Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into affective 'idiots'

Abstract

A sharp increase in racism and xenophobia, alongside an increase in philanthropy and charity, mark Europe’s Janus-faced reaction to the social consequences of the economic crisis. This paper goes beyond the racism/xenophobia vs. charity/philanthropy dualism, arguing that these seemingly antithetical responses have more in common than we may think.
(1) Both are equally divisive and ‘othering’ practices. Whilst racism transforms human beings into de-humanized entities in order to be able to hate them, charity transforms human beings into dependent objects in order to be able to offer aid.
(2) Both are strongly affective yet deeply apolitical reactions of people who lose their political agency as they become imbued with fear and insecurity; of citizens who turned into indebted apolitical objects, when social solidarity and welfare provision turned from a collective responsibility into a private affair.
When housing, healthcare, etc. became accessible mainly through private loans and mortgage markets, private welfare debt became the biopolitical tool that enrolled the workforce into volatile financial speculative practices and turned citizens into fear-imbued ‘idiots’, i.e. private individuals who can only care for their private matters. Understanding the biopolitics of privatized welfare and increased household debt as the process that drives this transformation of citizens into ‘idiots’ allows us to move beyond the false dilemma of charity vs. racism, in search of a politics of solidarity.

Full text

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Pre-Publication Draft Page 1
Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
How to cite this paper
This is a pre-publication draft of the following paper in print:
Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal
welfare turns citizens into affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI:
10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521.
For updates, contact author: m.kaika@uva.nl maria.kaika@manchester.ac.uk
Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal
welfare turns citizens into affective ‘idiots’.
ABSTRACT
A sharp increase in racism and xenophobia, alongside an increase in philanthropy and
charity mark Europe’s Janus-faced reaction to the social consequences of the economic
crisis. This paper goes beyond the racism/xenophobia vs. charity/philanthropy dualism,
arguing that these seemingly antithetical responses have more in common than we may
think.
1) Both are equally divisive and ‘othering’ practices. Whilst racism transforms human
beings into de-humanized entities in order to be able to hate them, charity
transforms human beings into dependent objects in order to be able to offer aid;
2) Both are strongly a-ffective yet deeply a-political reactions of people who lose
their political agency as they become imbued with fear and insecurity; of citizens
who turned into indebted a-political objects, when social solidarity and welfare
provision turned from a collective responsibility into a private affair.
When housing, healthcare etc. became accessible mainly through private loans and mortgage
markets, private welfare debt became the biopolitical tool that enrolled the workforce into volatile
financial speculative practices and turned citizens into fear-imbued ‘idiots’, i.e. private individuals
who can only care for their private matters.
Understanding the biopolitics of privatized welfare and increased household debt as the
process that drives this transformation of citizens into ’idiots’, allows to move beyond the
false dilemma of charity vs. racism, in search of a politics of solidarity.
KEYWORDS: affect, biopolitics, debt, crisis, welfare, racism, xenophobia, philanthropy,
subjectification, solidarity, financialisation

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal
welfare turns citizens into affective ‘idiots’.
INTRODUCTION
idiot (n.)
early 14c., "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" … from
Greek idiotes [ἰδιώτης] … literally [a] "private person" (as opposed to one taking part in
public affairs), used patronizingly for "ignorant person," from idios [ἴδιος] "one's own".
(Etymology online dictionary,
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=idiot, last accessed
20/04/2017)
The negative social consequences of the recent economic crisis both united and divided
Europe, through a Janus-faced reaction to the increased levels of inequality, unemployment,
poverty and homelessness. One side of Europe’s Janus-faced response to the crisis bears
the beautiful form of compassion, charity and philanthropy; the other side, however, bears
the ugly form of hate, xenophobia, racism and neo-nationalism. The rise in
charity/philanthropy has become the object of academic enquiry (Kohl-Arenas, 2017), whilst
recent research has also offered critical insight on the relationship between (post)-welfare
state practices and the rise of racism and xenophobia (Demmers and Mehendale 2010;
Simonsen, 2015; Dufour, 2015; Dalakoglou 2013; Kaika 2015; Fredrickson 2002; Goldberg
2009; Lentin and Titley 2011).
In this paper, however, I go beyond the charity/philanthropy vs. racism/xenophobia
dualism, and argue that these seemingly antithetical responses have more in common than
we may like to think. First, I argue, they are both equally divisive and ‘othering’ practices:
on one hand, xenophobia and racism transform human beings into de-humanized entities in
order to fear or hate them (Haldru, Koefoed and Simonsen 2006); on the other hand,
compassion (in the form of philanthropy or charity) transforms human beings into
dependent objects in order to offer aid and help (Tsalikoglou, 2012). Second, I argue, both
racism and charity are strongly a-ffective, but ultimately a-political reactions of people who
became imbued with fear and insecurity, as social solidarity and welfare provision was
transformed from a collective responsibility into a private affair.
As the European workforce was forced to compensate for the decline in state welfare
provision by privately purchasing access to better healthcare, education housing etc.
(Simonsen 2015; Sequera and Janoschka 2012; Crouch 2009; Soederberg, 2014)., it signed

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
off an increasingly higher percentage of labour and income to private loans and mortgage
contracts. This acted as a biopolitical tool that enrolled the bodies and livelihoods of the
workforce into speculative financial mechanisms (Garcia-Lamarca and Kaika 2016). The
biopolitics of fear and insecurity generated by this process turned citizens from political
subjects, into fear/insecurity imbued indebted objects who lost their political agency. It
turned political subjects (actively caring for the commons and the political life of the polis)
into ‘idiots’ (a-political fear/insecurity imbued, indebted objects (Lazzarato 2007)) who care
only for the matters related to their private household). This, I argue, accounts for the
degradation of solidarity politics into expressions of affect (positive or negative).
Understanding the biopolitics of privatized welfare and increased household debt as the
process that drives the de-politicization of citizens and their transformation into ‘idiots’, (i.e.
into private persons who can only care for private matters), allows to better contextualise
both racism and charity as the affective yet apolitical reactions to the socio-economic
consequences of the crisis. It also allows to make a distinction between instances of racism
or charity (understood here as affective reactions), and acts of solidarity (understood as
political praxis).
The argument in this paper draws upon quantitative and qualitative data from research
conducted over the past 5 years on the economic crisis (Kaika 2012; Kaika and Karaliotas
2014), financialisation as a ‘lived’ process (Kaika and Ruggiero 2016), and the biopolitics of
debt (Garcia Lamarca and Kaika 2016).
Compassion vs. Racism: a Janus-faced reaction to the crisis or a false
dilemma?
“What good are these people, who abandon their own bleeding country to come to our
country? … They bring alien ethics and traditions, alien religions ... and want to impose these
on us… at the expense of our own traditions. … Why should we bow the head and accept all
this … in the name of … some form of failed globalisation?”1
There is nothing particularly novel about the above opening quote; it is a commonplace
xenophobic rant. What does, however, make it interesting, is that it comes from an unlikely
1 The full text of the letter (in Greek) can be found on: “Greek Mothers addressing the Popular Assembly of
Direct Democracy at Syntagma Square”, Tuesday 19 July 2011.
http://spithathriasiou.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/blog-post_19.html author’s translation; last accessed 10
October 2015.

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
source: the 2011 Occupy Syntagma square protests in Athens. It is an excerpt from a letter
penned by The Greek Mothers, a group who actively participated at Syntagma’s protests
with a banner demanding ‘Jobs for Greek children; not for foreigners’. When the Greek
Mothers’ banner was taken down by other Syntagma protest groups in outrage for its racist
content, The Greek Mothers responded with this letter and demanded for it to be read
publicly at the Square’s General Assembly. They too -Greek Mothers argued- were part of
the occupation of the Square and they demanded their voice were heard in the name of
democracy and pluralism (see Lorey 2014; Kaika and Karaliotas 2014).
The Greek Mothers were not alone in reacting to Europe’s post 2008 debt crisis and
austerity with xenophobia or even racism. The xenophobia induced by the economic crisis
permeated all levels: global financiers attached the label ‘PIIGS’ to ‘misbehaving’ Portugal,
Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain; national representatives repeatedly verbally abused each
other at EU summits; ultra-nationalist parties gained strength across Europe. But what
makes the Greek Mothers’ racist reaction significant, is that it stands for the extent to which
the crisis/austerity-induced xenophobia has moved beyond the confines of ultra-nationalist
or neo-nazist parties and permeated unexpected corners of everyday life. It is the first time
after the Second World War that everyday xenophobia amongst Europeans is on the rise,
including the 57% increase in reported racist abuse incidents in the UK (targeting mainly
white europeans) during the period that immediately followed the Brexit referendum2. The
economic crisis has divided Europe.
But the economic crisis has also united Europe in adverse ways. This is the first time after
the Second World War that European citizens collectively experience a significant
deterioration in healthcare provision (Stuckler & Basu 2013), a sharp rise in unemployment
levels (with Greece and Spain leading the way with over 60% youth unemployment), as well
as increase in homelessness, hunger, and child poverty. And as Europe’s economic crisis is
steadily turning into a humanitarian crisis across the European South, the effects of the
erosion of social welfare does not generate xenophobia only; it also generates discourses
and practices of compassion, charity and philanthropy towards Europe’s nouveau poor
2 Reported by True Vision, a police-funded hate-crime-reporting website. Cited in The Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/29/frenzy-hatred-brexit-racism-abuse-referendum-
celebratory-lasting-damage

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
(Kaika 2012). Because this is Europe’s middle classes turn poor; a poverty and homelessness
of our own making. And it sends shockwaves down our spines. This is not the Europe we
once knew; and certainly not a Europe we would like to see in the future.
So, as the social effects of the economic crisis are concurrently uniting and dividing Europe
the question that begs an answer is: what exactly is it that polarizes Europeans so much, as
to make them react to this crisis with levels of both compassion and racism that Europe has
not experienced since the Second World War? Who exactly is Europe’s new Janus faced
citizen, whose one side bears the ugly form of racism, xenophobia and conflict, and the
other side bears the beautiful form of charity, compassion and support?
And, might there be something that charity and racism -these seemingly antithetical
reactions to the crisis - share in common?
What I argue in the following sections is that, although charity and racism are perceived as
the antipodes of the European citizens’ reaction to the crisis, they actually have more in
common than we may like to think. Because they are strongly a-ffective, but ultimately a-
political reactions. I argue that they are both affective reflexes of citizens who have lost
their political agency out of fear and insecurity, as they experience social solidarity and
welfare provision across Europe being metamorphosed from a collective responsibility into
a private matter (Crouch, 2009); (Terranova 2015). Charity and racism are affective but
apolitical reactions of people who turned from active citizens (caring for political life and
common affairs) into ‘idiots’, i.e. into private individuals caring only for their private affairs,
through the need to find increasingly complex forms of personal compensation for the
erosion of collective welfare provision.

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
Turning citizens into ‘idiots’ through the biopolitics of debt: how the
metamorphosis of welfare into a private matter produced Europe’s Janus
faced citizen.
The political economic and social implications of the recent crisis and of the related decline
of the welfare state across Europe after the 1980s are well documented (Dorling 2014);
(Finlayson, 2009); (Crouch, 2009) (Kunzmann 2016; Dalakoglou and Vradis 2011)
(Koutrolikou 2016). The decision to end the Post War European social contract for welfare
provision was coupled by the populist promise made by European leaders after the 1980s
(from Thatcher to Blair, from Sarkozy to Aznar, Papandreou, and Gongalez) to make
everybody middle class. The decline of welfare provision was linked to the ideology that the
expanding European middle classes would no longer be dependent on state welfare as they
would be able to buy their own welfare provision through easy and ‘cheap’ access to private
credit. Although this articles focuses on Europe, a similar process took place across the
western world. With the rise of creditocracy (Ross 2017) and what Soederberg (2013) aptly
terms the debtfare state, everyone was promised tailor made access to better housing,
healthcare, education etc. through the simple act of signing private loans or mortgage
contracts or simply by getting a credit card..
Private debt contracts (loans, credit cards, etc) and mortgage contracts played a major role
in enabling and mobilizing this process that metamorphosed welfare into a private affair
(Crouch 2009;Garcia-Lamarca and Kaika 2016) and after the 1980s became a key tool for
turning European citizens from political beings with equal and universal access to welfare
provision, into indebted subjects (Lazzarato 2007), or private welfare investors (Langley,
2008), ‘free’ to manage their own welfare choices. This way, the exponential increase in
household debt across Europe became a biopolitical tool that turned European citizens into
private investors (see also Sequera and Janoschka 2012 on neoliberal globalisation and
citizenship). After the 1980s, the ability of European citizens to house themselves, be
healthy, educated, have children or not, care for the elderly etc. became increasingly
dependent upon the extent to which they are prepared to sign off significant parts of their
current and future labour to private debt contracts; the extent to which they were
prepared to ‘mortgage’ their lives and enrol their current and future labour, bodies and

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
livelihoods into global financial speculative practices (Garcia Lamarca & Kaika 2016). In
short, welfare became dependent upon the extent to which European citizens were
prepared to become objectified under the category that Lazzarato terms the indebted Man
(and Woman) (Lazzarato, 2007; Di Feliciantonio 2016). Becoming private welfare investors,
becoming objectified as indebted men and women and living “mortgaged lives” (Colau &
Alemany, 2012; García Lamarca & Kaika 2016) is a key characteristic that households across
Europe share in common today. The same way that social solidarity and the demand for
secure access to welfare provision and relative economic and political stability was a key
characteristic that households across Europe shared in common after the Second World
War.
This new common characteristic, (becoming indebted objects and living mortgaged lives) is
what both unites and divides citizens across Europe today in their inability to act politically. I
argue that the metamorphosis of solidarity and welfare into a private affair (Crouch 2009)
over the last three decades threatens to induce an anthropological catastrophe, as it goes
hand in glove with a slow metamorphosis of collectively responsible political subjects into
de-politicised private individuals, or else, into ‘idiots’. The etymological origin of the word
‘idiot’ lies with the Greek ἰδιώτης (idiótes), a word originally used to the denote a private
individual who was not a ‘political man’ in the ancient polis. ‘ Ιδιώτης was originally a word
for someone who cared for his own private household matters and did not participate
actively in the political life of the polis, in public debates, and law making processes. Over
time, however, this word for the a-political private individual became a pejorative term that
ended up describing someone who had limited intellectual abilities or skills, and lack of
knowledge or understanding; the idiot. The man who did not participate in political life and
only cared for his own affairs could only be an ‘idiot’ in today’s terms (Bampiniotis 2010;
771).
So the metamorphosis of collectively responsible citizens into private welfare investors
threatens to metamorphose politically active citizens who demanded and got labour rights
and a strong welfare state during the post war years into idiots. The fear and insecurity
binding us together to this collective indebtedness threatens to turn us from political

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
animals, into mere animals -- to use the Aristotelian analogy. That is, into beings who are
prepared to renounce and eventually lose their ability to reason, to make laws, and to enter
a process of political subjectivisation. What distinguishes men from animals, according to
Aristotle, is that animals cannot make laws and reason politically. Animals can scream out
loud their private sufferings in public, but they cannot act politically. Animals can be
affective; but they cannot be political.
I argue that understanding the process through which our lives became ‘mortgaged’ (Garcia-
Lamarca and Kaika 2016), the ways in which our labour and our bodies became intimately
entangled in the web of global financial speculative practices in order to continue accessing
what used to be our collective welfare commons, is central for contextualizing both
xenophobia and charity as the deeply affective but ultimately apolitical reactions to this
crisis.
Charity and xenophobia are the Janus faced affective reactions of millions of people across
Europe who lost their political subjectivity to biopolitical practices of indebtedness. Citizens
who compromised their political agency and their power to make decisions over their future
when they were forced to forge an intimate relationship between speculative practices of
global financial institutions and their bodies, their labour, and their lives by signing up to
private loans or mortgages.
The debt that both unites and divides Europeans: translating household debt
figures into everyday practices as a means to go beyond false North/South
divisions.
The fear and insecurity that stems from biopolitical practices of indebtedness both unites
and divides citizens across Europe today (Vercellone 2015). Because, although the current
debt crisis is presented as a southern European crisis (Fumagalli & Lucarelli, 2015), if we
shift focus from public debt to household debt, the picture changes dramatically. Table 1 3
3 Despite limitations in data availability and the fact that longitudinal comparability is impeded by
differences in data collection methodologies between different sources, Table 1 does allow a
comparative understanding of levels of household debt in each year (column).

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
which allows a level of comparison 4 between household debt-to-income ratios across
Europe shows that it is not the European South, but the European North that holds the
lion’s share of household debt.
In
2009, Denmark held one of the highest household debt
ratios at an astounding
338.7
%, followed by the Netherlands (
286.6
%), the United Kingdom
(
167.5
%), and Sweden (
163.5
%) (Eurostat, 2015). In fact,
the countries that found themselves in
the thick of the economic crisis hold some of the lowest household debt ratios (Portugal at 151.4 Spain
at 145.2 Italy 86.5 and Greece at 85.3%),
with the exception of Ireland (
240.8%).
On average,
across the European north and south, households owe over 100% of their income to debt
repayments, at the same time when the Maastricht Treaty does not allow for national debt
to go over 60%, and for public deficit to exceed 3%. Although undoubtedly locally distinct
(Barbehön and Münch 2015) this crisis shares key common characteristics across Europe
(Gonzalez and Oosterlynck 2014). Today, households across Europe remortgage their homes
in order to pay for increased school or university fees, health care, or to compensate for
reductions in their pensions. For example, in July 2013, the value of mortgage lending in the
UK for that month alone was £3.9 billion (Council of Mortgage Lenders, 2014), whilst during
the same year (2013) 35,000 homes were repossessed and 159,800 mortgages were in
“arrears of 2.5% or more of the mortgage balance” (Council of Mortgage Lenders, 2013).
Household debt
to
net
d
isposable
income %
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2013
Denmark
221.1
226.3
232.8
237.7
242.9
248.7
261.9
282.1
299.4
324.7
339.4
338.7
255.81
Netherlands
176.7
189.0
199.1
194.2
204.4
222.9
233.0
251.5
256.9
261.4
274.3
286.6
221.53
Ireland
-
-
-
110.8
126.2
147.2
170.0
201.0
225.9
236.2
231.9
240.8
-
UK
114.4
117.3
118.9
125.6
138.8
151.7
164.9
167.2
178.8
183.3
178.1
167.5
128.3
Sweden
101.5
105.3
108.6
119.2
121.6
128.2
137.0
146.7
153.8
157.4
159.5
163.5
144.36
Portugal
77.0
94.3
106.8
118.3
121.6
123.6
126.8
135.9
140.6
145.7
148.9
151.4
-
Spain
79.7
84.2
87.1
94.1
102.3
113.6
128.2
144.3
154.1
150.1
145.2
-
4 “Gross debt-to-income ratio of households (including Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households) is defined
as loans (ESA2010 code: AF4), liabilities divided by gross disposable income (B6G) with the latter being
adjusted for the net change in pension entitlements (D8net). Detailed data and methodology on site
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/sectoraccounts. “ (EUROSTAT, 2015)

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affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
Finland
64.7
66.0
69.2
70.8
75.6
79.9
88.6
99.2
109.4
114.7
117.1
117.5
106.24
France
72.4
74.9
74.8
77.0
77.5
81.1
81.9
88.4
93.6
96.6
98.7
104.3
-
Belgium
68.3
70.5
68.3
66.3
68.3
70.7
74.6
79.5
83.3
87.4
89.8
90.8
-
Italy
46.0
50.7
54.5
56.5
59.4
62.5
66.2
71.3
76.1
80.2
81.6
86.5
-
Greece
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
72.1
80.4
84.7
85.3
-
TABLE 1. Household debt to net disposable income by country.
Source: Compiled by author
adopted from: EMF (2009, 70); OECD (2009); INE (2014); Last column (2015) from Eurostat 2015
If we translate the above numbers into everyday practices, they mean that from the
European North to the European South, the majority of households have signed off
significant parts of their current and future labour and decision making capacity in advance
to debt repayments, in order to purchase their welfare in the form of housing, education,
healthcare, or other forms of welfare credits. It means that all of a sudden, the exchange
rates of the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc, the interest rates of the European Central
Bank, the inflation or deflation of global real estate markets became factors determining our
ability to house ourselves, to be healthy, educated, to have children, to care for the elderly,
et cetera.
The shock of absolute identification: Europe’s middle class precariat, torn
between compassion and racism.
It is precisely this indebted, politically discredited man/woman that has become Europe’s
new Janus. Europe’s new Janus can still feel compassion and empathy towards the homeless
families in Spain or Greece. In fact, being charitable and philanthropic is gratifying, as it
affirms that s/he is still a human being (Kaika 2012). But at the same time s/he is afraid.
She/he is afraid not only that she/he might be called upon to pay part of the debt of “the
other” (i.e. the Greek, the Spaniard, the Irish, etc.); most of all Europe’s Janus faced wo/man

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is afraid that s/he might any moment be in exactly the same position as the Greek the Irish
or the Spaniard.
The shock that images of poverty and homelessness in the European south induce to the
European North is not the same as the shock induced when faced with the sufferings of a
marginalised ‘other’ a subaltern subject; instead, this is the shock of absolute identification.
The average English, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch middle class citizen knows very well that the
300,000 evicted families in Spain look a lot like him/her. They are people who like him/her
had secure jobs, decent incomes, and homes they could call their own. They are people
who, like him/her, got access to a better life by signing up the promise made after the 1980s
and 1990s by Blair, Sarkozy, González, Aznar, Mitterrand, Chirac, Papandreou; a promise to
make everybody middle class by signing up to private loans and mortgages.
Of course, the political promise for a better life is not new. The same promise was offered
across the western world in the years that followed the Second World War (Smart 2011).
With a significant difference: that earlier promise made access to housing, education,
healthcare, and general welfare a collective responsibility. It was a promise offered on the
basis of an increase in public deficit and rendered the whole of the society co-responsible
for its materialisation. By contrast, the more recent promise was offered on the basis of
expanding private deficit, and household debt. This promise instituted everybody as credit
worthy so that everybody could get access to a system of “asset based welfare” (Finlayson,
2009) that turned welfare into a personal responsibility. So, the real promise that was given
by Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, Mitterrand, Aznar, etc., was not a promise to make everybody
middle-class. It was a promise to make everybody deeply indebted. And it was a promise
that was delivered in full, as shown in the previous section. In 2007 alone, banks in Spain
issued 1.3 million mortgages whilst In 2014 in the UK, mortgage debt totalled over and
above £1.2 trillion and rising (Council of Mortgage Lenders, 2014). And so long as housing
prices keep rising, the increase in household debt is disguised as an increase in household
‘asset wealth’ (Garcia Lamarca and Kaika, 2016).

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
Crisis as ‘the invasion of the real’.
As noted earlier, the metamorphosis of solidarity and welfare into a private affair, coupled
with the disguise of private debt as asset wealth through the liberalisation of private lending
after the 1980s, turned what used to be collectively responsible political subjects into
private individuals who only care about private affairs or private sufferings. By turning the
majority of Europeans into private welfare investors, responsible for purchasing welfare
credits, private debt in the form of personal loans and mortgages operated as a kind of bio
politics (García Lamarca & Kaika, 2016). A technology of life that promoted the
entanglement of the fabric of human life into the fabric of global financial markets.
As we turn from citizens, to Europe’s Janus-faced over-indebted welfare investors, the
extraction of value from the body is subsumed not only in the form of current labour at the
production level. The extraction of value is now subsumed from future labour credits at the
level of financial circulation, making the fluctuation of interest rates and the exchange value
of the Euro, the Japanese yen or the Swiss franc factors determining our current and future
ability to access housing, education and healthcare (Garcia-Lamarca and Kaika 2016). The
British, Norwegian, French, Finnish citizen who has become an over-indebted welfare
investor, is fully aware that if interest rates went up, if real estate prices collapsed, if
unemployment increased in their country, s/he too, would have to come face-to-face with
the violence of financial capitalism (Marazzi 2011) as the citizens of the European south did.
The concept of the “violence of financial capitalism” (Marazzi, 2011) that until recently may
have sounded more like a theoretical construct, has now acquired material substance and
immediately recognisable form in the hundreds of thousands of evicted Spanish families, or
the thousands of Greeks who committed suicide because they were unable to service their
debt obligations (Stucker and Basu 2013). As Bertolt Brecht put it in back in 1937 in his
Threepenny Novel
“… What is the value of killing someone, my friend, when one can hire his labour
[for life] instead? … Raw violence has gone bankrupt, my friend. We no longer need

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Kaika, Maria (2017) “Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into
affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
to hire assassins; we can hire the bailiff [to do the same job] for us.” (Brecht, 1971):
50-51; author’s own translation).
I argue that the fear induced by the violence of financial capitalism is precisely what both
unites and divides us across Europe. The austerity induced humanitarian crisis that the
European south experiences is the ‘invasion of the real’ (Žižek, 1989) that shutters the
promise for perpetual debt-derived middle class prosperity through privately purchased
welfare; a promise upon which neoliberalism fed and thrived over the last decades. This
invasion of the real exposed the European middle classes for what they really are: a
proletariat indebted for life to its creditors as their current and future labour is packaged
and sold in the form of financial products and global vehicles of securitization and financial
speculation; a middle class precariat for whom the production and reproduction of their
mortgaged lives is heavily dependent upon their ability to service their debt under
increasingly volatile circumstances (see Neilson & Rossiter, 2008). This is a new form of
feudalism where the European so called ‘middle classes’ owe a significant part of their
current and future labour in advance to the landlord as surf labour (Baudrillard, 1975); only
the landlord in this case takes the form of global financial institutions. This state of
indebtendness is something akin to an anthropological disaster where active citizens and
political subjects turn into indebted objects.
The process through which the embeddedness of livelihood in global financial speculative
practices through debt produces proletarianiased bodies is not some kind of plot from the
part of an invisible superstructure; it is an essential part of the ‘economic infrastructure’
and institutions of capitalism (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984).
Beyond affect: solidarity as a political act … or … how fighting for the
commons can avoid an anthropological catastrophe.
In this paper I argued that understanding the condition of the indebted European middle
class precariat and examining the intimate relationship developed between livelihoods and
financial institutions as citizens are forced to become private welfare investors is central in

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affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
order to contextualise the strong reactions to the recent economic crisis: charity and
xenophobia.
As noted earlier, although charity and xenophobia may appear to be standing at the
opposite ends of the spectrum, they are in fact part of the same Janus faced strongly a-
ffective, but ultimately a-political and deeply divisive practices. As I argued earlier, both
xenophobia and charity have to ‘other’, in order to allocate hatred or support respectively.
It is only after I objectify the other as a lesser human being, that I can hate them. But it is
also only after I objectify the other as a dependent entity that I can offer charity or
philanthropy (Tsalikoglou, 2012). Whilst xenophobia transforms human beings into de-
humanized entities in order to be able to hate them, charity transforms human beings into
dependent objects in order to be able to offer aid thus reproducing relations of power
(Kohl-Arenas 2017). There are numerous groups and organizations across Europe today that
offer charity and aid; equally, there are numerous groups that promote xenophobia and
hatred. But there are preciously few that go beyond affect and down the dirt-path of
instituting methods and practices of solidarity.
Solidarity is not an affective act; it is political praxis; it is the generation of radical
imaginaries for social change (Castoriadis 1987) and –importantly- the generation of new
methods to institutionalise these radical imaginaries; methods that can promote rupture
with previous subject positions and disentangle the thread of life from the web of financial
transactions. In academic terms, a search for a politics and praxis of and for solidarity would
be very close to Cindi Katz’s conceptualization of minor theory, as “not a theory of the
margins, but a different way of working with material” (Katz 1996: 489).
At the aftermath of the occupy protests, many groups -less numerous but arguably more
important politically- emerged across Europe, whose focus goes beyond mere protests
against marginalisation or against austerity politics (Calvaro Velegrakis and Kaika 2017).
These groups promote methods and practices of solidarity for reclaiming their livelihoods
and their commons (in the form of housing, food, water, nature, etc.) through instituting
processes of subject formation that transcend the subject positions of the indebted
Wo/Man (Bayırbağ and Penpecioğlu 2016; see also Velicu and Kaika 2015). By means of
example, I would like to conclude by drawing attention on two groups who do just that:

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affective ‘idiots’. “ European Planning Studies DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521
establish practices of solidarity and institute methods to disentangle the thread of life from
the web of financial capitalism.
The first one is the Platform for Mortgage Affected people in Spain (Platforma d’ Afectats
per la Hipoteca - PAH). The PAH emerged in 2009 across Spain, out of the necessity to
rehouse hundreds of thousands of families (at least 300,000 since 2008) who were evicted
because they could not service their mortgage debt and subsequently became homeless
because there was no institutional framework to provide alternative housing and support
(García Lamarca and Kaika 2016; Colau et al, 2012). There are many charities and groups
that offer support to these families. But what makes the practices of the PAH singular is that
they are neither philanthropic nor charitable; they are deeply political acts. The PAH does
not offer ‘relief’ and temporary shelter by treating evicted people as powerlessness objects,
and the state or banks as powerful authorities that can allocate temporary shelter or charity
in the form of debt relief. Instead, the PAH demands housing as a right for all, and performs
this demand in four distinct ways. First, with the aid of activist lawyers they challenge
evictions decisions in court, making evictions a procedure that incurs high legal fees and
long delays for both the banks and the state institutions that enact evictions on behalf of
banks. Second through weekly assemblies and media reports, the PAH takes evictions
outside the sphere of a private tragedy and makes them a common affair that needs to be
visible in the public domain. It makes private suffering, shame or fear everybody’s business.
Third, by physically blocking evictions through forming a strong human barrier against
bailiffs and police forces, often facing the raw violence of riot police. Activist photographers
and filmmakers are also in situ. The PAH establishes home dispossessions and evictions as a
collective problem. And enacts anti-evictions activism as a collective social practice, not a
private affair. Fourth, the PAH performs housing as a right for all, by occupying empty
buildings owned by banks and actively re-housing evicted families in these buildings, thus
taking back the right to housing as soon as it is taken away. In short, the PAH actively
promotes a process that not only re-houses, but also re-dignifies evicted citizens, through a
deep seated process of politicisation that changes how citizens define themselves. The
PAH’s actions are based on the understanding that any pleads with the state or banks to re-
regulate debt repayments, or prolong the right to stay in repossessed homes would be
nothing but an affirmation of both indebted evicted citizens as powerless objects, and the

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bank or the state as powerful authorities that can charitably grant rights or regulate debt.
Through participating in assemblies, mobilisations, blocking evictions, occupying buildings,
etc, citizens stop defining themselves only as powerless indebted objects and gain strength
to fight collectively for the right to housing; they become political animals again.
The second movement I want to bring into this discussion in order to exemplify emerging
practices of solidarity that go beyond affect is the coalition against the privatisation of the
water and sewage company of Thessaloniki in Greece. The coalition was initiated by the
water company’s trade union (SEEYATH), when the profit making public company was
identified as one of the assets that the Greek state could sell in order to raise funds for debt
repayments. The trade union’s initial protests soon widened out to a broader coalition of
citizens and groups, notably “SOSte to NERO” and “Initiative 136” (henceforth K136). These
two groups went way beyond mere protests against privatisation. They produced new
imaginaries that changed radically the framework for negotiating water as a right. K136
asked citizens to contribute 136 euros each towards buying back the water commons when
they came up for sale. By doing so, K136 generated a radical imaginary that turned citizen’s
purchasing power into autonomous capital flows that could claim the commons (water)
back, as soon as it was snatched away. By doing so, the water coalition (like the PAH)
contributed towards redefining the role of citizens; no longer as the powerless indebted
objects living in a bankrupt country (Greece) with no choice other than to forfeit their
commons (water in this case) in order to be delivered from personal or national debt (see
Mercille and Murphy 2016). The coalition invited citizens to denounce their role as mere
animals that can only scream against pending privatisations or job losses, and become
political animals again who can actively institute new methods and practices for reclaiming
their commons.
Although a full analysis of the practices and methods of these movements lies beyond the
scope of this article (for details see Garcia Lamarca 2016; Garcia Lamarca and Kaika 2016;
Kaika 2017), I single them out here because these practices and methods are strong
contributions towards avoiding an Anthropological catastrophe: avoiding all of us accepting
and vesting the role of powerless indebted Men and Women; avoiding building a Europe
made not of citizens, but of fear-ridden indebted objects, discredited political subjects,

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incapable of producing their own history through new imaginaries, and solidarity practices.
These movements are two amongst many (see Faber 2005; Mayer 2009; Lorey, 2014; Velicu
and Kaika 2015) emerging contributions towards avoiding building a Janus faced Europe,
where the potential for political praxis is consummated into affective acts of charity or
xenophobia.
The radical imaginary as the key difference between charity and solidarity:
the importance of the quality of ruins and of failing better next time.
As xenophobia and hate are on the rise across Europe, this is a mature moment to
distinguish between, on one hand, affective acts and protests of charity/hatred or ‘animal
cries’ of private suffering, and on the other hand movements that generate new radical
imaginaries of solidarity, but which also produce methods to institute these as collective
imaginaries and perform new subject positions (Smart 2011). Because only groups that can
overcome the fear to institute their radical imaginaries as social practices (Castoriadis 1987)
can produce history (Kaika 2017). And overcoming the fear of instituting new imaginaries
means overcoming the fear of failing. It means accepting that our self-defined beautiful
revolutionary selves may become bruised, scratched, scathed and wrinkled and our
beautiful revolutionary ideas may become less perfect once put into practice. Indeed, both
the PAH and the water coalition have already undergone traumatic processes of internal
conflict and split-ups. It is the role of scholarship in planning and urban studies to amplify
these voices (Siemiatycki, M and Siemiatycki, E 2016).
For even if their imaginaries for instituting a new collective right to housing or water
become bruised as they become praxis, their transformative power rests not in how well
these movements will succeed in delivering their goals in full; their transformative power
rests in in how gracefully they can eventually fail; in the legacies they leave behind if/when
their militancy withers away. Like the quality of any great edifice or idea, the quality of
these emerging radical imaginaries will be best judged by their ruins. Because ruins are
testimonies that something has been real and therefore political.

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It is this quality (the political) that distinguishes these political initiatives from countless
affective initiatives emerging across Europe (in the form of charity or racism) (Lorey 2014).
Even if/when their militancy withers away, the Spanish PAH and the Greek citizens’ water
coalition will still have put into gear a process of subject formation that challenges the
social fatalism that followed the recent crisis; a process that can become a generative force
for a broader transformation that will prevent an Anthropological catastrophe. They will
have contributed towards disentangling the web of life from its direct dependency on
capital flows.
If we take seriously Hanah Arendt’s (1998) or Cornelius Castoriadis’ (1987) arguments that
history is the creation of new meanings and new social imaginaries, there is no better
moment than now to overcome fear and follow Samuel Beckett’s (Beckett, 1983) command:
if you have failed, try again, and fail again. But try to fail better next time. Today, during
times of wide spreading fear, insecurity, hatred and crisis, radical imaginaries stop being just
abstract intellectual exercises. They become a social necessity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. Many thanks to all the ENTITLE Mentors and Fellows, and my
colleagues at the University of Manchester and the University of Amsterdam. Particular
thanks to Melissa Garcia Lamarca, Dimitra Siatitsa, Irina Velicu, Giorgos Velegrakis, Rita
Calvaro, Lazaros Karaliotas, Stavros Stavrides, Michael Janoschka, Sara González, Georgia
Alexandri, Stuart Hodkinson, and the Contested Cities conference organizers. Thanks also to
Grigoris Kafkalas for commenting on earlier versions, and to the anonymous reviewers and
the editor of European Planning Studies.
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