Care, austerity and citizenship: story-telling as protest in anti-austerity activism in the UK

This chapter will consider expressions of citizenship, or political subjectivity, as they might emerge during local protests against the closure of Sure Start Children’s Centres in England. The centres were woven into the everyday lives of women caring for young children, providing a range of forms of support and connection to them. Coming forward as activists and to speak out against the closures involved a process of reflection on the politics of care and a range of ‘citizenship acts’ (Isin and Nielson, 2013) which made such politics, and the place of the centres within them, visible in different ways. Overall the data points to a gendered politics of daily life emerging from local anti-austerity protests, and the chapter assesses some of the potentials and fragilities of such a politics.