‘Everywhere and nowhere’: interventions and services under austerity
‘Everywhere and nowhere’: interventions and services under austerity
This chapter explains how austerity has led to an increasingly fragmented and disparate economy and geography of welfare. These changes have affected people's ability to access services, leaving some of them isolated and excluded from activities that they previously enjoyed. The chapter then questions the use of new information technology (IT) systems and the related expansion of cybernetic relations to register, administer, manage, and target some of the most vulnerable members of society. It argues that these virtual systems emerge as a way of dealing with cases that need physical and in-depth contact in the context of austerity budgets rather than a tested way of pooling information to save lives. This argument suggests that they can also be a way to exclude service users from decision-making about their entitlement and ultimately their lives, reconfiguring the power relations between the public and the state.
Keywords: austerity, welfare, service access, information technology systems, cybernetic relations, vulnerable people, austerity budgets, service users, power relations
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