Growing Up and Getting By. Группа авторов

leave lasting scars through lower investment, an erosion of human capital through lost work and schooling, and fragmentation of global trade and supply linkages’ (World Bank, 2020, unpaginated). In the UK for example, the Office for National Statistics GPD figures report a state of ‘significant shock … the economy is in a technical recession, falling by 20.4% during Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2020, compared with Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2020 … the largest decline since quarterly records began’ (ONS, 2020: unpaginated). The consequences of these economic shocks for communities already experiencing economic crises and austerities are unfathomable and deeply anxiety-inducing. In England, for example, emergent evidence suggests the extent to which COVID-19 has intersected with resented geographies of austerities. On the one hand, COVID-19 has resulted in a significant acceleration of cuts to local government budgets for many cultural, community, educational, heritage and leisure services; on the other hand, there is evidence that impacts of COVID-19 have been most profound in communities which previously experienced the deepest cuts to health, social care and community facilities (Gillespie and Hardy, 2020; Flesher Fominaya, 2020). In this context, it remains to be seen how unprecedented government spending on furlough schemes, subsidies for leisure and hospitality sectors, public health messaging, and emergency healthcare facilities will be balanced through future multi-sectoral spending cuts. A parallel strand of critical debate has begun to consider the intersection of COVID-19 with processes of neoliberalisations. It is argued that decades of neoliberalisation effectively depleted the capacities of states, institutions and systems to act with resilience and compassion in the face of a challenge like COVID-19; moreover, it is argued that COVID-19 is precisely the kind of systemic shock through which neoliberal claims for yet more deregulation and efficiency measures can be expected to advance dramatically (Saad-Filho, 2020).

      5) Do any aspects of childhood and youth in COVID-19 times offer hope for more progressive and equitable futures?

      Against these backdrops of entrenched economic crises, austerities and neoliberalisms it will be necessary for many of us to commit to renewed forms of community-mindedness, collegiality, care, support, activisms and progressive politics to safeguard the kinds of communities, spaces and precarious lives witnessed in the following chapters. And we want to conclude this chapter on a hopeful, affirmative note by asking: wherever and whenever you read this, can children and young people’s everyday hopes, solidarities and care offer hopeful ways forward in contexts of economic crises–austerities–neoliberalisms–COVID-19s? We want to recognise that, sometimes, children and young people can role-model hopeful and progressive ways of being in spite of the ‘hard times’ of COVID-19. In our own communities and lives, we have been struck by children and young people’s creativity, humour and play during this time, their community-minded actions, their intimate attunement to local spaces and natures, their gestures of inter- and intra- generational care, and their moral-political leadership in calling out issues of social and environmental injustice locally and globally. Maybe all of us could remember and learn from that …

      As we prepare to submit this postscript, the COVID-19 situation continues to change daily, and will almost certainly have shifted further as the book goes to print, constituting new inequalities, new anxieties and new ‘hard times’…

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