Koukaki neighbourhood in Athens, discovered by designers, curators and savvy Airbnb users, September 2018.Aristidis Vafeiadakis/Press Association. All rights reserved.
The Euro-zone crisis that started in 2009 supposedly came to an end in August 2018 with Greece the last European country to exit the crisis phase. Yet, in the meantime, what in fact happened all around Europe is that apparatuses that were working for people’s well-being such as pensions systems, healthcare, education and so forth took one of their most severe hits in recent history.
This did not only happen exceptionally in the name of emergency but as part of much more systematic and widely orchestrated policy paradigm change. For instance, the Dutch king has announced since his inauguration the end of the welfare state and the start of a ‘participation society’. Tory governments in Britain talked about ‘Big society,’ while in places like Greece and Portugal government ministries of social solidarity appeared, requesting society to take over activities previously carried out by the state or by public/private partnerships.
