Beyond Defeat and Austerity: Disrupting (the Critical Political Economy of) Neoliberal Europe (RIPE Series in Global Political Economy)

"Much of the critical discussion of the European political economy and the Eurozone crisis has focused upon a sense that solidaristic achievements built up during the post-war period are being continuously unravelled. Whilst there are many reasons to lament the trajectory of change within Europe's political economy, there are also important developments, trends and processes which have acted to obstruct, hinder and present alternatives to this perceived trajectory of declining social solidarity. These alternatives have tended to be obscured from view, in part as a result of the conceptual approaches adopted within the literature. Drawing from examples across the EU, this book presents an alternative narrative and explanation for the development of Europe's political economy and crisis, emphasising the agency of what are typically considered subordinate (and passive) actors. By highlighting patterns of resistance, disobedience and disruption it makes a significant contribution to a literature that has otherwise been more concerned to understand patterns of heightened domination, exploitation, inequality and neoliberal consolidation. It will be of interest to students and scholars alike."--Provided by publisher Cover 1 Endoresment 2 Half Title 4 Series Page 5 Title Page 6 Copyright Page 7 Table of Contents 8 List of Illustrations 9 Figures 9 Table 9 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 Chapter 1 Beyond left melancholy: Towards a disruption-oriented account 19 Left melancholy: despair and domination in the critical political economy of European integration 19 Towards a disruption-oriented account 29 Chapter 2 The limits of market-based pacification: Labour unrest and European integration 45 Pre-1945: the eruption of radical refusal-prone materialism 46 Post-1945: the Marshall Plan, European integration, and the pursuit of market-based discipline 50 1968: the end of the post-war pacification and the neoliberal resort to ‘more market’ 55 The relaunch of European integration as part of the neoliberal response 63 Disrupting the neoliberal response, causing the European crises: between manufactured disengagement and peripheral refusal 69 Conclusion 73 Chapter 3 In search of a new radicalism?: Workers and trade unions during the European crisis 75 The British post-crisis workplace: precarity and anti-precarity 79 Workplace restructuring and the reinvention of workplace struggle in Spain: ‘They want to get rid of everything’ 97 Conclusion 115 Notes 118 Chapter 4 Resisting neoliberal Europe, responding to the dismantling of welfare states 119 The European Welfare Model and the (partial) mollification of the working class under Fordism 119 Under pressure: welfare states, neoliberal European integration and its coming crisis 121 A ‘constraining dissensus’: the post-Maastricht crisis of the European Union 123 Refusing welfare reforms, frustrating neoliberalism 124 Welfare during the European crisis: the age of impeded austerity? 132 UK welfare reforms and disruptive subjectivity 138 Workfare and anti-workfare: ‘If you exploit us, we will shut you down’ 149 Spanish welfare retrenchment and protest movements: ‘For a society that puts people first’4 157 Iai@flautas: ‘the appropriate moment to provoke’ 163 Conclusion 168 Notes 170 Chapter 5 Defending the commons: Struggles against marketization and austerity in education 172 Between marketization, new constitutionalism and oppositional students’ movements: public education and European integration 173 Education in the European crisis: austerity-driven marketization meets public protest 186 UK: the anti-tuition fee movement and beyond 190 ‘Public education by everyone for everyone’: cuts, marketization and new social movements for public education in Spain 196 Conclusion 205 Notes 206 Chapter 6 Everyday endeavours towardsneeds-based housing policies 208 Rent strikes, squatting movements and the ‘right to the city’: European integration and housing struggles 208 Contesting the residualization of social housing in Britain’s ‘age of austerity’ 224 Housing, everyday precariousness and anti-eviction protests: beyond ‘mortgaged lives’ in the Spanish context 237 Conclusion 246 Notes 248 Chapter 7 Trapped between authoritarian constitutionalism, pragmatic prefigurative movements and the ‘Brexit’?: Disrupting neoliberal Europe 249 Note 258 References 260 Index 298 This book takes as its point of departure the observation that much of the critical discussion of the European political economy and the Eurozone crisis has focused upon an impending sense that solidaristic achievements built up during the first thirty years of the post-war period are being continuously unravelled. Bailey et al argue thatwhilst there are clearly many reasons to lament, and be concerned about, the trajectory of change within Europe' s political economy, there are nevertheless also important developments, trends and processes