5 - Neoliberalism, division and austerity: precarity and hunger in the UK

Summary

Introduction

This chapter addresses the role that social class has played in shaping societal responses to austerity post 2010. We discuss the rise of neoliberalism as a free market and small welfare state approach that has driven divisions across society, separating the deserving from the undeserving, resulting in a rise of precarity and food insecurity for many. Structurally, this chapter examines the Equality Act 2010, one of the final, yet crucially significant policies of the New Labour government, and challenges the absence of ‘working class’ as a protected characteristic. Doing so, this chapter locates its arguments within Guy Standings’ (2011) framework of the precariat, a new social class, distinctively separate from any other that has gone before. Moreover, this chapter is about neoliberalism and its associations with division, austerity and the creation of the precariat in the UK. Here we exemplify this through a discussion of class structure, identity and food poverty.

The first part of this chapter will establish the theoretical framework which sits over our discussion, notably that of Bourdieusian habitus (1984) and authenticated links to Standing's (2011) precariat.

Following this, we will explain what we mean by the umbrella term neoliberalism, with examples of how this approach has determined policy in practically all areas of the UK, notably the Equality Act 2010. Here, in line with Standing (2011), neoliberalism is discussed as the main cause of social division and precarity, coexisting with a sense of dispossession and disqualification. We then identify how the state of neoliberalism has become normalised for many ordinary families and working people and exists within a backdrop of populist political narratives. These narratives work to reposition the working-class identity as simply a non-identity; one that is envisaged as an economic category linked to a lowering of socioeconomic status.

Standing (2011) has posited that the loss of a working-class identity has left the working class as now reflective of little more than an evocative label. We believe it is important to present a broad view of neoliberalism so that the reader understands how extensive its reach has been in society since at least the 1980s and how it has influenced and determined social policies throughout the subsequent years.