Nostalgia and the cruel promises of austerity: Neoliberal narratives and post-industrial memory in the South Wales coalfield

Austerity in the United Kingdom has been widely framed, in academic and popular representations, as a nostalgic project, drawing legitimacy from idealised images of a resilient past. We argue that these notions of resilience embedded in austerity discourses parallel nostalgic attachments to mining legacies in the South Wales coalfield. Through analysing the promises and strategies behind austerity, we explore its complex dynamics in post-industrial communities marked by long-standing marginalisation and hardship. Based on ethnographic research in the South Wales Valleys, we contend that nostalgia plays a key role in nurturing the ‘cruel optimism’ of austerity, enrolling citizens into its neoliberal logic and material practices. Nostalgic practices such as heritage projects and community initiatives often reinforce values central to austerity, creating a conflicted space where memory serves both empowerment and exploitation. However, amid the legacies of deindustrialisation and austerity, a growing scepticism and recognition of austerity’s failures have given rise to subtle forms of resistance, grounded in community solidarity and care. This resistance, sustained by nostalgic narratives of perseverance and collective identity, holds potential for alternative, transformative politics in the future.