Making Ends Meet

John Boswell and Anna Killick from the Centre for Political Ethnography worked with the Southern Policy Centre and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on a research project exploring pockets of severe multiple deprivation across the South Coast region.

The research offers a timely corrective to over-simple ideas about an English North-South divide. It highlights the significance of ‘hidden’ deprivation in affluent areas. It also provides some depth and nuance to our understanding of the broader effects of deprivation by reporting the voices of everyday people experiencing that deprivation.

The research is relevant to the continuing debate about the ‘left behind’ in Britain and to the drivers of social upheaval and political disaffection. A summary of the report can be found here .
The stars of the event were members of the Panel, which included citizens who had taken part in the fieldwork. They spoke openly and frankly about their experience of deprivation.