Meantime WelfareSocial provisioning and community crafting in Britain

As Britain’s social security system fails to ensure food, fuel, and housing security, diverse provisioning actors provide what I call “meantime welfare” – a patchwork of precarious projects at the local level whose scope, resources, and durations are limited and often uncertain. I explore what collective arrangements emerge from meantime welfare, and how they reshape British welfare in the process.

In Britain, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis has seen food and fuel insecurity deepen and spread into previously secure middle classes. An increasing number of people are now facing basic needs crises that don’t seem to be going away any time soon. In the context of a national social security system that is consistently failing to ensure food, fuel, and housing security, diverse provisioning actors (local councils, charities, foundations, social enterprises, schools, etc.) are coming together at the local level to address people’s unmet basic needs. These provisioning actors provide what I call “meantime welfare.” Often unable to ensure that residents can provide for themselves in the long run, provisioning actors fund and/or operate a patchwork of precarious projects at the local level whose scope, resources, and durations are limited and often uncertain. 

My research explores how meantime welfare reshapes sociopolitical relations in Britain, in practice. Taking food provisioning in two London boroughs as a starting point, I ask what collective arrangements emerge when provisioning actors attempt to address residents’ needs. How do projects such as food hubs and pantries craft community in a context of protracted crisis and uncertainty? And how are expectations and assumptions about the British welfare state reshaped in the process?