109 feminism and the implications of austerity

In January 2014, the UK’s Channel 4 broadcast a series entitled ‘Benefits Street’, which followed the lives of people living on benefits in a street in Birmingham. The programme attracted a great deal of controversy, and many of the people who took part voiced their concern about the ways in which their lives had been presented. Among the various remarks about the programme there was, however, one in particular that went beyond the usual tropes of discussion about those claiming benefits. An unnamed woman (not in any way involved in either making or appearing in the programme) commented in a televised interview about the programme that ‘a lot of us have always been poor. This austerity is just a continuation of what many people have always known’.