Improvising security: subsistence in contemporary urban Europe
Western Europeans are navigating new insecurities in work, care, and access to basic infrastructures, arising from economic shifts and welfare reforms. While the causes and effects of these insecurities are popular topics for research, little is known about how people actually achieve solutions to the everyday challenges raised by these new insecurities.
This project examines how urban Western Europeans improvise what is conceptualized as subsistence security in their everyday lives through combinations of practices, for example, working several jobs, cohabiting, or creating informal care arrangements. Improvisation is a novel approach to understanding security in Western Europe, given its inclusion of both informal and formal practices.
The project combines urban ethnography with artistic methods and studies informal and formal practices in Rotterdam and Dublin, but it also aims to contribute to imagining future forms of security.
The research is funded by a NWO Vidi grant.
Researchers
- Dr. Marguerite van den Berg, project lead
- Anushka Dasgupta, PhD researcher, working on the subproject in Dublin
- Gresa Gashi, PhD researcher, working on the subproject in Rotterdam
Contact
Would you like to know more about this project, please contact Marguerite van den Berg (project lead): m.a.vandenberg@uu.nl
Project website
For more information and updates about this project, please visit the website: