attainment in lieu of exams, using an algorithm which manifestly advantaged smaller class sizes and schools’ previous exam results, have galvanised discussion about the extent to which experiences of COVID-19 have been patterned by structural inequalities (BBC, 2020b). Evidently, young people who were already diversely marginalised, precarious and at risk have been disproportionately exposed to COVID-19 risks and personal-political-economic fallout. It will be important for future research and policy to consider how multiple inequalities and exclusions have been compounded and hardened through COVID-19. We wonder, and worry profoundly, about how impacts of COVID-19 are intersecting with the kinds of gendered, classed, ableist, post-colonial, heteronormative, cis-normative and globally uneven modes of marginality and social exclusion evidenced through this book (see WBG, 2020; Brewer and Handscomb, 2020; European Commission, 2020). We fear that the complexly intersectional ‘hard times’ discussed through this book just got a lot harder, in all kinds of ways.
3) How are children and young people represented in media and policy discourses of COVID-19?
From our English perspective, we worry about the ways in which young people have repeatedly been represented in very particular, prominent ways in media and policy discourses of COVID-19. It seems to us that many media, political and social media discourses have fallen back on a default assumption that young people – particularly teenagers, perhaps particularly young men – are feckless, feral, amoral, irresponsible and anti-social. These kinds of discourses have been widely perpetuated via representations of, for example, young people defying ‘social distancing’ and ‘lockdown’ restrictions in pursuit of lairy, boozy, promiscuous, lawless, care-less lifestyles. (At this point, we had lined up some illustrative examples from outlets including The Sun, MailOnline, Daily Telegraph and Twitter. But we find that, right now, we are not really minded to give the oxygen of publicity to this sort of grim, divisive, exclusionary, trolling, culture war clickbait). These kinds of representations seem weirdly callous and toxic, and efface the precisely contemporaneous prominence of young people in community volunteering, familial and neighbourhood care work, and campaigning in support of social and environmental justice, LGBTQ+ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement. So we wonder, what can be learnt from representations of children and young people and COVID-19 in diverse contexts, beyond our UK media bubble, and what other, more hopeful cultural discourses and norms about contemporary childhood and youth might be possible?
4) How have neoliberalisations, austerities and economic crises been compounded by COVID-19?
It is with considerable anxiety that we try to anticipate the impacts of COVID-19 for the processes of economic crises, austerities and neoliberalisations that have framed this book. The outlook is not good. Economically, global and national forecasts suggest that COVID-19 will have significant and enduring consequences which will haunt every one of the contexts described in this book (European Commission, 2020). At time of writing, the World Bank baseline forecast predicts a 5.2% contraction in global gross domestic product (GDP) for 2020: ‘the deepest global recession in decades … the deep recessions triggered by the pandemic are expected to 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’…
References
Aalbers, M. (2009) ‘Geographies of the financial crisis’, Area, 41(1): 34–42.
Allen, K. (2016) ‘Top girls navigating austere times: Interrogating youth transitions since the “crisis”’, Journal of Youth Studies, 19(6): 805–820.
Askins, K. (2015) ‘Being together: Everyday geographies and the quiet politics of belonging’, ACME, 14(2): 461–469.
Barnett, C. (2005) ‘The consolations of “neoliberalism”’, Geoforum, 36(1), 7–12.
BBC (2020a) ‘Why are more people from BAME backgrounds dying from coronavirus?’, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52219070
BBC (2020b) ‘A-levels and GCSEs: How did the exam algorithm work?’, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-53807730
