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This paper showcases Oral Histories and Futures interviews as an approach and series of innovations for researching crises with qualitative methods. It presents new possibilities for methodological innovations to embrace the multi‐directional and longitudinal temporalities of crises across the life‐course and the life‐course of crises. As an exciting avenue for methodological enhancement, I build on and bring together techniques across Oral Histories and creative biographical interviewing. Developed as part of a recent study exploring reproduction, economic crisis and the life‐course, with this approach I aimed to elicit people's experiences and opinions about their pasts, present and futures by innovating with traditional qualitative methodologies. I outline five areas of innovation—and associated observations, opportunities and obstacles—including a focus on younger generations, on the future, the inclusion of reflexive activities, interviewing in the midst of crises, and remote interviewing. Conclusions highlight what can be learned from an Oral Histories and Futures approach for thinking about socio‐temporal horizons. This paper presents new possibilities for qualitative methodologies to embrace the multi‐directional and longitudinal temporalities of crises across the life‐course and the life‐course of crises. I outline five areas of innovation—and associated observations, opportunities and obstacles—including a focus on younger generations, on the future, the inclusion of reflexive activities, interviewing in the midst of crises, and remote interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many young adults in the UK, austerity has restricted capacities to access secure housing, employment and social welfare, with sharp implications for reproduction and reproductive futures. Exploring these lived reproductive experiences, this article develops a conceptual framework that brings together social reproduction, emotional labour and relational work in new ways, specifically through the concept of 'carrying'. Carrying, I argue, beholds a range of embodied, emotional and laborious qualities that are required for contemporary social reproduction. To demonstrate, I draw on research based in the North East of England, as an area that has seen detrimental cuts in the name of austerity and has some of the lowest fertility rates in the UK. Empirical examples come from 12 in-depth Oral History and Future interviews, a technique specifically developed to explore present-day narratives about (not) having any or more children. It is argued that the emotional, embodied and relational labour of carrying is key to understanding the experience of reproduction in this context, particularly regarding (1) carrying possibilities, (2) carrying bodies and (3) carrying instabilities. These forms of labour often go unnoticed and unchecked and yet can shed new light on reproduction. To close, I argue that because the labour of reproduction is carried forward into the life-course, reproductive futures are yet another way in which social inequalities can widen further under austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"It died once at playgroup, I didn't know what to do": towards vital, vibrant, material geographies of the mobile phone in austerity In these thick descriptions and envisionings of mobile phone use as ubiquitous in the context of austerity and wider global neoliberal policies, concerns about equity and access (as the politics I of i the mobile phone) are relatively sidelined; Ureta's ([47]) study of mobile phones, everyday spatial mobility and poverty in Santiago, Chile, being a notable exception. The mobile phone as a vital and vibrant material in austerity: three vignettes From the ethnographic research emerged a set of textured stories about mobile phones, everyday life and austerity, presented below as vignettes. Keywords: Austerity; mobile phone; materiality; vitalism; intimacy; vignette; Austeridad; Teléfono lMóvil; Materialidad; Vitalismo; Intimidad; Viñeta; Austérité; téléphone portable; matérialité; vitalisme; intimité EN Austerity mobile phone materiality vitalism intimacy vignette ES Austeridad Teléfono lMóvil Materialidad Vitalismo Intimidad Viñeta FR Austérité téléphone portable matérialité vitalisme intimité 972 989 18 09/09/22 20220901 NES 220901 1. [Extracted from the article]

Reproduction is a considerable concern in contemporary Europe and has attracted growing academic interest in the context of austerity. This paper brings together literature on social reproduction, the life-course and vital conjunctures, and develops innovative methodologies to understand reproduction in the context of everyday life in austerity. Using biographical vignettes from family ethnographies, themes of welfare restructuring, debt and care responsibilities emerge. Empirical insights explore social reproduction and defaulted futures, indebtedness and indecision as reproductive conjuncture, and incongruous biographies and absent possibilities. Conclusions call for further research on the relationship between reproductive futures and austerity, and methodological experimentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austerity policies and austere socio-economic conditions in the UK have had acute consequences for everyday life and, interconnectedly, the political and structural regimes that impact upon the lives of women and marginalised groups. Feminist geographies have arguably been enlivened and reinvigorated by critical engagements with austerity, bringing to light everyday experiences, structural inequalities and multi-scalar socio-economic relations. With this paper I propose five areas of intervention for further research in this field: social reproduction, everyday epistemologies, intersectionality, voice and silence, and embodied fieldwork. To conclude, I argue for continuing feminist critique and analyses given the legacies and futures of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Austerity is a distinctly gendered ideology, process and condition. • The paper explores the everyday, personal and gendered nature of austerity. • The in-depth, longitudinal ethnographic research moves beyond macro-level analysis. • Connections are made between quiet politics, care ethics and social infrastructures. Geographers are beginning to more fully consider the ways in which austerity can be encountered at and across a range of social spaces, with growing interest in how austerity politics play out in everyday personal lives. With this paper I contribute to these burgeoning discussions by drawing upon, connecting and extending feminist theories of the personal and political, quiet activisms, gendered care and care work, and social infrastructures. Using findings from two years of ethnographic research with community groups and families in Greater Manchester, UK (2013–2015), I explore the significance of everyday social infrastructures, the value of quieter politics, and the role of body-work and care work in fieldwork. These findings illuminate how managing the fallout from austerity policies - whether managing budgets, performing care work, or providing emotional support - remains a largely gendered responsibility with distinctly personal and political consequences. To close, I encourage fellow geographers to further engage with feminist theories of the personal, political and relational, which remain as important as ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances ideas about relational geographies to explore 'everyday austerity'. Whilst geographers have analysed the causes and aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the focus largely remains on problems within economic systems and urban governance, rather than austerity as lived experience. I outline how focusing on everyday relationships and relational spaces – family, friendship and intimate relations – provides exciting opportunities for thinking geographically about everyday life in austerity. Using examples of care and support and mundane mobilities, I demonstrate how a relational approach extends current understandings of how austerity cuts through, across and between spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together key ideas from across economic and social theory to expand geographical understandings of crisis at the personal scale. Drawing on ethnographic research with families in Greater Manchester, UK, together with literatures on the geographies of crises and conjunctures, I argue that economic crises, such as austerity, can be revealing of the fragilities within familial and personal relationships and as such constitute a very personal crisis. In times of austerity and economic crisis, questions are raised about how people imagine themselves, and the relationships, spaces, and times in which they situate their lives – previously, presently, and prospectively. I advance conceptualisations of the ways austerity and economic crisis "play out" to illustrate how everyday life is punctuated and disrupted by crises and conjunctures of various types. Personal conditions of austerity are knotted within personal inventories of important life experiences, relational comparators, and memories, of social, emotional, or financial hardship, which resonate strongly. Furthermore, I identify the way in which crises are woven within imaginaries of the future, personal biographies, and lifecourse trajectories, whereby economic crises and austerity can be felt as life crises. Providing added depth to current geographical literature focused on the personal scale, in this paper economic crises and austerity are shown to be personally affective, having lasting impacts on social relationships. Ultimately, I make the case for how an economic crisis is almost always and inevitable felt as a personal crisis; a vital conjuncture, the crescendo of circumstance, opening up the sores of memories and creating new ones, compromising familial and financial fragility. This paper brings together key ideas from across economic and social theory to expand geographical understandings of crisis at the personal scale. I argue that economic crises, such as austerity, can be revealing of the fragilities within familial and personal relationships and as such constitute a very personal crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together relational geographical writings on the politics of waiting, austerity and social reproduction, and also speaks to feminist methodology and praxis. I draw on a recent research project exploring experiences of reproduction in austerity, in particular having any or more children, to think about how austerity in the UK is endured in everyday life. I engage with geographical ideas about temporality – pauses, silences and futures – to unpick everyday and intimate experiences of economic change in the UK. I offer multiple interpretations of 'a pregnant pause' in this context. Firstly, of pausing and waiting 'with' decisions to having any or more children as a direct result of changes in the name of 'austerity': welfare cuts, precarious housing, unaffordable childcare etc. Secondly, the pauses and silences in public discussions about the economic impacts of austerity on reproduction, as a rarely shared experience and one that participants seldom spoke to anyone else about. And thirdly, the literal pauses and silences in verbal discussions on this topic, and how to respond in method and praxis. In doing so, I refocus discussions about the everyday life of austerity towards a relational politics of endurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue for repositioning geographies of children, youth and families at the centre rather than at the periphery of discussions about the economy. This not only reveals what contemporary and lived experiences of economic change feel and look like, but also exposes deeper problematics about the geographically and socially uneven nature of neoliberalism and the austere state. This paper also introduces a collection which, when taken together, explores intersections between everyday life and austerity, with children, youth and families as the focus of inquiry. Adopting a multi-scalar approach, the collected papers 'zoom in' to explore the everyday realities of austere life in the UK in order to refract our understanding of the broader condition of economic change and concomitant austerity measures. Simultaneously, and speaking to a wider political agenda, the collection can be scaled up, or the framing 'zoomed out', to question and actively address the injustices of austerity and neoliberal retrenchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of austerity have permeated many aspects of everyday life in the UK, making this an important context in which to carry out social research. In this paper I consider some of the challenges that austerity poses to how we carry out research into everyday austerities and the ethical implications of researching in austere conditions. Drawing on debates from feminist and moral geographies on ethics, care and responsibility, and on first-hand experiences of researching families in the current economic climate, I argue that the everyday mechanics of research - such as recompensing participants, and the place of the researcher - acquire particular resonance in austerity. In doing so, I also reflect on the significance of social proximity and personal biography, and the ways in which researchers may become enveloped in participants' personal narratives in addition to providing support and care. In the conclusion I identify contributions made to understandings of care and responsibility in fieldwork, the ethics of researching in and about austerity, and the relational space of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dressmaking is a practice infused with historical significance which in the contemporary context of austerity has renewed social, cultural, economic, political and moral importance. Drawing on writing from across the social sciences we advance a geographical understanding of dressmaking by focusing on the themes of feminism and crafting practices, austerity, fashion and consumption, and friendship and encounters in order to theorise the everyday spatialities of contemporary crafting cultures. In doing so we argue that the recent return to dressmaking cannot be understood as an extension or repetition of historic practices but that contemporary dressmakers are claiming a history and geography of their own. To conclude, we argue that dressmaking and other related fabricultures have much to offer our understanding of austerity, feminism and friendship and thus merit further theoretical and empirical investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a first critical overview of literature within and beyond geography regarding the everyday ethics of consumption in times of austerity, with a focus on urban spaces. How consumers balance their ethical imperatives in a time of austerity has significant, multi-scalar social and economic impacts, and yet there is a limited literature that addresses the everyday ethics of consuming in austere conditions. By teasing out the differences between the 'ethics of consumption' and 'ethical consumption', and ref lecting on research regarding consumption in contemporary and historical periods of austerity, I highlight the need for greater geographical insight into the impacts of economic and political change on everyday urban life. I demonstrate that geographers might begin to tackle this emerging research agenda by attending to issues that impact on people's everyday lives, using the examples of ordinary mobilities, including home spaces and tourism, and food consumption in the case of food banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]