Domesticating Neo-Liberalism E-Book

Alison Stenning

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 558

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Based on in-depth research in Poland and Slovakia, Domesticating Neo-Liberalism addresses how we understand the processes of neo-liberalization in post-socialist cities. * Builds upon a vast amount of new research data * Examines how households try to sustain their livelihoods at particularly dramatic and difficult times of urban transformation * Provides a major contribution to how we theorize the geographies of neo-liberalism * Offers a conclusion which informs discussions of social policy within European Union enlargement

Leseprobe

Contents

Plates, Figures and Tables

Series Editor’s Preface

Preface and Acknowledgements

Chapter One: Domesticating Neo-Liberalism and the Spaces of Post-Socialism

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism

Post-Socialism

Everyday Life in Post-Socialist Poland and Slovakia

Transforming Post-Socialist Cities and Neighbourhoods: Kraków and Bratislava

A Note on Method

Plan of the Book

Chapter Two: Neo-Liberalism and Post-Socialist Transformations

Theorizing Neo-Liberalism

Neo-Liberalization and Domestic Economic Policies in Post-Socialism

Neo-Liberalism and the Polish Political Economy

Neo-Liberalism and the Slovak Political Economy

Comparing Polish and Slovak Neo-liberalization

Conclusions

Chapter Three: Domesticating Economies: Diverse Economic Practices, Households and Social Reproduction

Introduction

Practices and Everyday Economic Lives

The Limits to Practices: Assets and Power

Economic Practices and the Diverse Economy

Economic Practices and (Post-)Socialism

Domestication

Conceptualizing the Household

Social Reproduction

Conclusions

Chapter Four: Work: Employment, Unemployment and the Negotiation of Labour Markets

Introduction: The Place of Work

Transformation and the Neo-Liberalization of Labour Markets

Experiencing Labour Market Change

Negotiating Segmented Labour Markets and the Emergence of In-Work Poverty

Articulations Beyond the Formal Labour Market

Conclusions

Chapter Five: Housing: Markets, Assets and Social Reproduction

Introduction: Housing and Its Geographies

The Transformation of Housing in Poland and Slovakia

Housing in Nowa Huta and Petržalka

Capitalizing on Housing Assets

Negotiating Housing Crises and Housing Market Exclusion

Housing Costs, Energy Liberalization and Poverty

Conclusions

Chapter Six: Land and Food: Production, Consumption and Leisure

Introduction: The Meanings of Land and Food

Land and the Domestic Production of Food

Land and Land Development

Social Networks and the Circulation of Food

The Transformation of Retail Landscapes and Food Consumption Practices

Managing Retail Exclusion

Conclusions

Chapter Seven: Care: Family, Social Networks and the State

Introduction: Care and Its Geographies

Transforming Landscapes of Care: Neo-Liberalizing Care?

Domestic Work and Family Support

Neighbours and Networks

Networks of Care

The State and Other Institutional Forms of Care and Support

Conclusions

Chapter Eight: Conclusions

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism

Diverse Economies of Post-Socialism

Neo-Liberal Subjectivities and their Others

The Violence of Neo-Liberalism: Class, Gender, Generation and Ethnicity

Comparative Neo-Liberalisms

Conclusions

Appendix I: Summary Information on Interviewed Households

Appendix II: Semi-Structured Interviews with Key Informants

Notes

Bibliography

Index

RGS-IBG Book Series

Published

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism: Spaces of Economic Practice and Social Reproduction in Post-Socialist CitiesAlison Stenning, Adrian Smith, Alena Rochovská and Dariusz Świątek

Swept Up Lives? Re-envisioning the Homeless CityPaul Cloke, Jon May and Sarah Johnsen

Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, AffectsPeter Adey

Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life LinesDavid Ley

State, Science and the Skies: Governmentalities of the British AtmosphereMark Whitehead

Complex Locations: Women’s geographical work in the UK 1850–1970Avril Maddrell

Value Chain Struggles: Institutions and Governance in the Plantation Districts of South IndiaJeff Neilson and Bill Pritchard

Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape TownAndrew Tucker

Arsenic Pollution: A Global SynthesisPeter Ravenscroft, Hugh Brammer and Keith Richards

Resistance, Space and Political Identities: The Making of Counter-Global NetworksDavid Featherstone

Mental Health and Social Space: Towards Inclusionary Geographies?Hester Parr

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in VulnerabilityGeorgina H. Endfield

Geochemical Sediments and LandscapesEdited by David J. Nash and Sue J. McLaren

Driving Spaces: A Cultural-Historical Geography of England’s M1 MotorwayPeter Merriman

Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics and Urban PolicyMustafa Dikeç

Geomorphology of Upland Peat: Erosion, Form and Landscape ChangeMartin Evans and Jeff Warburton

Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban GovernmentalitiesStephen Legg

People/States/TerritoriesRhys Jones

Publics and the CityKurt Iveson

After the Three Italies: Wealth, Inequality and Industrial ChangeMick Dunford and Lidia Greco

Putting Workfare in PlacePeter Sunley, Ron Martin and Corinne Nativel

Domicile and DiasporaAlison Blunt

Geographies and MoralitiesEdited by Roger Lee and David M. Smith

Military GeographiesRachel Woodward

A New Deal for Transport?Edited by Iain Docherty and Jon Shaw

Geographies of British ModernityEdited by David Gilbert, David Matless and Brian Short

Lost Geographies of PowerJohn Allen

Globalizing South ChinaCarolyn L. Cartier

Geomorphological Processes and Landscape Change: Britain in the Last 1000 YearsEdited by David L. Higgitt and E. Mark Lee

Forthcoming

Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical ConsumptionClive Barnett, Paul Cloke, Nick Clarke & Alice Malpass

Spatial Politics: Essays for Doreen MasseyEdited by David Featherstone and Joe Painter

The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton BosniaAlex Jeffrey

In the Nature of Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk BroadsDavid Matless

Learning the City: Translocal Assemblages and Urban PoliticsColin McFarlane

Fashioning Globalization: New Zealand Design, Working Women and the ‘New Economy’Maureen Molloy and Wendy Larner

This edition first published 2010© 2010 Alison Stenning, Adrian Smith, Alena Rochovská and Dariusz Świątek

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Domesticating neo-liberalism : spaces of economic practice and social reproduction in post-socialist cities / Alison Stenning . . . [et al].

p. cm. - (RGS-IBG book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-6991-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-4051-6990-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Women-Poland-Social conditions. 2. Women-Slovakia-Social conditions. 3. Women-Poland-Economic conditions. 4. Women-Slovakia- Economic conditions. 5. Sex discrimination against women-Poland. 6. Sex discrimination against women-Slovakia. 7. Feminist economics-Poland. 8. Feminist economics-Slovakia. 9. Feminist theory-Poland. 10. Feminist theory-Slovakia. I. Stenning, Alison.

HQ1457.D66 2010

330.94373–dc22

2010004728

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Plates, Figures and Tables

PLATES

1.1 Haanova, Petržalka

1.2 Gessayova, Petržalka

1.3 Lúky-sever, Petržalka

1.4 Osiedle Willowe, Nowa Huta

1.5 Osiedle Górali, Nowa Huta

1.6 Osiedle Przy Arce, Nowa Huta

1.7 Osiedle Dywizjonu 303, Nowa Huta

1.8 Osiedle Oświecenia, Nowa Huta

4.1 A steelworker at Arcelor Mittal, Nowa Huta

5.1 New private housing development in Petržalka

5.2 Balcony renovations in Nowa Huta

6.1 Vegetable plot on an allotment in Nowa Huta

6.2 Workers’ allotment garden, Nowa Huta

6.3 Allotment garden and small cottage, Petržalka

6.4 Carrefour Hypermarket in Nowa Huta

6.5 Tomex, a market in Nowa Huta

7.1 Pensioners talk in Nowa Huta

7.2 Towarzystwo Solidarnej Pomocy (Mutual Assistance Association), Nowa Huta

FIGURES

1.1 Income inequality in Central and Eastern Europe, 1989 and 2006 (Gini coefficient)

1.2 Map of Nowa Huta

1.3 Map of Petržalka

2.1 State expenditure on social assistance for those in ‘material deprivation’, Slovakia 1997–2004

3.1 The economy as iceberg

3.2 A diverse economy

4.1 Sectoral employment change, Bratislava and Kraków

4.2 Occupational profile of household members relative to poverty risk levels, Petržalka and Nowa Huta

TABLES

1.1 Poverty risk in East Central Europe

1.2 Population of Nowa Huta, Kraków and Poland, 1950–2002

1.3 Population of Petržalka, Bratislava and Slovakia, 1950–2001

1.4 ‘Risk of poverty’ and social exclusion in Nowa Huta and Petržalka

1.5 Surveyed neighbourhoods in Nowa Huta

1.6 Surveyed neighbourhoods in Petržalka

2.1 Flat tax rates on personal incomes in East Central Europe

4.1 Average monthly gross wages in Poland and Slovakia

4.2 Employment structure of households in Nowa Huta and Petržalka relative to ‘at risk’ of poverty levels

4.3 Average equivalized monthly income for households with different employment structures in Nowa Huta and Petržalka

4.4 Gender and occupational structure in Nowa Huta and Petržalka

4.5 Average proportion of income derived from various sources

5.1 Means of acquisition of current apartment, by income category

5.2 Tenure status of surveyed households

5.3 Average apartment prices in selected central European cities, 2004

5.4 Average apartment sale prices in Petržalka and Nowa Huta

5.5 Surveyed neighbourhoods in Petržalka

5.6 Surveyed neighbourhoods in Nowa Huta

5.7 Total living space

5.8 Living space per person in Petržalka and Nowa Huta

5.9 Average proportion of household expenditure on housing by income groups

6.1 Access to land by income categories

6.2 Gender of the main household members with responsibility for working on land

6.3 Generational structure of household members working on household plots

6.4 Primary purpose of having access to land

6.5 Average proportion of household expenditure on food, leisure and savings

6.6 Average household provisioning of vegetables and fruit

6.7 Average proportion of household expenditure on various items by income groups relative to median income

7.1 Household composition in Petržalka and Nowa Huta

7.2 Domestic work: gender of primary responsible household member

7.3 Percentage of households engaging non-household members in routine tasks

7.4 Frequency of family help

7.5 Help given and received from family, friends, neighbours, colleagues and organizations

7.6 Households with some level of contact with neighbours, by neighbourhood

7.7 Forms of neighbourly support

7.8 Average proportion of income derived from various sources

7.9 Households receiving state or local authority assistance in previous 12 months

7.10 Households receiving school assistance in previous 12 months

Series Editor’s Preface

The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The Series places strong emphasis on theoretically informed and empirically strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories.

For details on how to submit a proposal please visit:

www.rgsbookseries.com.

Kevin WardUniversity of Manchester, UK

Joanna BullardLoughborough University, UK

RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Preface and Acknowledgements

This book is the product of a research project funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council entitled Social Exclusion, Spaces of Household Economic Practice and Post-Socialism (RES-00023-0695). This project has generated a range of publications (many of which are listed in the bibliography) and we have altered author order over this range of publications to achieve some balance between the two primary investigators (Adrian Smith and Alison Stenning). Domesticating Neo-Liberalism has been primarily written jointly by Adrian and Alison, with very important input from Alena and Dariusz in terms of data collection, analysis and interpretation. In that sense it is very much a joint endeavour.

Research of the kind discussed in this book inevitably results in the accumulation of a whole series of debts and gratitudes to those who so freely gave of their time to allow us to develop the understandings discussed here. We are first and foremost truly appreciative of the time and space that all of our respondents and informants in Nowa Huta, Petržalka and beyond provided, often at times when they had many other pressures on their lives, as we document in Domesticating Neo-Liberalism. The kindness shown by our informants and respondents marks one of the key elements, as we note in the book, of everyday life in Nowa Huta and Petržalka, namely a deep-seated economy of generosity.

Throughout the timeframe of the research we benefited from the careful and thoughtful comments of an advisory group who helped us in the design and implementation of the research and our interpretation of the material that was being generated. In particular, we would like to thank Bernardína Bodnárová and Anton Michálek in Bratislava, Alena Ledeneva in London, and Claire Wallace in Vienna and then Aberdeen. We are also grateful to Paweł Buczkowicz, Karol Janas, Tomasz Padło, Małgorzata Sadowniczyk, Anna Świątek and Beata Zawilska in Nowa Huta and Peter Brezovský, Slavomír Brezovský, Zuzana Zajacová and Anton Sorád in Bratislava for assistance in carrying out the household survey, in transcribing interviews and in assisting with data entry.

A large number of colleagues across Europe and beyond provided ideas, comments and discussion of our work in research workshops, conference sessions and more informally. As a team, we would particularly like to thank: Bob Begg, Stefan Bouzarovski, Mike Bradshaw, Andy Cook, Kathie Gibson, Julie Graham, Jane Hardy, Kathrin Hörschelmann, Deema Kaneff, Wendy Larner, Roger Lee, Sallie Marston, Linda McDowell, Pete North, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Jamie Peck, John Pickles, Frances Pine, Al Rainnie, John Round, Martin Sokol, Adam Swain, Adam Tickell and Judit Timár. Versions of some of the chapters of this book were presented at academic conferences and in departmental seminars. We are grateful to all those who provided their comments and ideas.

Ed Oliver produced the maps and we are very grateful to him for responding in the calm and patient manner he always does to our many requests for changes and alterations.

Sections of Chapter Four have been published previously in Smith, A., Stenning, A., Rochovská, A. and Świątek, D. (2008) ‘The emergence of a working poor: Labour markets, neoliberalisation and diverse economies in post-socialist cities’, Antipode, 40 (2): 283–311, which has been reprinted as Smith, A., Stenning, A., Rochovská, A. and Świątek, D. (2008) ‘The emergence of a working poor: Labour markets, neoliberalisation and diverse economies in post-socialist cities’, in Smith, A., Stenning, A. and Willis, K. (eds) (2008) Social Justice and Neo-Liberalism: Global Perspectives (London: Zed, pp. 164–198). We are very grateful to Wiley-Blackwell and Zed Books for permission to use parts of this material here. We are also very grateful to Julie Graham, Kathie Gibson and the Community Economies Collective for permission to reproduce Figure 3.1, which is attributed to Ken Byrne. All the photographs that appear, including on the front cover, are the work of the project team.

Kevin Ward has been a wonderfully patient and supportive RGS-IBG book series editor; Jacqueline Scott at Wiley-Blackwell has provided first rate editorial input; and we are very grateful to the reviewers of the initial proposal and of the draft manuscript for their help in clarifying issues and pushing us to be sharper in our analysis.

In addition, Adrian would personally like to thank Milan Buček, Roman Džambazovič, Juraj Janto, Rudolf Pástor, Leo Singer, Peter Spišiak, and Zuzana Kusá for their help and collaboration, as well as Angela Baxter, Alex, Dom and Theo for all their love and support. Alison would like to thank her Polish and UK colleagues (especially Mariusz Czepczyński, Stuart Dawley, Bolesław Domański, Helen Jarvis, Nina Laurie, Jane Pollard and Aneta Słowik) and her PhD students for their ongoing support, interest and ideas. In Nowa Huta, she owes a huge debt of thanks to Danuta Szymońska and Kasia Danecka-Zapała for their interest in her work, their ongoing encouragement and, above all, their friendship. She also thanks her mother, Elisabeth Banks, for a careful proofread, and other help along the way. Finally, at home, Fergus Campbell has lived with her everyday domestications and she thanks him with all her heart.

Chapter One

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism and the Spaces of Post-Socialism

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism

In February 2004, three months before Slovakia was due to join the European Union, the Slovak government mobilized 20,000 extra police and 1,000 soldiers to quell a revolt by members of the Roma community in the east of the country. The revolt involved, primarily, the looting of basic provisions from food stores and was a reaction to the dramatic scaling back of the social welfare system. As the then Minister for Labour, the Family and Social Affairs and architect of a radical overhaul of the social assistance system, L’udovít Kaník, was quoted as saying ‘Cuts in benefits are needed to end a culture of dependence among Roma’ (Burgermeister, 2004). This series of events emerged out of a much larger-scale state initiative, which originated in the political economy of the collapse of state socialism in 1989 and intensified after the 1998 election of a centre-right coalition government, to dramatically overhaul the nature of political and economic life, modelled strongly on neo-liberal principles (Smith & Rochovská, 2007; Fisher, et al., 2007). The events of February 2004 represented, then, part of a popular reaction against neo-liberalism, which culminated in the election – after eight years of neo-liberal policies – of a more centre-left coalition government in June 2006.

Three years after these events in Slovakia, in the summer of 2007, ‘Poland . . . witnessed one of the biggest waves of social protests in healthcare in many years’ (Czarzasty, 2007) – the so-called ‘white protests’ – as thousands of Polish nurses and doctors expressed in different ways their own discontent with the neo-liberalization of Poland’s health care sector. After weeks of strikes (Warsaw Voice, 20 June 2007), a demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s chancellery suffered a disproportionate response from the authorities as nurses, doctors and their supporters were attacked by riot police. Refused a meeting with the Prime Minister, four of the nurses’ leaders launched a sit-in of the chancellery and some 1,500 of their supporters camped out in solidarity in nearby Lazienki Park, creating the so-called ‘White Village’, a ‘tent city’ with kitchens, lectures, clinics and its own newspaper, which was maintained for over four weeks, with the support of miners, steelworkers and others who shared the nurses’ concerns. These protests emerged against a backdrop of repeated strikes and protests (Stenning & Hardy, 2005) through which nurses, in particular, contested ongoing reforms to the health sector. Their particular concerns were ‘inadequate financial expenditure on the public healthcare system in general and . . . insufficient pay levels in particular’ (Czarzasty 2007), which their leaders argued resulted from the commercialization of the health service, and the creation of health care funds which introduced internal markets into health care provision. These – and the chronic underfunding which ensued – were, in turn, the result of pressures to reduce government debt, in the hope of Poland’s entry into the Eurozone. In contrasting ways, then, the nurses’ protests of summer 2007 echoed the earlier contestation of neo-liberalization in Slovakia, and a growing wave of concern about its effects across East Central Europe (ECE).

The key elements of the reforms contested by the Slovak Roma and the Polish health care workers – benefits cuts, attacks on ‘dependence’, public sector rationalization, fiscal austerity – sit at the heart of the project of neo-liberalism. Indeed, the ‘transition’ from communism to capitalism in ECE represents perhaps one of the boldest experiments with neo-liberal ideas in the world today, demonstrating vividly the policies and practices associated with this market-led ideology.1 The project of neo-liberalism (or neo-liberalization), as we discuss in more detail in Chapter Two, rests on a theory of political economy which promotes markets, enterprise and private property, restructures regulation into more limited forms, and reduces the role of the public sector and welfare (Harvey, 2005; Peck & Tickell, 2002; Larner, 2003; J. Clarke, 2004). But it is more than a political-economic project; neo-liberalization is a social project too. It is predicated on a rejection of ‘society’ and on a promotion of the individual – most particularly, the entrepreneurial self (du Gay, 1996) – and of an idealized notion of the family. Neo-liberalism remakes the familial spaces of the household and of social reproduction as it remakes the economy. In all of these ways, the neo-liberal projects adopted and struggled over around the world have very real and often negative consequences, especially for the poor, the socially excluded and the marginalized (Smith et al., 2008a).

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism examines the remaking of household economic practices and social reproduction in Poland and Slovakia in the context of these neo-liberal transformations. In short, it asks how Polish and Slovak households work to ensure that their basic needs for income, housing, food and care are met as wider political economies are neo-liberalized. Through this focus, Domesticating Neo-Liberalism seeks to understand how the processes of neo-liberalization are promoted, received, lived, negotiated and resisted in Poland and Slovakia.

In order to explore the articulations between everyday economic practices, social reproduction and the construction of neo-liberal worlds, we take inspiration from Creed’s (1998) argument that state socialism could only be understood within the context of its domestication, as it was negotiated, constituted and made possible through the practices of everyday life and social reproduction. For Creed, domestication involves envisioning ‘big’ political-economic projects not simply as ‘out there’ and all-powerful, but as always already particular, domestic, and local phenomena too.

Building on Creed (1998) and others who work with the notion of domestication (see Chapter Three), we intertwine two versions of domestication. On the one hand, we explore the ways in which politicians, academics, think tanks and social institutions at the national, regional and international scales have ‘domesticated’ the dissemination of neo-liberal policies in Poland and Slovakia in ways which query the idea of neo-liberalism as a singular, top-down political-economic project. This perspective builds on accounts of neo-liberalism that characterize it as a geographically differentiated, locally complex process (invariably called ‘neo-liberalization’) (Barnett, 2005; Castree, 2006; Harvey, 2005; Larner, 2003; Leitner et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2008; Ward & England, 2007).

On the other hand, we read neo-liberalism as a process that is domesticated not only by the actions of national elites but also by the everyday economic practices of individuals, households and communities. This interpretation follows Creed (1998) more closely and presents domestication as an everyday and ongoing set of practices that at times destabilizes neo-liberalism but at other times articulates the neo-liberal with its others. As a result, domestication entails much more than explicit attempts at resistance, as Creed (1998: 3) explains in the context of socialism:

By simply doing what they could to improve their difficult circumstances, without any grand design of resistance, villagers forced concessions from central planners and administrators that eventually transformed an oppressive, intrusive system into a tolerable one. In short, through their mundane actions villagers domesticated the socialist revolution.

In Domesticating Neo-Liberalism, this second reading itself folds in three key claims. We argue that a focus on the mundane practices of economic life enables a detailed understanding of how neo-liberalism is understood, negotiated, contested and made tolerable in homes, communities and workplaces; how neo-liberalism is lived in articulation with a host of economic, political and social others; and how those practices are themselves involved in the remaking of neo-liberalism.

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism, then, connects two interrelated concerns. Empirically, we are concerned to document and explain the ‘violence of the economy’ (Pickles, 2004b; see also Žižek, 2006, 2008) in post-socialist East Central Europe and to build an account of the ways in which Polish and Slovak households have negotiated – or domesticated – the dislocations and exclusions that have emerged since 1989. Conceptually, we seek to employ these analyses of ‘domestication’ to think again about neo-liberalism in general and its post-socialist form in particular, by considering how neo-liberalism has been made and remade in Poland and Slovakia, at a variety of scales from national policy debates, through the work of think tanks, firms and charities, to the household and individual.

The research for this book took place in 2005 and 2006, before the global economic crisis of 2008/9, which has begun to transform neo-liberalism and the landscape of global economic policy-making in important ways. As we discuss more fully in the concluding chapter, the extent and nature of these transformations and their impact on both national political economies and everyday economic practices in Poland and Slovakia remains an open question.

Post-Socialism

In the Polish and Slovak contexts, which form the focus of Domesticating Neo-Liberalism, these analyses of both the particular policy circuits and environments as well as the lived experiences of neo-liberalism demonstrate the importance of both the legacies of socialism and the particular political economies of the post-1989 period. Thus, we also explore the particularities of post-socialist neo-liberalism, seeking to understand the difference that post-socialism makes to the processes of neo-liberalization.

Since the collapse of state socialism, debates about post-socialism have been centred in large part on the discursive power and political economy of neo-liberalism. While the early debates revolved around the distinction between ‘shock therapy’ and ‘gradualism’ (Sachs, 1990; Popov, 2000, 2007; see also Chapter Two), the perceived ‘failure’ of the state to effectively manage political-economic life refracted earlier concerns over state intervention and the likelihood for some that it would lead to a ‘road to serfdom’ (Hayek, 1994; for a critical review, see Peck, 2008). Different models of economic transformation emerged across the region, but each was committed in various ways to neo-liberalism: to the primacy of market relations; to the establishment of the social relations of capitalism based on private production, appropriation and redistribution of the economic and social surplus; to re-configurations of property ownership relations and class power; to a transformation of the state in the support of the development of market economies and capitalist social relations; and to the establishment of an ethic and subjectivity of individual responsibility. This ‘transition culture’ (Kennedy, 2002) left little space for debate or for alternatives. Policy prescriptions were frequently teleological, modernizing and reductionist (see Chapter Two) and placed an overwhelming emphasis on the changes that needed to be implemented for the post-socialist states to reach the ‘standards and performance norms of advanced industrial economies’ (EBRD, 1996: 11–12; see also Smith, 2002b; Stenning & Bradshaw, 1999). To meet these norms, four ‘pillars’ were identified – privatization, stabilization, liberalization and internationalization – whose correct and successful implementation would lead, it was argued, to the emergence of a market economy. This orthodox prescription sits within the wider notion of the ‘Washington Consensus’ (Williamson, 1990; Stiglitz, 2002), derived from the policies of international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). In these ways, the ‘transition to capitalism’ in ECE has been experienced as a thoroughly neo-liberalizing process. However, as we explore here in detail, the neo-liberal transition has been articulated with a host of ‘others’, economic and social relations which were not reducible to the market but were connected to it in complex ways (Smith & Stenning, 2006; Smith & Rochovská, 2007).

As the 1990s progressed, and as the policy focus shifted away from establishing the building blocks of market capitalism across the region, the possibility of wider geo-political and geo-economic integration with the European Union (EU) further consolidated a commitment to the primacy of capitalist and neo-liberal social relations (Gowan, 1995; Rainnie et al., 2002a; Smith, 2002b). The EU had, of course, by this time – following the introduction of the single currency, the extension of the single market and the Lisbon agenda on competitiveness – become thoroughly committed to a neo-liberal framework, despite the attempt to balance this with a continuing commitment to social cohesion. The prospect of EU membership and the imposition of the aquis communautaire (the European Community’s complete legislative framework) enabled a process of West–East policy transfer. In this way, policies to secure the primacy of the market and the legal basis for competition policy were adopted across the candidate countries as the basis for approval of their accession to the Union. Such was the power of this discursive and material framing of neo-liberal transformation in the run-up to EU enlargement that several commentators argued that accession represented the effective end of ‘post-socialism’ as the countries of the region became ‘normalized’ into the European family of nations (for a critique, see Stenning & Hörschelmann, 2008).

The notion of domestication, and the attention we draw to other sets of social relations that articulate with neo-liberalism, echo a conceptualization of post-socialism which is marked by a diversity of social forms, by continuity and change, and by an appreciation of the ways in which ‘actually existing’ state socialism continues to reverberate through the cultural and political economy of ECE (Stenning & Hörschelmann, 2008). As Hann et al. (2002: 10) suggest, ‘the everyday moral communities of socialism have been undermined but not replaced’, such that the experiences of post-socialism continue to be distinctively shaped by ‘the socialist past and narratives of the past’ (Hemment, 2003). The narratives and legacies of the past – including those that hark back to the era before socialism – articulate with contemporary processes of globalization and neo-liberalization. They do so in their particular incarnation as ‘transition’, but also in their other more universal manifestations, with the passage of European Union enlargement and with wider experiences of restructuring and development, with which post-socialism shares both discursive and material features (Pickles & Smith, 1998; Stenning & Bradshaw, 1999).

Everyday Life in Post-Socialist Poland and Slovakia

As this account of post-socialist transformation suggests, the collapse of communism in ECE in 1989 heralded a set of political, economic, social and cultural transformations which radically remade the landscapes of everyday life. In the spheres of work and labour markets, home and housing, community and social networks, and consumption, amongst others, the lives of post-socialist citizens shifted dramatically. These everyday transformations have attracted increasing attention in studies of post-socialism, as geographers, sociologists and anthropologists seek to document and understand the lived experiences of post-1989 transformations (Burawoy & Verdery, 1999; Bridger & Pine, 1998; Shevchenko, 2009). In part this reflects a renewed interest in the everyday across the social sciences (Bennett & Watson, 2002; Moran, 2005; see also Chapter Three), but it also reflects the particularities of post-socialism. Not only was the ‘transition to capitalism’ in East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union one of the boldest projects of social, political and economic reform of recent times, but the very nature of the political economy of state socialism meant that many of the spheres of everyday life were particularly interconnected, and thus their transformation particularly complex.

Domesticating Neo-Liberalism focuses on the spheres of work, housing, food, and care, all of which have been dramatically transformed in the years since 1989. In the sphere of work, redundancy and unemployment have been coupled with the emergence of new forms of work in new sectors of the economy, and with the remaking of pay and conditions across the labour market. In housing, the rapid development of markets has promoted owner occupation, and has fed the construction of new forms of residential space, the stigmatization of socialized housing and the polarization of housing outcomes. Through the home, housing transformations have been connected to wider transformations in relationships and family life, as marital, sexual and domestic politics have shifted, and phenomena such as alcoholism, homelessness and depression have grown and/or become more visible. These shifts themselves have remade social networks, communities, and institutions, positively and negatively, as some have been eroded by poverty and inequality and others have emerged from new opportunities and new connections. Rising poverty and inequality have also structured access to post-socialist spheres of consumption, marked above all by the diversification of retail provision as large transnational corporations enter the market alongside a multiplication of domestic retailers, marking out a complex geography of provision.

Together, these transformations have radically remade the everyday lives of post-socialist citizens and their geographies. The complexity of these everyday transformations has been increasingly recognized,2 but much of this work has focused on the question of ‘survival strategies’. In Domesticating Neo-Liberalism, as we discuss in more detail in Chapter Three, we shift the focus away from survival towards social reproduction. The focus on survival strategies, we argue, delimits the breadth and complexity of household economic practices; it suggests that such practices are responsive acts, constructed in conditions of austerity to achieve survival, rejecting the possibility that such practices may be planned, creative, rooted in family and community cultures, and oriented towards pleasure, thriving and flourishing. In focusing instead on social reproduction, we echo the necessity of economy – that is, as Lee (2006) has argued, economic practices must be ‘life-sustaining’ – but expand our focus to reflect a recognition that social reproduction demands the satisfaction of more than material basic needs, to include care, comfort, pleasure and community.

One of the concerns, however, that the literature on survival strategies does highlight is that of growing poverty in post-socialism. While poverty was relatively ‘hidden’ prior to the collapse of state socialism (Golinowska, 2000; Tarkowska, 1999), in many of the new EU member states levels of poverty (defined in relation to the standard of 60% of national median income) remain close to, or above, the EU average (Table 1.1). Poland stands out as having among the highest levels of poverty and the geography of poverty at the sub-national level in both Poland and Slovakia is very uneven, with many geographically concentrated ‘pockets’ of immiserised peoples (Michálek 2004, 2005; Rochovská, 2004; Kusá & Džambazovič, 2006; Džambazovič, 2007; Tarkowska, 1999; Warzywoda-Kruszyńska, 1999). In both Poland and Slovakia, high concentrations of poverty are found in rural regions dominated by former state and collective farms, on the eastern and western borders, and in urban regions experiencing industrial decline (Danglová, 1998; Smith, 1998; Stenning et al., 2007; Stenning, 2005a).

Table 1.1 Poverty risk in East Central Europe (% of households below 60% of median income)

Source: Extracted from Eurostat online database 2007

Patterns of poverty are uneven not only spatially but also socially. In institutional (Alam et al., 2005) and academic accounts of poverty in post-socialism, the most vulnerable groups are regularly identified as children and young people, women, pensioners, minority ethnic households, those living in households headed by people out of work (as a result of unemployment, disability or ill-health) and by those with low levels of education. Yet whilst poverty levels amongst many of these groups are disturbingly high, increasingly large numbers of those living in poverty fit none of these categories; these are the working poor – a new phenomenon in ECE (which we explore in more detail in Chapter Four).

The costs of ‘transition’ can be measured not only in rising poverty, but also in increasing inequality. Before 1989, many of the countries of ECE (and the former Soviet Union) recorded some of the lowest levels of income inequality in the world. Since 1989, however, indicators suggest that there has been a rapid increase in inequality (see Figure 1.1).3 This rising income inequality is a result partly of ‘top-end’ shifts as the decompression of wages, the rewarding of entrepreneurship, the appearance of some well-paid jobs in global corporations and the ‘windfalls’ of post-socialist privatizations enable the emergence of the wealthy and even ‘super-rich’ in ECE. However, it is the simultaneous negative shifts at the ‘bottom’ end of the income continuum which account for most of the polarization of income; job loss, wage decline and arrears, and the reliance of some on informal labour markets have led to marked impoverishment for many. Income inequality is, moreover, reinforced by the erosion of other material assets (such as housing, land and equipment), by the poverty of social networks, by the absence of opportunity (for work, education, consumption and leisure), and by exclusion from mainstream spaces and institutions. Inequalities reflect asymmetries of both economic and socio-cultural power and draw attention to the ways in which the neo-liberal commitment to individualized responsibility both rests on and remakes gender, class, generation, and ethnicity.4

Figure 1.1 Income inequality in Central and Eastern Europe, 1989 and 2006 (Gini coefficient)

Source: Elaborated from UNICEF TRANSMONEE database

The uneven experience of post-socialist neo-liberalization suggests that the domestication of post-1989 transformations will play out in particular ways in large cities. Much of the research on poverty and inequality in post-socialism has been focused on marginal, rural regions, and has avoided serious analyses of these issues in diverse, dynamic urban centres. As the emergence of in-work poverty suggests, however, these are important issues in large urban spaces too. Although poverty in cities tends to remain hidden within the overall context of economic growth, inequality has become increasingly visible as employment, income and access to work have become more and more polarized, not least because cities have been at the forefront of post-socialist transformations (Andrusz et al., 1996; Bodnár, 2001; Stenning, 2004). This centrality is connected to positive transformations, such as high rates of economic growth, low levels of unemployment, and increasingly diversified economies (in production and consumption), at least until the 2008 economic crisis. But these positive indicators are also suggestive of rapid transformation – and thus the need for adaptation and negotiation – and conceal the uneven development of post-socialism. These questions become all the more acute when the focus shifts away from the globalized city centres towards the peripheral, state socialist housing estates where the majority of post-socialist urban populations live. These large estates became an essential element of the housing system and urban fabric of societies in ECE, home to largely in-migrating populations of relatively young families, often with roots in rural society. During state socialism, as we discuss in more detail in Chapter Five, the estates tended to be socially mixed, housing both working- and middle-class households, but since the collapse of communism there has been an expectation that they would become increasingly divided, echoing patterns in Western European cities (Sýkora, 2000). Domesticating Neo-Liberalism interrogates this idea in detail, focusing as it does on the remaking of everyday life in such districts since 1989.

Transforming Post-Socialist Cities and Neighbourhoods: Kraków and Bratislava

The empirical focus of this book, then, is the everyday economic practices of individuals, households and communities in two districts in two large cities: Nowa Huta in Kraków, Poland, and Petržalka in Bratislava, Slovakia. By focusing on these two districts in two cities in two countries, we examine the differentiated practices of domesticating neo-liberalism at a variety of scales, attentive to the specificities of place and to articulations with wider urban, national and international cultures and political economies. In this context, the comparison between Poland and Slovakia is not the book’s primary analytic; instead we seek to explore the many ways in which geography makes a difference, from the scale of the household, through the housing block and neighbourhood, to the city and beyond. As we discuss in Chapter Three, the idea of practices and the concept of domestication explicitly focus on the weaving together of places and scales in the everyday. Our research design, explored below, was constructed explicitly to enable us to develop each of these comparative aspects and was structured in and around certain neighbourhoods in the two districts in the two cities. Because the particular geographies of our case studies are critical to understanding the differential experiences of post-socialist neo-liberalization, and its domestication, what follows provides an introduction to the cities, districts and neighbourhoods.

Bratislava and Kraków

In many ways, Bratislava and Kraków represent some fairly typical post-socialist urban transformations. Both cities have been radically remade since 1989 and are now fully inserted into global circuits of capital, travel, culture and politics. Beyond the visible symbols of capitalism, ubiquitous not only in their city centres but in their neighbourhoods too, the two cities’ economies have been liberalized and internationalized, with impacts on patterns of ownership, on the shape of local labour markets, and on patterns and levels of growth in the economy. As a result of both Bratislava and Kraków being at the heart of their countries’ economic dynamism, unemployment rates stood at just 2% and 7% respectively in 2007, compared to national rates of between 8% and 11%.5 Alongside the restructuring of labour markets, the cities have experienced significant housing market transformations (Chapter Five) and expanded and increasingly differentiated retail provision (Chapter Six; see also Stenning et al., 2009), which have added to the costs of living for households and individuals within both cities. Kraków and Bratislava are increasingly recognized as high-cost cities; in 2006, Bratislava was ranked higher than Prague, Warsaw and Budapest in an index of city living costs6 and Kraków was identified as having the highest increase in property prices in Europe (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, 2007). In this context, as in other large post-socialist cities, labour market segmentation, the emergence of ‘bad jobs’ (which offer low pay and insecure conditions) and rising living costs raise critical questions about the connection between employment, a living wage and the ability to secure household social reproduction.

For all their similarities, however, Bratislava and Kraków have distinct histories and geographies, which play a significant role in shaping their contemporary economies. Kraków was capital of Poland from 1038 to 1596, when the seat of the Polish monarchs was moved to Warsaw (Carter, 1994). It remained a key city throughout Poland’s early modern and modern history, even during the Partitions (1772–1918), when Poland was occupied by the Prussians, Russians and Austrians and disappeared as a territorial entity from the map of Europe. Indeed, from 1815 to 1846, Kraków was established as a free city by the Congress of Vienna and became a hub both of Polish intellectual and political life and of economic liberalism. During this period, and under the later Grand Duchy of Kraków when the city continued to be afforded more economic, political and cultural freedom than the rest of occupied Poland, Kraków attracted traders, immigrants, entrepreneurs, artists and activists from across the occupied territories. In all this time, Kraków was also the capital of the wider region, Małopolska (or Little Poland). As a result of this history, the city is endowed with a range of historic national monuments and a wealth of cultural, architectural, and intellectual resources. It also inherited, on independence in 1918, an economy largely oriented to trade and science, rather than to industry. Although some industries did exist in pre-war Kraków (including, for example, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and confectionary), the major dynamic of industrial growth in the city was the construction of socialism after World War II, and in particular the establishment of the Lenin Steelworks and Nowa Huta, to the east of the historic city centre (Hardy and Rainnie, 1996; Pounds et al., 1985). In some ways, this phase of industrial development can be seen as a detour in Kraków’s economic history; since 1989, the focus of much economic activity has returned to historic spheres, incarnated in post-socialism through an expansion of tourism, a boom in retail and commercial services, and high levels of foreign investment in high-tech sectors (such as software engineering) and in research and development. In 2008, Kraków overtook Łódź to become Poland’s second largest city,7 with a population of 756,441,8 and a total of approximately 1,200,000 in the conurbation as a whole (OECD, 2008b: 51).

During the majority of the twentieth century, Bratislava occupied a key role in both Czechoslovakia and as capital of the independent Slovak Republic during the Second World War, returning to that role following the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Prior to this, Pressburg, as Bratislava was then known (or Pozsony in Hungarian), was the capital of the Hungarian monarchy between the 1500s and 1783 when – following Turkish invasion of the Hungarian Empire – the capital city was relocated there. As such, despite its relatively small size for a capital city (the current population is nearly 430,000), the city has been a political, economic and cultural centre for many centuries and continues to play a key role as the political and economic core of today’s independent Slovakia. The economic dominance of the Slovak capital is underlined by the fact that its GDP per capita placed it in 2006 at 149% of the EU27 average, among the highest for the new EU Member States (see also Dunford & Smith, 2000).9 The sectorally diverse nature of the city’s economy has been underlined by the growth of tertiary sectors over the past 15 years, particularly in finance and information technology-related activity (see Chapter Four), and Bratislava has become home to the headquarters of many of the country’s foreign investors. Industrial activity remains important; its overall significance has declined relatively, but major foreign investment projects in the automotive sector, centred on Volkswagen, as well as the major oil refinery Slovnaft, are based in the city and remain key employers (Sokol, 2007). Alongside industrial and service sector activity, Bratislava’s centrality in political and administrative structures also means that employment in central government and public administration is important. The city boasts five major higher education institutions and large parts of the population have high levels of educational attainment. In addition to these features, Bratislava has also seen its geographical location become a major factor in the city’s transformation over the past 20 years. It is the only capital city to border another state (Austria) and Bratislava is only 60 km from Vienna, with both cities being considered as part of the ‘golden triangle’ of Vienna–Bratislava–Györ (Smith, 1998). This location has meant that Bratislava has been the main regional focus for foreign investment in Slovakia, with 68% of FDI located in the city region in 2007,10 and significant pressure for land, property and commercial development has resulted, as we discuss in later chapters.

Nowa Huta and Petržalka

Within these cities, patterns of economic transformation have been differentiated, as the processes of post-socialist transformation have played out unevenly in homes and communities. The focus of this book is on two particular districts of Kraków and Bratislava – Nowa Huta and Petržalka (Figures 1.2 and 1.3). Petržalka is one of 17 urban districts of Bratislava and Nowa Huta comprises five of Kraków’s 18 urban districts (Nowa Huta, Bieńczyce, Mistrzejowice, Czyżyny and Wzgórza Krzesławickie). Petržalka is the largest district of Bratislava in terms of both its area and population and, like Nowa Huta, is one of the largest housing estates in Central Europe. In 2005, Petržalka was home to 115,000 residents, comprising 27% of the population of the capital. Nowa Huta houses 220,000 people, a similar proportion of Kraków’s population. The two districts are located on the periphery of their respective cities and were largely constructed at the height of state socialist urbanization. However, notwithstanding their commonalities, Nowa Huta and Petržalka possessed different starting points in their experience of post-socialist transformation. Petržalka forms part of the diverse urban economy of a capital city, characterized by a range of employment opportunities across different economic sectors. Nowa Huta, by contrast, was constructed on the edge of Kraków to serve a single workplace (the Lenin Steelworks), locked into the industrial economy but closely connected to the persistent peasant economy. Both districts are currently experiencing a re-articulation of their relationship with the wider cities in which they are located.

Figure 1.2 Map of Nowa Huta

Figure 1.3 Map of Petržalka

Nowa Huta was created as a settlement primarily housing workers for the newly built steelworks from the late 1940s (Stenning, 2000). The first three- and four-storey brick-built blocks of flats were constructed in 1949 on the area of three villages – Mogiła, Pleszów and Krzesławice. Initially the district provided accommodation for construction workers employed to build the then Lenin Steelworks, who migrated from mainly rural and old industrial areas of Poland. As late as 1970, 74% of Nowa Huta’s population were of ‘peasant’ origin (Stenning, 2000). Once the steelworks opened, Nowa Huta provided accommodation for new workers and increasing demand for accommodation, particularly in the 1960s, led to a further expansion of Nowa Huta towards the north and the villages of Bieńczyce and Mistrzejowice (Table 1.2). A third phase of development rested on the introduction of panel-built high-rise blocks, which were still under construction until the late 1990s. Nowa Huta was originally planned for 100,000 residents but between 1950 and 1985 the population of Nowa Huta actually increased to 223,000, and growth there accounted for much of Kraków’s overall demographic and territorial growth (Soja, 1990). Nowa Huta’s population was, for many years, younger, more male, less educated, and more dependent on industrial employment than the rest of Kraków, but demographic and economic shifts since 1989, in particular, have narrowed the gap. The Lenin Steelworks employed over 40,000 workers at their height, the majority of whom lived in Nowa Huta, and, like many major industrial enterprises under socialism, the steelworks supported a range of social and cultural facilities in the town (B. Domański, 1997; Stenning, 2000). The rhythm of life in Nowa Huta was shaped by the rhythms of the steelworks and many were drawn to the new town in search of the work that might offer stability and security for their families (Stenning, 2005c). There were, however, other important employers, including not only the extensive public sector (health, education, administration) but also other industrial enterprises, such as ZPT Kraków, a major cigarette factory now owned by Philip Morris (Hardy & Rainnie, 1996).

Table 1.2 Population of Nowa Huta, Kraków and Poland, 1950–2002

Source: Polish National Censuses 1950, 1960, 1970, 1978, 1988, 2002 (NB: figures for some years are rounded)

Petržalka, by contrast, was for many centuries an independent, rural settlement outside of the city of Bratislava, and divided from the main city by the natural boundary of the Danube River to its north and east. Similarly to Nowa Huta, but some 20 years later, the rural character of Petržalka was dramatically transformed by the construction of low- and high-rise housing blocks, resulting in a dramatic growth of population (Table 1.3) (for further details, see Mládek, 1994, and Mládek et al., 1998). In the same way as Nowa Huta, Petržalka was established to provide mass housing for workers to meet burgeoning labour requirements in the city. But unlike Nowa Huta, Petržalka provided worker housing for a much wider employment base – the diverse economy of what became a capital city region. The construction of Petržalka was (like Nowa Huta and other Central European cities) designed to try to deal with the significant under-investment in housing under state socialism, what Szelényi (1983) has called under-urbanization. Between the 1970s and 1980s, 36,498 flats were built, and the resident population increased to nearly 130,000, largely as a result of significant in-migration from elsewhere in Bratislava, but also from across what was then Czechoslovakia. The new residents were generally characterized as having a high level of economic activity, good levels of education and qualifications (more than half of inhabitants had secondary- and university-level education), and a relatively young age structure (70% of residents were in economically active age groups and only 5% were in ‘post-productive’ age groups). Through this process of urban development Petržalka has been transformed into a high-density urban district, with a relatively young population, many of whom commute to work in other parts of Bratislava. This has created a distinct set of transport, employment and social connections with the wider city and partially limited the development of social and retail infrastructure within the district itself (Miškolci & Mládek, 1994; Mládek, 1994; Mládek et al., 1998).

Table 1.3 Population of Petržalka, Bratislava and Slovakia, 1950–2001

Source: Slovak National Censuses 1950, 1960, 1970, 1978, 1988, 2002

While both Nowa Huta and Petržalka saw different periods of population growth – the main periods of expansion occurring about 20 years earlier in Nowa Huta – both districts continued to see a growth in population until the last decade of twentieth century, when the first signs of population loss were evident (the population of Petržalka reduced by 11,000 and that of Nowa Huta by 6,500) (Tables 1.2 and 1.3). Both districts are also witnessing an overall ageing of the population and these demographic shifts have taken place alongside wider social and economic developments. These are documented in more detail in Chapters Four to Seven, but recent years have seen a diversification of land use and population in both Nowa Huta and Petržalka. In Petržalka, the 1990s saw a dynamic construction boom with development of new, private housing blocks, office space, shopping centres and hypermarkets. Once known as the dormitory housing estate for the wider city of Bratislava, Petržalka has today been transformed into a much more multi-functional space. Petržalka’s location as part of the capital city and its proximity to the border with Austria have meant that pressures for growth have been somewhat more significant than in Nowa Huta, but Kraków’s booming economy – and available space – have fed major changes in Nowa Huta too. Many new hypermarkets have been constructed in Nowa Huta and vast new estates of private housing have also been developed. Much of this development has taken place on Nowa Huta’s western and north-western edges, eroding the belt of land which lay undeveloped between Nowa Huta and Kraków for 50 years.

The social situation of households and poverty in Nowa Huta and Petržalka

In Chapters Four to Seven we focus on the range of social and economic practices developed and adopted by individuals and households in Nowa Huta and Petržalka. These attempts to sustain social reproduction in neo-liberalizing cities are, of course, situated in a context of increasing poverty and inequality in the two districts as the uneven social and economic transformations impact on resident households. Using equivalized household per capita income relative to regional median income levels, 10% of surveyed households in Nowa Huta and 15% of those in Petržalka fell below the ‘at risk of poverty’ level (Table 1.4).11 In total, 28% of surveyed households in Nowa Huta and 51% of those in Petržalka received incomes placing them below the regional median income. At the same time, over 40% of surveyed households in Nowa Huta and 30% of Petržalka households received incomes placing them above 140% of the median, reflecting the growing polarization of household income in the two cities.

Table 1.4 ‘Risk of poverty’ and social exclusion in Nowa Huta and Petržalka

Source: Household survey

Looking at overall household structure and levels of social exclusion in Nowa Huta, approximately half of adult-only households (one adult, 44%; two adults, 55%) were concentrated in the highest income category of 140% of the median income, while the worst income situation was found in single-parent households, with 60% of these surveyed households falling below 60% of the median income, echoing national patterns. The proportion of surveyed households which were ‘at risk’ of poverty was much lower for households without children. Levels of educational attainment were also very closely connected to risk of poverty: households comprised of university graduates were far more likely to appear in the wealthier categories and those with a basic education or less were concentrated in the very low income category.

In Petržalka, there was a clear connection between the likelihood of surveyed households being at risk of poverty and the number of children present: 36% of surveyed households without children were found below the median income, whilst 79% of surveyed households with children were below this level. The proportion of surveyed households which were ‘at risk’ of poverty was much lower for households without children. For example, around 40% of all surveyed households with just one or two adult members were concentrated in the highest income category. All single-parent households with children were below the median income. For households with children, higher levels of poverty risk were found in households with younger children; older dependent children were likely to be university-level students, who may also have been working and contributing to household income. There was also a positive relationship between education level and the extent of ‘risk of poverty’ among households: surveyed individuals with higher education were more likely to be living in households with the highest incomes.

Neighbourhoods

Within Nowa Huta and Petržalka, Domesticating Neo-Liberalism focuses on the economic practices and social reproduction of households in particular neighbourhoods chosen to reflect a range of socio-economic characteristics and to enable us to capture the diversity of economic life. Neighbourhoods were selected on the basis of a range of criteria, including relative levels of poverty and social exclusion (judged from preliminary analysis of census data in Petržalka, data on housing debt in Nowa Huta and detailed field observation), location and accessibility in relation to the main city, period of construction and types of blocks. In choosing the neighbourhoods in each community, we also considered issues such as the history of the neighbourhood, flat and block size, as well as proximity to markets, allotment gardens and public transport. Within each neighbourhood, individual housing blocks – which were the primary unit through which we accessed respondents – were again chosen to reflect the range of socio-economic situations, including levels of poverty, block size, and demographic composition (see Table 1.5 and 1.6).

Table 1.5 Surveyed neighbourhoods in Nowa Huta

Source: Polish National Census, 2002; field observations and household survey

Table 1.6 Surveyed neighbourhoods in Petržalka

Source: Slovak census, 2001, field observations and household survey

Petržalka is divided into 24 main neighbourhoods. The three neighbourhoods that were selected for this research each have a similar population size, but reflect a range of social status positions. The Haanova neighbourhood, with a population just over 4,500, is located close to the city centre, just south of the River Danube, and has the most positive social characteristics among the three neighbourhoods in Petržalka (Plate 1.1). Unemployment rates were the lowest among all neighbourhoods in the district (10%)12 and the proportion of the population with a university degree was 19%, which was the highest level for the whole of Petržalka. Haanova was one of the earliest developments of Petržalka in the 1970s and is dominated by smaller, four-storey blocks, which have more green space between them than in other parts of the district. Haanova is also close to the centre of Petržalka with good public transport connections.

Plate 1.1 Haanova, Petržalka

The Gessayova neighbourhood, by contrast, is an area with a much poorer social structure (Plate 1.2). Like Haanova, Gessayova is located close to the city centre, and has a population of just over 4,500, but the built form and the social characteristics of the neighbourhood are very different. The unemployment rate was among the highest for Petržalka (12%); the area had the lowest proportion of population with university education (14%); and a relatively large young population (the highest in Petržalka at 12% of the total population of the neighbourhood). The neighbourhood comprises a single, wall-like 12-storey block of apartments, a large proportion of which are small, one-bedroom flats that have experienced some rapid changes in ownership.

Plate 1.2 Gessayova, Petržalka

The Lúky-sever neighbourhood was selected as an ‘average’ Petržalka neighbourhood incorporating a range of both middle-status and poorer residents (Plate 1.3). The population in the neighbourhood was almost 5,400 and the unemployment rate was 11%. The housing structure consists mainly of blocks typically ranging from four to twelve floors, with the majority being eight-storey buildings. Lúky-sever is located further from the city centre and, like many neighbourhoods to the south of Petržalka, was built most recently (between 1981 and 1990). It is closest to the main centre of hypermarket development on the western arterial road of Petržalka and one of the main outdoor markets is very close.

Plate 1.3 Lúky-sever, Petržalka

In similar ways to Petržalka, the four neighbourhoods (osiedla in Polish) in Nowa Huta represent contrasting socio-economic fortunes. Osiedle Willowe and Osiedle Górali are two neighbourhoods located in so-called old Nowa Huta (Plates 1.4 and 1.5). Willowe is one of the two oldest neighbourhoods, located at the easternmost edge of Nowa Huta and constructed in the late 1940s for the first workers who were employed to build the steelworks. It consists of small brick-built blocks (three or four storeys) built around playgrounds and other green space, and is adjacent to Nowa Huta’s two major allotments sites. The population is around 2,000 to 2,500, living in approximately 30 blocks and smaller (one- or two-room) flats predominate. The population here is older than the Nowa Huta average, with many resident since the 1950s. Not only does that mean that fewer are economically active, but also that social networks are more deeply rooted. Because of the smaller apartment size, households tend to be smaller. Górali