reproduce some rather partial understandings of impacts of service withdrawal, which I critique via a reading of recent geographical work on anticipatory politics. Second, I evidence how political-economic contexts of neoliberalisation and austerity have constituted a particular atmosphere and sense of the future, tangibly affecting everyday relationships, spaces and the efficacy of service provision at the case study youth group. In particular, I emphasise the significance of anticipated futures, noting that the anticipation of funding cuts is having manifold everyday, lived consequences that are arguably more wide-ranging, intractable and troubling than the impacts of funding cuts themselves. Third, in particular, I argue that spaces of anticipated funding cuts and service withdrawal are frequently characterised by an intensification of anxieties about, and hopes for, young people's futures. I note that young people are diversely affected by, and engaged in, the circulation of these anxieties and hopes - but also recognise that young people's geographies go on, and sometimes offer hopeful ways on, 'in the current climate'.

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.