This book reflects on lasting effects of austerity in Britain in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought into sharp relief the consequences of a near-decade long programme of spending cuts and tax increases. Completed in 2023, it seeks to assess the consequences of the dynamic stratification processes that were set in motion and the governance reforms that may prove to be a permanent and fundamental form of austerity, serving to condition policy making also in better economic times. As such, it builds upon a body of research, to which I have contributed, that points towards the potential for austerity to rupture and fragment real and anticipated life courses. Yet it goes further in situating life course outcomes in relation to governance reforms that have reduced the capacity of the state to ameliorate the structural disadvantages that impede certain population groups from achieving upward social mobility. This book, then, situates research on the personal and familial effects of austerity (utilizing the idea of enduring as suffering) in relation to recent work that argues these outcomes must be seen in the light of austerity having created a more polarized social and spatial structure that will continue to configure opportunities for upward mobility long after the policy mechanisms that have led to increased social and geographical inequality are downgraded or withdrawn (the idea of enduring as lasting). At the same time, it seeks to demonstrate that transformations of state and governance under austerity have made it more difficult to contest growing territorial and social injustice by depoliticizing and de-democratizing political decision-making. While scholars have rightly focused on the detrimental impact austerity has on people's lives, the way in which austerity undermines democratic processes has been relatively neglected. This book therefore includes consideration of how austerity endures in the terms of how formal democratic processes have subsumed political goals to the fiscal frame and pushed social inequality and uneven development off the political agenda.

This book is intended to be an active intervention into contemporary debates about the impacts of austerity, which have been unevenly distributed between different groups and geographical areas.