4 - Austerity Talk

Summary

Brits on low pay – and those out of work – are forced to compete with millions of people from abroad for jobs.

(Iain Duncan-Smith, Conservative MP, 2016, emphasis added)

Every time people look at White Dee … it will serve as a reminder to people of the mess the benefits system is in and how badly Iain Duncan Smith's reforms are needed. White Dee is bone idle and doesn't want to work another day in her life and has no intention of finding a job.

(Philip Davies, Conservative MP, 2014, emphasis added)

This chapter explores how women who are significantly affected by austerity and welfare reform and who are devalued and made abject by the symbolic and institutional violence of the austerity programme — single mothers, women reliant on welfare, migrant women and women with disabilities or health conditions — talk about the austerity agenda. Women's narratives are not straightforward, they dialogue with this discourse in contrasting and contradictory ways, simultaneously reproducing, reinforcing, questioning and talking back to moralistic narratives of hard work, fairness and responsibility. They experience a range of violent impacts, increased racism, fear, humiliation, high levels of anxiety and concerns about the growing mistreatment from both the public and institutions of the state. Despite such experiences, their discussions are narrated through paradoxical dialogues of negotiation and distancing towards and away from such negative stereotypes. Rather than assuming such distinctions reflect the prevalence and internalization of anti-welfare messages and austerity discourse, such distinctions are ‘a central feature of their own bid for recognition and legitimacy’ (Dhaliwal and Forkert, 2015: 49). The ways in which these women try to value themselves thus becomes dependent on, and specific to, the immediate context, as well as to the resources and capital that they have available to be mobilized.

Divided into three sections, the first part of this chapter examines how women who are deemed to be ‘hard-working citizens’ by the government speak about these abject figures. Invoking outrage and condemnation, it is within these narratives that the power and influence of ‘poverty propaganda’ (Shildrick, 2018) becomes visible. The second section of this chapter then explores how women who are devalued and made abject through dominant anti-welfare discourse talk back to and dialogue with these representations.