Sarah Marie Hall’s research while affiliated with University of Manchester and other places

This article seeks to advance geographical understandings of the impact of austerity on young adults in Europe and particularly on their social, relational, and temporal sense of the future. We adopt a life-course perspective to theorise personal, generational, institutional, and social change in relation to one another. Firstly, we progress relational life-course perspectives in human geography to illustrate how place-based experiences of austerity shape lived experiences, temporalities, and normative ideas surrounding life transitions. We introduce the concept of ‘foreclosed futures’ to re-examine conceptualisations of young adults’ eroding material conditions as a postponement of adulthood. We argue that the enduring impact of austerity contests the theorisation of young adults’ experiences of precarity as a transient elongation of youth. Expanding upon non-teleological life-course perspectives, we show that while austere institutions have foreclosed stable futures, the paths to precarity are myriad and rooted in geographically varied forms of austerity. Secondly, in examining how austere institutions shape young people's work, housing, and family biographies, we argue that, rather than leading to de-institutionalisation, austerity marks a process of life-course re-institutionalisation or ‘familialisation of the life-course’. To conclude, this article proposes a series of prompts for future international empirical research on austere life-courses and foreclosed futures.

We have approached this edited collection with an ambitious agenda; to create further space to develop and extend pluralized contemporary economic geographies. This is a task that can only be achieved collectively, and so it is fitting to start our ending by thanking all the contributors to the collection. The work of pluralizing and diversifying is not an equal or shared task, and we are mindful that the labour of doing ‘diversity work’ often falls to those individuals who are most deeply affected by the problems of privilege and exclusivity. Thus, a collection such as this is more than the sum of its parts, and more than can be seen written on the pages. It represents a collective vision for how to do things differently. In this postscript we take the opportunity to outline what we hope may come from this collection as part of a broader project which brings in you, the readers. This is less of a ‘last word’ and more of a call to action. One of the main ways in which we anticipate this book will be adopted is as a teaching resource across multiple disciplines and learning stages. With a wide range of topics and themes, concepts and approaches, from across disciplinary and empirical contexts, the collection offers rich material for teaching pluralistic economic geographies. The chapters are designed to be pithy, accessible and inspiring. As such, they are useful as key readings and introductory texts for foundational undergraduate modules across the social sciences. At the same time, due to the depth and breadth of the contributing chapters, the collection also offers materials for optional courses which explore contemporary economic issues in more detail. Moreover, with a focus on previous, current and future research agendas, we expect the collection will appeal to students and scholars alike in developing ideas for their own studies (for example, scoping projects, dissertations, funded research). The act of pluralizing any discipline involves active participation and learning, regardless of educational or career stage. Indeed, this collection brings together scholars from a wide range of approaches, perspectives and backgrounds. Added to this, pluralizing any discipline is a process that requires time and effort. This includes thinking about not just what we write about but how we write.

A collective agenda What could economic geographies be? What should economic geographies be? Who might be included in this project, what might they contribute, and how can we ensure that this work is valued? These are not new questions, and yet they remain as pertinent as ever. This collection adopts a fresh perspective to these debates, and to economic geographies more broadly, with a focus on plurality. We show how contemporary economic geographies are already plural, as they are critical and inspiring. However, this remains to be widely recognized and celebrated. Such pluralism is, we argue, essential. It includes building upon economic geographies that acknowledge the deeply ingrained racial, gendered and classed power differentials inherent within the economy across space, scale and time; and that propose ways to address these problems. It involves expanding upon the areas that are considered the ‘heartlands’ of economic geography (such as a focus on regional and national scales, agglomeration and clustering, financial processes and industrial sectors), and advancing the theoretical devices deployed to understand these worlds. Pluralism likewise extends to empirical and methodological imagination, in terms of how, where and with whom economic geographies engage, include and empower. This involves wider engagements across international fields of study, going beyond Anglocentric sites, writings and perspectives, and broadening methodological expertise to encourage innovation and creativity. Working towards more plural economic geographies also means tackling and addressing long-standing concerns about the overbearing heteronormativity of who ‘does’ and who is ‘recognized’ within the subdiscipline (Christopherson, 1989; McDowell, 1992). By this we refer to historical over-representation of White, male, Western, middle-class, able-bodied, older scholars, which is both an aesthetic problem and an epistemic one, and which requires constant maintenance. We are not asking for space to be made or given. This is not the economic geography we seek to expand. To our mind, there is no singular ‘project’, no ‘one’ economic geography, no particular set of gatekeepers. Rather it is a collective agenda, with varied voices, positions and approaches, and this collection celebrates this in all its diversity.