Understanding fuel poverty from the bottom up: vulnerability and

social relations

Lucie Middlemiss

Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds

Manchester workshop

14th of May, 2015

Characterising FP from the bottom up

Challenges to Energy Vulnerability:• quality of dwelling fabric• energy costs and supply issues• stability of household income• tenancy relations• social relations within the household and outside• ill health(from Middlemiss and Gillard, 2015)

Example: Ill health

Challenge:Ill Health often requires increased energy consumption

Related challenge:Stability of household income

Resilience:Increased entitlement to benefits and care services. The elderly and those that are recognised to be unwell (disability, incapacity) are best catered for.

Vulnerability: Unrecognised health conditions lead to vulnerability.Responsibility for resolving issues (ill health/fuel poverty) can fall between services.

Implications

• Agency of the fuel poor is limited; • Need to understand household energy

vulnerability as a series of interrelated challenges;

• Precise dynamics of the relationship between challenges is unclear;

• ‘Social relations’ stands out as the challenge that has had the least attention in research to date.

Evidence on social relations

Challenge:Households have a wide variety of different support network arrangements

Resilience:Family and friends help out with fuel bills and fuel-hungry practices.

Vulnerability: People with limited social relations have no one to turn to in times of hardship;Non-negotiable needs of household members can result in unaffordable fuel bills;Tensions within households around practices that use energy.

Individualisation

• Homo Clausus: ‘a little world in himself who ultimately exists quite independently of the great world outside’ (Norbert Elias, 2001, p. 472).

• See Middlemiss, 2014

Anthony Gormley Another Place on Crosby Beach, Liverpool (Source: anthonygormley.com)

Stigma, individualisation and poverty

• Poverty individualised and stigmatised (Shildrick et al., 2013): poor people deny their own poverty and blame ‘the poor’

• Stigma can result in people distancing themselves from close relationships (Shildrick and MacDonald, 2013; Garthwaite, 2015)

• Family and others can increase or diminish resilience to multiple deprivation (O’Leary and Salter, 2014)

Focus on social relations

• What is the current state of social relations among the fuel poor?

• Is energy vulnerability or fuel poverty something that is also associated with stigma?

• How do social relations exacerbate or ameliorate experiences of fuel poverty?