Caring for a ‘Left Behind’ Community: How Care Becomes Resistance in Deindustrialised South Wales
Olivia Frigo-Charles

In a South Walian village once influenced by the rhythm of coal mines and steelworks, a man gently knocks on the door of a modest bungalow. He waits a moment. The door creaks open slowly. “Hi Ann, how are you today?” he asks. She looks at him with a faint flicker of confusion before her expression brightens: “You want a cup of tea, love?” “That’d be lovely, Ann,” he replies, stepping inside without hesitation. He walks straight to the hallway cupboard, opens a drawer, and pulls out a well-thumbed notebook. “Ah, I see Joan was here yesterday. Did you enjoy your Welsh cakes and a cuppa?” Another flicker of uncertainty, followed by a soft smile. Ann has dementia. Her condition has deteriorated quickly since the death of her husband. Though professional carers now visit twice daily, their care is rushed and impersonal, constrained by the strict time limits set by the private care companies that employ them. The carers are unaware of her food preferences. Meals are left untouched. Medication is delivered, but without the comfort of conversation or familiarity. Most days, she sits alone, sometimes talking to the garden gnome in her back garden. In the absence of personalised support from the state, her neighbours have stepped in. Friends from the chapel she once attended, the nurse who lives a few houses down, even the local pastor – they’ve created an informal rota, ensuring someone checks in on Ann every day. To avoid unsettling her with questions she cannot answer, they use a shared notebook to log each visit and know who was there last. It’s a small gesture that brings Ann calm and helps them coordinate care.

This is community quietly stepping in where formal systems fall short. In a landscape marked by the absence of a well-functioning welfare system and state support, these everyday acts keep people from slipping through the cracks. Shared vulnerability becomes the foundation of new forms of solidarity (Butler 2004). But this also poses a deeper question: is this just kindness, or something more political? Many residents described stepping in where the state had retreated during my fieldwork[i], helping one another because no one else would. So, what happens when the state withdraws, but people refuse to look away and let each other fall?

The Big Picture: What’s Happening Here?

This scene is not unique for this particular deindustrialised village in South Wales. Across much of South Wales and in many other parts of the world, deindustrialisation has left visible marks: silent factories, boarded-up shops, and crumbling infrastructure. The closure of the coal mines under the Thatcher government in the 1980s dismantled the tightly woven social networks that had formed around them. For many, it wasn’t just an economic loss but an unravelling of a shared way of life. What followed were decades of disinvestment, cuts to public services, and a political narrative that framed these communities as ‘left behind’ (see e.g. Downe and Taylor-Collins 2019; Pike et al. 2024). This also translates to how people feel in relation to other regions in the same country. Welsh identity has long been shaped by the experience of being politically, economically, and culturally subordinate to England. From Edward I’s conquest in the 13th century to the Acts of Union in the 16th century, which formally integrated Wales into the English legal and political system, this history of incorporation has left lasting traces.[ii] The suppression of the Welsh language – imposed from outside, but also, as historian Martin Johnes (2019) notes, sometimes internally adopted for reasons of economic pragmatism – contributed to a complex legacy of accommodation and loss. This is a past that has produced enduring narratives of marginalisation and shaped the collective memory of many Welsh communities. 

More recently, the further dismantling of Wales’s industrial base has reinforced these feelings of neglect. In 2024, the winding down of Tata Steel UK’s blast furnaces in Port Talbot reopened familiar wounds.[iii] The furnaces were not just a workplace but part of the community’s identity. Their closure marked yet another rupture in the social and economic fabric of the region. As one steelworker put it:

“It doesn’t have to be that way. With the right investment and government support, there’s potential to grow the steel industry and everything around it. There’s talk of a transition fund, but similar promises were made to Ebbw Vale and never materialised.” (Interview with Paul, Port Talbot, April 2024)

Residents recall the scrapped Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project, the abandoned plans to electrify the railway west of Cardiff, and the many regeneration schemes that never made it past glossy brochures.[iv] There is a sense of déjà vu: a weary familiarity with being promised a future that never arrives. Over the past decade, regional development in the UK has been hindered by fragmented and short-term funding schemes, severe austerity-driven cuts to local government budgets, and the post-Brexit loss of EU funds, all of which have particularly impacted public services and quality of life in weaker regions (Fai and Tomlinson 2023). Like many regions across Britain, the council in which the fieldwork for this study took place has experienced over a decade of austerity, with more than £100 million cut from its revenue budget since 2008. These reductions have led to the scaling back of non-statutory services such as youth clubs, leisure centres, parks, and libraries, while school closures and staff reductions have further reflected the strain. Despite some support from the Welsh Government, ongoing funding gaps have forced the council to make efficiency savings, raise council tax, and warn that it may have to become a smaller organisation focused only on essential services in the future. In relation to health care, austerity accelerated the outsourcing of professional care to private or third-sector providers. Meanwhile, investment continues to flow toward London and the Southeast (Ernst & Young Global Limited 2025), reinforcing the feeling that Wales is not simply overlooked, but deliberately left behind (a most recent example that reignited this narrative was the government’s decision to save the Scunthorpe steel plant in England whilst the blast furnaces in Port Talbot were left to wind down only a few months prior).

Wales has nurtured a long tradition of resistance: from the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in the 1400s to the miners’ strikes of the 1980s. These (hi)stories are constantly reproduced and become part of the collective memory. In 2024, protest banners and union meetings in Port Talbot echoed that legacy. Though the planned strike was called off under pressure, after the company threatened an earlier closure, the mobilisations reflected deep emotions:

“It invokes anger, passion, and the fight. People want to stand up and be counted. [...] If they’ve never experienced the class struggle or had to decide between paying the gas bill or buying food, they’re less likely to fight because they don’t know life without security” (Interview with Paul, Port Talbot, April 2024)

The quote illustrates both the emotional dimension of resistance and its uneven distribution within the community. The shared histories can motivate political engagement, but they also influence who feels compelled to act but also who remains silent. However, resistance doesn’t look the same for everyone, and it doesn’t necessarily need to take the form of public protest. More often, it is woven into the routines of everyday life.

How Care Becomes Resistance

This quiet resistance is particularly significant in contexts where neoliberalism and austerity have eroded welfare structures. Here, care emerges as a practical response to systemic abandonment, but it can also be seen as a political act. This aligns with James C. Scott’s (1989) concept of ‘everyday resistance’, which describes the subtle, often hidden practices through which marginalised groups push back by avoiding direct confrontation, such as protest or mobilisation, and refuse to fully submit to imposed norms. In the context of South Wales, acts of mutual support and care respond to the retreat of public services. These are political interventions that sustain life and defy the dominant logic of individualism and market efficiency, even without the form of protest. 

Feminist scholars have long argued that unpaid care is a politically significant form of labour essential to society, yet systematically devalued – especially when performed by women, the elderly, and the working class (Tronto 1993; Fraser 2004). Under neoliberalism, responsibility for the health and the resilience of the community and its members has shifted from the state to individuals (Joseph 2013). This has become a reality in Wales, especially since the 1980s, when public services were cut and communities expected to fend for themselves (Peck and Tickell 2002). While cities and regions were reimagined as entrepreneurial actors competing for investment and recognition, much of South Wales was excluded from these supposed opportunities, as seen in large infrastructural regeneration projects (like the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon or the rail electrification; see endnotes) which never materialised. In this context, contemporary welfare is increasingly taking the form of ‘community capitalism’, where voluntary initiatives are used to offset shrinking public services, blurring the line between unpaid care and market logic (van Dyk and Haubner 2021). In a system that persistently undervalues care (especially in the light of most recent developments of creeping privatisation within the UK’s National Health Service and treating public care as a cost rather than a collective right), the burden of care has continued to fall on individuals and informal networks. Initiatives like self-organised systems of care and food-sharing schemes resist the framing of care as a private obligation.[v] These practices prioritise collective well-being over individual gain and express solidarity through action. In doing so, they quietly resist the terms of neoliberal restructuring and its emphasis on self-reliance and competition, challenging them not through confrontation, but by sustaining life outside its logic.

What emerges in these deindustrialised places is a redefinition of resilience. It is not passive endurance nor the romanticised image of working-class grit. It is an active, collective practice grounded in reciprocity and refusal. In communities shaped by abandonment, everyday acts of care become a form of political agency: Sustaining life – together – is already resistance.

But Is This Enough? The Limits of Informal Care

But resilience has limits. In South Wales, I often encountered informal carers – mostly women – who were overburdened, unpaid or underpaid, and largely invisible. They stepped in where public services had receded, becoming the ‘infrastructure’ (Simone 2021) holding everyday life together. In a region marked by decades of deindustrialisation, welfare cuts, and economic neglect, these acts of care – while essential – can unintentionally legitimise state withdrawal. They may foster empowerment and solidarity, yet are easily co-opted into narratives that celebrate endurance. Because resilience is then so often framed in positive terms, it risks depoliticising crisis: shifting responsibility onto individuals and communities, normalising precarity, and ultimately producing exhaustion (Graefe 2019; Joseph 2013). Such dynamics can cultivate political passivity, as people come to accept precarious conditions rather than challenging the structures that produce them (Fassin 2021). This raises a critical question: does community care build collective power, or does it simply let the state off the hook?

Paul Willis’s (1981) analysis of working-class youth offers a useful lens here. His study shows how acts of resistance can become performances of class identity that, paradoxically, reproduce their social position. Similarly, in South Wales, the pride in ‘looking after our own’ reinforces expectations of self-sufficiency and hierarchies of class, gender, and responsibility. Informal care alone cannot dismantle structural inequality. Without political transformation, such as investment in public services, recognition of care as essential social infrastructure, and fair labour conditions, such practices remain palliative rather than transformative. They help communities survive, but survival is not the same as justice. 

Yet despite these limitations, care retains radical potential. It is more than a coping mechanism: it is a quiet refusal of the logic of individualism and market efficiency, as well as a space for reimagining political resistance and maintaining dignity from the ground up. As Silvia Federici (2012) reminds us, such practices also serve as a form of collective education and a reclaiming of history as a shared project, countering neoliberalism’s tendency to frame the past and future as shaped solely by individual effort. To fully realise its potential, care must not be treated as a substitute for political change, but as one strand of a larger struggle to reclaim what has been lost and to create futures not defined by abandonment.

What’s Next? Hope, Action, and the Bigger Fight

As shown, resistance isn’t always a loud protest. Sometimes, it’s a discreet ticketing system in the local pub, allowing patrons to pre-pay for meals that others can quietly collect when times are hard. Sometimes it’s a neighbour passing on outgrown children’s clothes to a young family, with no expectation of payment. These are not grand gestures, but they matter. Resistance can simply mean a village refusing to be forgotten. Despite the exhaustion, despite the gaps, acts of care persist. And perhaps these acts are more than responses to decline: they are expressions of collective imagination. An imagination of what the future of these communities could look like. This is what Markus Keck and Patrick Sakdapolrak (2013) refer to as transformative capacity: a form of resilience built through participation and doing, not just declaring. These everyday gestures help reweave a social fabric worn thin by decades of political neglect instead of merely patching holes.

Across Wales, there are signs of a broader rethinking of economic priorities. The concept of The Foundational Economy, which has been taken up by the Welsh Government, seeks to reposition sectors such as care, education, housing, food, and energy as essential infrastructures of everyday life, rather than as conventional markets (Welsh Government 2025). Pilot projects and policy shifts, as well as the Well-being of Future GenerationsAct of 2015, suggest a shift away from purely profit-oriented service provision (Future Generations Commissioner for Wales 2025). The latter, in particular, has drawn international interest and is often cited as a model for sustainable policy-making. Yet questions remain about the reach and impact of such initiatives. In many deindustrialised communities, people continue to rely on informal support networks to meet basic needs, casting doubt on the practical reach and transformative potential of such policy frameworks.

The danger persists that such community care efforts are praised as resilience, while the government and public services retreat further. That is why it is important to recognise: care work does not simply fill the gaps. It builds alternatives and reminds us that another way is possible. One where the economy centres on human needs rather than profit margins. One where looking after one another is not treated as a private virtue but recognised as a collective right.

And then, there’s Ann.

She still lives in her small bungalow, her memory slipping a little more each month. The official carers come and go – brief, scheduled visits, hurried and impersonal. But it’s the neighbours, the friends from chapel, the nurse down the road who make the real difference. The rota still hangs on the wall. The notebook is still being filled. Someone always pops in for a cuppa, a chat, or just to check she’s okay.

There is no budget line for this kind of care. No performance indicator or funding scheme to measure its value. And yet, it holds her life together. And it holds something else together, too: the social glue of a place that refuses to disappear. Here, care is a quiet act of resistance. It shifts the focus from production to reproduction, from profit to people. Care is not a fallback when everything else collapses: it is what sustains everything in the first place.

The challenge now is to ensure that these practices are not just reactive responses to neglect but part of a broader movement for systemic change. This challenge lies not only with local communities but with the government, policymakers, institutions, and society at large. Grassroots initiatives can demonstrate what care-centred futures might look like, yet they cannot shoulder the burden of transformation alone. For such practices to become truly transformative, they need to be recognised and supported by political structures that redistribute responsibility and resources through public investment, fair working conditions, and the revaluation of care as essential social infrastructure. It requires governments to move beyond rhetoric about community resilience and commit to rebuilding welfare systems that protect these communities. Because it’s not just about helping Ann. It’s about refusing to accept a system that forgets people like her, and about imagining and building a future not in spite of vulnerability, but through it – together, across communities, institutions, and the state.

 

References

Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

Downe, James, and Emma Taylor-Collins. 2019. At the Tipping Point? Welsh Local Government and Austerity. Wales Centre for Public Policy [Online]. Available at: https://wcpp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/190418-Austerity-Report-FINAL-1.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2025.

Van Dyk, Silke, and Tine Haubner. 2021. Community-Kapitalismus. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.

Ernst & Young Global Limited. 2025. UK Regional Economic Forecast 2025 [Online]. Available at: www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-unified-site/ey-com/en-uk/newsroom/2025/03/ey-uk-regional-economic-forecast-03-2025.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2025.

Fai, Felicia M., and Philip R. Tomlinson. 2023. Levelling up or down? Addressing Regional Inequalities in the UK. Contemporary Social Science 18(3–4):285–97. doi:10.1080/21582041.2023.2282161.

Fassin, Didier. 2021. Crisis. InWords and Worlds: A Lexicon for Dark Times, edited by Veena Das and Didier Fassin, 261–76. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Fraser, Nancy. 2004. Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition. In Matters of Culture: Cultural Sociology in Practice, edited by Roger Friedland and John Mohr, 227–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Federici, Silvia. 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland, CA: PM Press.

Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. 2025. Future Generations Report 2025 [Online]. Available at: futuregenerations.wales/cym/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Future-Generations-Report-2025.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2025.

Welsh Government. 2025. The Foundational Economy [Online]. Available at: www.gov.wales/foundational-economy. Accessed 20 October 2025.

Graefe, Stefanie. 2019. Resilienz im Krisenkapitalismus: Wider das Lob der Anpassungsfähigkeit. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Johnes, Martin. 2024. Welsh Not: Elementary Education and the Anglicisation of Nineteenth-Century Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Johnes, Martin. 2019. Wales: England’s Colony? The Conquest, Assimilation, and Re-Creation of Wales. Cardigan: Parthian Books.

Joseph, Jonathan. 2013. Resilience as Embedded Neoliberalism: A Governmentality Approach. Resilience 1(1):38–52. doi:10.1080/21693293.2013.765741.

Keck, Markus, and Patrick Sakdapolrak. 2013. What Is Social Resilience? Lessons Learned and Ways Forward. Erdkunde 67(1):5–19. doi:10.3112/erdkunde.2013.01.02.

Peck, Jamie, and Adam Tickell. 2002. Neoliberalizing Space. Antipode 34(3):380–404. doi:10.1111/1467-8330.00247.

Pike, Andy, Vincent Béal, Nicolas Cauchi-Duval, Rachel Franklin, Nadir Kinossian, Thilo Lang, Tim Leibert, Danny MacKinnon, Max Rousseau, Jeroen Royer, Loris Servillo, John Tomaney, and Sanne Velthuis. 2024. ‘Left Behind Places’: A Geographical Etymology. Regional Studies, 58(6):1167–1179. doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2023.2167972.

Scott, James C. 1989. Everyday Forms of Resistance. The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 4(89):33-62. doi:10.22439/cjas.v4i1.1765.

Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2021. Ritornello: “People as Infrastructure”. Urban Geography 42(9):1341–48. doi:10.1080/02723638.2021.1894397.

TETHYS. 2025. Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon (SBTL) [Online]. Available at: https://tethys.pnnl.gov/project-sites/swansea-bay-tidal-lagoon-sbtl. Accessed 20 October 2025.

Tronto, Joan C. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.

Welsh Affairs Committee. 2018. The Cancellation of Rail Electrification in South Wales. First Report of Session 2017–19 [Online]. Available at: publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwelaf/403/403.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2025.

Willis, Paul. 1981. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Morningside Edition. New York: Columbia University Press.

 

Caring Resistance – Caring Solidarity. Ko-Artikulation queerer Fürsorge. Ein Special Feature im kuckuck (2/25)
mit Sascha Sistenich, jJsmith, hørmie

In dieser Folge sprechen Sascha Sistenich, jJSmith und hørmie über die Bedeutung von Für_Sorge und Solidarität im queeren Aktivismus – zwischen Erschöpfung, Gemeinschaft und widerständiger Praxis. Aus wissenschaftlicher und aktivistischer Perspektive diskutieren sie, warum fürsorgliche Strukturen im Aktivismus notwendig sind und wie sie nachhaltige, solidarische Praxen ermöglichen können.

Der Podcast ist Teil eines Public-Anthropology-Projekts für eine Ausgabe des Kuckucks zum Thema Care und Aktivismus. Der Dialog zwischen Podcast und Text zeigt, wie sich queere Sorgepraktiken, Solidarität und Forschung als miteinander verflochtene, fürsorgliche Prozesse verstehen lassen – jenseits neoliberaler Logiken von Produktivität.

Die Episode zeigt, wie Care in queeren Bewegungen mehr als Nettigkeit ist: sie ist widerständig, sie ist relationale Politik – und sie ist ein Werkzeug gegen Vereinzelung, Prekarität und Erschöpfung. Caring Resistance heißt hier: Forschung als Beziehungspraxis – eine Ko-Artikulation von Wissen, Affekt und Verantwortung.

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Hier finden Sie den Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/06uixdDkiDGxUodzqUcDm5?si=oiGK1EczTcGi1k8-P9vIEA