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Short abstract:

Building on Ann Laura Stoler’s framework for understanding imperial ruination, we consider public housing in Amsterdam as the object of ruination. We provide an account of the practices of repair and care by Amsterdammers in order to navigate the politics of ruination at home, which is concurrently an integral aspect to holding the ruins together.

Long abstract:

This paper considers Western European welfare states and its collective provisions as infrastructures of care – infrastructures that were built in industrial economies and have changed as a result of austerity and revisions for decades now. Building on Ann Laura Stoler’s framework for understanding imperial ruination, this paper considers welfare states as the object of various rounds of ruination, leaving contemporary dwellers in Western Europe with welfare debris: structures and pieces that are not the original structure but may be used in everyday life. Studying ruination and debris in the context of welfare opens the possibility to look at how Europeans build a life with the welfare debris that they are left with. This paper considers this question by learning from an ethnographic case in the context of public housing in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We perceive public housing apartments as objects of ruination through a lack of renovation and insulation. Going along with an NGO that conducts insulation repair activities within public houses, we provide an account of the material and immaterial practices of repair and care by dwellers and the NGO workers in order to navigate the politics of ruination at home, which is simultaneously an integral aspect to holding the ruins together. We contribute to our understanding of what a politics of ruination can look like within the context of the history and remains of public housing in Amsterdam, and what the repair and care practices of people within welfare debris mean for making and doing transformations.