Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 90 (2021): 22–35 © Te Authors doi:10.3167/fcl.2021.900103 Te Janus face of austerity politics Autonomy and dependence in contemporary Spain Susana Narotzky Abstract: How is social reproduction possible in a context of precarious employ- ment and austerity policies that have defunded welfare? Te paradox of autonomy and dependence is present in intergenerational relations of support and confict at various scales. It emerges, on the one hand, in the neoliberal injunction to be individually responsible for one’s own present and future wellbeing, an aspiration that is impossible to fulfll. On the other hand, it is expressed in the increasing recourse by younger active cohorts to the care work and assets of their older kin— in particular retirement pensions and a home. Finally, policy calls to transform the pension system oppose younger and older generations in the accountings of social security fnancial sustainability and question the fairness of existing public pension schemes. Keywords: class struggle, entrepreneurial self, generations, kinship, neoliberalism, pension, privilege, social reproduction “Who gives shelter to a couple with two chil- dren if not your parents? It is very tough, be- cause with 40 years that I have they cannot treat me as if I had 14 . . . and that I have to depend on my parents . . . when I have a husband and children and supposedly I should have an au- tonomy . . . and you go back to being 15 years old and being in your mom and dad’s home, with everything that it implies . . . because since then [when you were 15] you already are 40 years old.” Marta is unemployed and has been living with her parents since 2010 when, unable to pay the mortgage on an apartment she and her hus- band had bought, the couple was evicted. Even- tually, they divorced, the ex-husband moved to another region of Spain, and he stopped provid- ing alimony. She stayed with the children at her parents while she enrolled for various training courses and tried to fnd odd jobs, even as she tried to get fnancial aid from various institu- tional schemes. She confded to me in 2013 that she hates having to “depend” on state “aid”: “I don’t want any aid, what I want is work,” she an- grily asserts. Marta is among a generation of younger adults in Ferrol (Galicia) that have come to de- pend on their parents’ willingness to house them, share their income with them, and care for their children. She speaks of her parents’ generation misapprehension of her situation: “Tey expe-