The recent political era has seen a shift toward the discourse of austerity following the global economic crisis of 2007/08. The ideological nature of this austerity project has reasserted the classifications of deserving and undeserving, particularly with regard to welfare and access to services. Entwined with this has been a vehement anti-immigrant agenda, in which migrants are scapegoated as burdensome and are targeted by policies that seek economic reparations as the government makes large cuts to public spending. This paper will consider the findings of a qualitative PhD study that seeks to challenge the hegemonic narrative of austerity through interviewing migrant families about their experience of austerity policies and discourses in Manchester, UK. Concepts of citizenship, belonging and practices of everyday life (Lewis, 2004) illuminate the ways in which austerity has affected the day-to-day lives of these families and their perception of the city. The methodological and conceptual challenges of asking questions about such an abstract concept to an oft disenfranchised population will be analysed, and particular attention will be given to the experience of migrant mothers interviewed in this study. Mothers have demonstrated throughout this research that they negotiate complex issues such as caring, gendered division of labour and management of household finances in a time when support services for migrants are disappearing. This paper seeks then to narrate the complex layers of living in a period of austerity for women who are doubly disadvantaged by the racialized nature of migration rhetoric and policy.
