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from family and friends, and lived in a two-bed social housing flat near Mya’s school. Both Selma and Mya sorely missed their family living in Iran, where the distance became more pronounced by the fact there were few means of communicating with them. When they moved to the new flat there was no telephone line, and Selma worried about paying for the installation and a contract she couldn’t afford. Selma had a cousin who lived in London, who she and Mya would visit once every few months, returning with small trinkets and furnishings for the flat to make it feel more homely. Her cousin, knowing how much she missed family, took out an all-inclusive smartphone contract for her, paying the £39 per month. This was life-changing for Selma. It meant she could speak to her family and friends ‘by texts [WhatsApp] or by internet [Skype], every day’ (taped discussion, May 2014), and for free. It also meant she could call or message her cousin if she needed help or just someone to talk to; they had become a lot emotionally closer as a result. The role of virtual spaces of communication and intimacy may then acquire new meaning and face new struggles in austerity, when access to these technologies and services is limited because of rising costs in relation to income alongside the closure of local libraries as a hub for online communications (see Brewster 2014; Madge and O’Connor 2006; Parrenas 2005; Waters 2002). Some of these themes are continued in Chap. 4. Austerity policies therefore have a direct impact on mundane mobilities, whether in residency, neighbourhoods, commuting, practical logistics, communications or daily movement for socialising, which then affect how these relations are reconstituted in and through austerity. Relational geographies of austerity are revealed; the spaces through, across and between which these relationships are enacted, maintained or usurped; stretching, bending, twisting and shrinking the spatialities and relationalities of family, friendship and intimacy.
Conclusions My aim in this chapter has been to lay the groundwork for conceptualising everyday life in austerity through a relational approach, bringing together ideas about family, friendship and intimate relations as core
