Collective care in turbulent times: ‘it's just people holding each other up in a house that's already collapsing’

Charlie Grosset

Chapter 17 in Disability in a Turbulent Era, 2026, pp 202-212 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter explores how care happens in hard times through the story of Kristina, a disabled woman in England who both gives and receives care. Kristina supports her mother and children, while also needing support herself, and she shows that care is not a simple one-way act but a tangled web involving friends, family, and neighbours. These networks keep people afloat but are fragile and exhausting, especially under austerity. The idea of austerity is where public services have been cut and governments prioritise private sector contracts for these services. Austerity then turns public services into opportunities for profit and cost cutting, meaning that communities absorb the gaps. Kristina's story reveals how giving care can make a person's own needs invisible, as support systems assume she is ‘managing’ and so does not qualify for help. I call this dynamic care collectivity: the shared but unequal circulation of care within families and communities. To examine these tensions, I draw on Nishida's idea of messy dependency, which recognises that care is uneven, and Ahmed and McRuer's concept of the feminist and crip killjoy, which challenges comforting stories about love and resilience. Kristina is such a killjoy, naming the pain and pressure that come with survival. Her account reminds us that collective care is vital, but it cannot replace proper state support.

Keywords: Collective care; Messy dependency; Austerity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035347247
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