IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/loceco/v37y2022i8p692-707.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

COVID crisis, austerity and the ‘Left Behind’ city: Exploring poverty and destitution in Stoke-on-Trent

Author

Listed:
  • David Etherington
  • Martin Jones
  • Luke Telford

Abstract

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic and ‘cost of living’ crisis revealed and intensified the United Kingdom’s (UK) socio-spatial inequalities, these crises did not emerge into a vacuum. Long-term trends of deindustrialisation and austerity have meant many places particularly the former industrial areas across the North and Midlands have been ‘left behind’. The current crises have exposed the structural fault-lines created by austerity across 2010/20 especially comprising significant cuts to welfare and local government services, with the outcome being sizable parts of the UK’s post-industrial landscape experiencing poverty and destitution. In this paper, we focus upon deindustrialised Stoke-on-Trent in the North Midlands of England. Enduring long-term deindustrialisation and suffering from austerity, the article draws on qualitative and quantitative data to outline how the city contains a panoply of embedded structural problems including low-paid jobs, welfare retrenchment, poverty and destitution. Given it is a possibility that austerity will be reimposed after the next UK general election in December 2024, the paper concludes by briefly discussing the implications of these structural problems for UK government policy, indicating the urgent need for alternative policies to adequately address structural issues in places like Stoke.

Suggested Citation

  • David Etherington & Martin Jones & Luke Telford, 2022. "COVID crisis, austerity and the ‘Left Behind’ city: Exploring poverty and destitution in Stoke-on-Trent," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 37(8), pages 692-707, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:loceco:v:37:y:2022:i:8:p:692-707
    DOI: 10.1177/02690942231169700
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02690942231169700
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/02690942231169700?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mia Gray & Anna Barford, 2018. "The depths of the cuts: the uneven geography of local government austerity," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 11(3), pages 541-563.
    2. Richard Meegan, 2017. "Doreen Massey (1944–2016): a geographer who really mattered," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(9), pages 1285-1296, September.
    3. Alex Callinicos, 2012. "Contradictions of austerity," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 36(1), pages 65-77.
    4. Vivien Lowndes & Alison Gardner, 2016. "Local governance under the Conservatives: super-austerity, devolution and the ‘smarter state’," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 357-375, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David A Spencer & Mark Stuart & Chris Forde & Christopher J McLachlan, 2023. "Furloughing and COVID-19: assessing regulatory reform of the state," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 16(1), pages 81-91.
    2. Charlotte Hoole & Stephen Hincks, 2020. "Performing the city-region: Imagineering, devolution and the search for legitimacy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(8), pages 1583-1601, November.
    3. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Neil Lee & Cornelius Lipp, 2021. "Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 14(3), pages 457-481.
    4. Antoine Grandclement & Guilhem Boulay, 2021. "From The Uneven De-Diversification Of Local Financial Resources To Planning Policies: The Residentialization Hypothesis," Post-Print halshs-03322259, HAL.
    5. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Javier Terrero-Davila & Neil Lee, 2023. "Left-Behind vs. Unequal Places: Interpersonal Inequality, Economic Decline, and the Rise of Populism in the US and Europe," LIS Working papers 859, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. Stephen Mustchin & Miguel Martínez Lucio, 2023. "The fragmenting occupation of labour inspection and the degradation of regulatory and enforcement work inside the British state," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 44(2), pages 526-546, May.
    7. David Clelland, 2020. "Beyond the city region? Uneven governance and the evolution of regional economic development in Scotland," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 35(1), pages 7-26, February.
    8. Mark Fransham & Max Herbertson & Mihaela Pop & Margarida Bandeira Morais & Neil Lee, 2023. "Level best? The levelling up agenda and UK regional inequality," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(11), pages 2339-2352, November.
    9. Mia Gray & Michael Kitson & Linda Lobao & Ron Martin, 2023. "Understanding the post-COVID state and its geographies," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18.
    10. Julia Heslop & Josh Chambers & James Maloney & George Spurgeon & Hannah Swainston & Hannah Woodall, 2023. "Re-contextualising purpose-built student accommodation in secondary cities: The role of planning policy, consultation and economic need during austerity," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(5), pages 923-940, April.
    11. Attahir Babaji Abubakar, 2020. "Does fiscal tightening (loosening) reduce public debt?," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 32(4), pages 528-539, December.
    12. Denti, Daria & Iammarino, Simona, 2022. "Coming Out of the Woods. Do local support services influence the propensity to report sexual violence?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 334-352.
    13. Alexander Nurse & Olivier Sykes, 2019. "It’s more complicated than that!: Unpacking ‘Left Behind Britain’ and some other spatial tropes following the UK’s 2016 EU referendum," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 34(6), pages 589-606, September.
    14. John R Bryson & Chloe Billing & Mark Tewdwr-Jones, 2023. "Urban infrastructure patching: Citizen-led solutions to infrastructure ruptures," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(10), pages 1932-1948, August.
    15. Sheila C. Dow, 2014. "The role of belief in the debate over austerity policies," Working Papers PKWP1409, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    16. Alexander Wilson & Mark Tewdwr-Jones & Rob Comber, 2019. "Urban planning, public participation and digital technology: App development as a method of generating citizen involvement in local planning processes," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(2), pages 286-302, February.
    17. Antoine Grandclement & Guilhem Boulay, 2021. "From the uneven de-diversification of local financial resources to planning policies: The residentialization hypothesis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1454-1472, September.
    18. Mark Sandford, 2019. "Money talks: The finances of English Combined Authorities," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 34(2), pages 106-122, March.
    19. Tamás Kaiser, 2023. "Understanding Narratives in Governance: Naming and Framing Regional Inequality in the United Kingdom," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-16, April.
    20. Maximilian Lemprière & Vivien Lowndes, 2019. "Why did the North East Combined Authority fail to achieve a devolution deal with the UK government?," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 34(2), pages 149-166, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:loceco:v:37:y:2022:i:8:p:692-707. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/index.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.