Austerity and Altered Life-Courses: Socio-Political Ruptures to Family, Employment and Housing Biographies Across Europe

Austerity and the global economic crisis have had direct and devastating impacts on young people's life-course biographies across Europe since 2008. This has been particularly acute for those now aged 35 and under, experiencing significant disruption ('socio-political ruptures') throughout their formative years. This includes interconnected impacts on family childbearing decisions, employment opportunities, and housing arrangements. These vary depending on context. To investigate these issues, this project is focused on three European devolved or autonomous regions: Greater Manchester (UK), Barcelona Province (Catalonia, Spain) and Sardinia (Italy).
A growing body of academic and policy related research on the lived experiences of austerity and economic crisis considers the impact on young people's futures. However, less understood by academics and policy-makers are the interconnections between socio-political ruptures for/within life-course biographies of young people. A lack of understanding about intersecting socio-political ruptures is also mirrored in policy and government silos, whereby housing, family and employment policies and departments are rarely integrated. There is also a need to embed life-course perspectives into policy-making, to better account for how the social life of policy (such as austerity) has impacts that are felt on the ground long after implementation. As a form of redress, this project proposes thinking about austerity not as a point in time, society or space, but as constantly being formed and reshaped, and in dialogue with experiences, histories and futures.
This project provides the necessary conceptual novelty and empirical innovation to address these complex issues. It does so by synthesising and extending conceptual approaches from across social science disciplines, developing creative methodological tools, and co-designing regional policy recommendations that embed life-course perspectives within regional policy. It will reprise long-term perspectives offered by a life-course approach within geography, with a new methodological twist, and will develop a new approach to understanding policy that considers the 'social life of policy' as spatially and temporally contingent. To advance this agenda, the project is guided by the following research questions:
1. In what ways have young people experienced overlapping socio-political ruptures to their life-courses, according to local austere contexts?
2. How do young people articulate and envision the impacts of these socio-political ruptures on their future biographies?
3. How can life-course perspectives on austerity shape understandings about and applications of the social life of policy?
To address these questions, in-depth creative oral history interviews (100 per site) will be carried out in each site, documenting the impacts of austerity on young people's life-course biographies, focused on the linkages between socio-political ruptures. This will produce a rich, innovative body of data detailing the lived, complex legacies of austerity. With permission edited interviews will be submitted to local public archives in each site and used to develop an exhibition. The comparative empirical elements are also underpinned by systematic area profiles and literature reviews that bring together multi-disciplinary and policy work in the field, across languages and contexts. Co-production workshops, drawing on project findings presented via an exhibition in each site and a website, will develop policy recommendations on bringing life-course perspectives and ideas about the social life of policy into regional policies. These will be discussed at policy implementation workshops with the support of partners and attended by policy-makers from various levels of government. The project will also build a community of praxis leading to the first European research and policy network focused on young people's life-course biographies and austerity (ENYPLA).

This project will develop new and in-depth conceptual, methodological and practical insights into the lived impacts of austerity on young people's future life-course biographies. It will also develop policy recommendations for embedding life-course and the 'social life of policy' approaches within policy making at the regional scale. As such, and with a rich variety of engagement activities, it presents a unique opportunity for cross-sector knowledge formation and impact. This includes:

- Regional and national organisations directly engaging with young people impacted by austerity in UK, Spain and Italy. This includes project partners (TDM2000 and Young Manchester) and similar organisations who work directly with young people affected, and sector-specific groups, such as housing organisations (Shelter, Orbit and PAH) and welfare, employment and wellbeing organisations (ABD and Inspiring Futures). The project is a real opportunity for regional and national organisations to benefit from networking across sectors (e.g. housing with youth organisations), as well as internationally across the three project sites. This is supported by project partnerships and activities such as creative oral history workshops, and through collaborator and academic advisor networks.

- Policy-makers: including the three devolved or autonomous regional governments of Greater Manchester, Barcelona Province and Sardinia, local authorities, and national policy-makers from government and third sector, looking to learn from international cases. We anticipate interest in the project from wide ranging policy stakeholders given the intersectional scope and possibilities for evidence-led regional policy outcomes (through co-produced policy workshops and policy implementation events). Furthermore, a key outcome of the project is to find ways to integrate a 'social life of policy' approach at the regional level initially, which considers how the impacts of policies, such as austerity measures, continue to be felt on the ground long after implementation and even extermination. Crucially, this includes embedding notions of the life-course in policy making, to consider how policies are placed in both space and time.

- General public: such as young people and their families who have been affected by austerity, or wish to see policy change to reduce inequalities. Impacts in this regard are developed and measured through engagement and feedback mechanisms at creative oral history methods workshops, co-production policy events, a public-facing audio exhibition, and an interactive website. Members of the public, for whom taking part and sharing personal stories can be incredibly valuable and empowering, also engage with the research as participants (100 per site).

- Research community: this project aims to build a community of praxis within and beyond academia, across languages (English, Catalan, Spanish, Italian) and national contexts (UK, Spain, Italy), with an interest in austerity and economic change, youth transitions, life-course studies, housing, employment and family. In particular, a major outcome of the project is the development of the first European network on young people's life-course biographies altered by austerity (ENYPLA), which brings together academics, practitioners and policy-makers across Europe around this significant and topical agenda.