A researcher, teacher and activist, Kirsten Forkert is based in the School of Media at BCU in Birmingham, where she is Associate Director of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. She is the author of Artistic Lives (2013), and is a co-author of Go Home: The politics of Immigration Controversies (2017) and the forthcoming Media, War and the Making of Migrants. She is a member of the editorial collective of Soundings.

• Introduction: Tightening Our Belts / Chapter 1: Austerity and the Appeal of the Past / Chapter 2: Authoritarian Populism, Traditionalism and Austerity / Chapter 3: The Mediatisation of Austerity and the Case of Benefits Street / Chapter 4: Immigration, Austerity and the Welfare State / Chapter 5: Austere creativity, community and impasses around the welfare state / Chapter 6: Trade Union Activism after the 2010 Student Protests / Chapter 7: Spaces of Solidarity / Conclusion: From Austerity to Brexit and Trump, and the Politics of the “Ordinary”

This is a wonderfully clear-sighted and necessary appraisal of how ‘austerity’ is not simply a series of policies but a cultural sensibility and public mood. Kirstin Forkert’s astute and multifaceted account simultaneously helps us understand how destructive austerity politics are garnering support whilst investigating and imagining ways they are - and could be - addressed and combated in practice.

A researcher, teacher and activist, Kirsten Forkert is based in the School of Media at BCU in Birmingham, where she is Associate Director of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. She is the author of Artistic Lives (2013), and is a co-author of Go Home: The politics of Immigration Controversies (2017) and the forthcoming Media, War and the Making of Migrants. She is a member of the editorial collective of Soundings.

• Introduction: Tightening Our Belts / Chapter 1: Austerity and the Appeal of the Past / Chapter 2: Authoritarian Populism, Traditionalism and Austerity / Chapter 3: The Mediatisation of Austerity and the Case of Benefits Street / Chapter 4: Immigration, Austerity and the Welfare State / Chapter 5: Austere creativity, community and impasses around the welfare state / Chapter 6: Trade Union Activism after the 2010 Student Protests / Chapter 7: Spaces of Solidarity / Conclusion: From Austerity to Brexit and Trump, and the Politics of the “Ordinary”

This is a wonderfully clear-sighted and necessary appraisal of how ‘austerity’ is not simply a series of policies but a cultural sensibility and public mood. Kirstin Forkert’s astute and multifaceted account simultaneously helps us understand how destructive austerity politics are garnering support whilst investigating and imagining ways they are - and could be - addressed and combated in practice.

A researcher, teacher and activist, Kirsten Forkert is based in the School of Media at BCU in Birmingham, where she is Associate Director of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. She is the author of Artistic Lives (2013), and is a co-author of Go Home: The politics of Immigration Controversies (2017) and the forthcoming Media, War and the Making of Migrants. She is a member of the editorial collective of Soundings.

• Introduction: Tightening Our Belts / Chapter 1: Austerity and the Appeal of the Past / Chapter 2: Authoritarian Populism, Traditionalism and Austerity / Chapter 3: The Mediatisation of Austerity and the Case of Benefits Street / Chapter 4: Immigration, Austerity and the Welfare State / Chapter 5: Austere creativity, community and impasses around the welfare state / Chapter 6: Trade Union Activism after the 2010 Student Protests / Chapter 7: Spaces of Solidarity / Conclusion: From Austerity to Brexit and Trump, and the Politics of the “Ordinary”

This is a wonderfully clear-sighted and necessary appraisal of how ‘austerity’ is not simply a series of policies but a cultural sensibility and public mood. Kirstin Forkert’s astute and multifaceted account simultaneously helps us understand how destructive austerity politics are garnering support whilst investigating and imagining ways they are - and could be - addressed and combated in practice.