Legacies of Austerity: Editorial Introduction

Abstract

Austerity across Europe and other parts of the world has become a go-to socio-economic policy, supporting and enriching neoliberal principles of a shrinking state, financial self-responsibilisation and welfare conditionality. This Special Section presents a new approach to understanding contemporary austerity by focusing on legacies. In this introduction, we illustrate how the lens of legacies can be applied to understanding the aftermath of austerity, in terms of how austerity's legacies are lived out, passed on and become manifest in daily life. More specifically, we highlight the significance of policy, social, and material legacies, including where they overlap and interweave. Supported by seven papers and an afterword, this collection advances debates within geography about the space-times of austerity as they condition present and future geographies.