“It feels like somebody cut my legs off”: Austerity, transportation and the ‘web of dispossession’ in Saskatchewan, Canada

Mounting global evidence reveals a rise in austerity driven by neoliberalisation. We explored the health impacts of an austerity decision to shut down the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC) in Saskatchewan, Canada. We conducted 100 semi-structured interviews and 4 focus group discussions with former bus riders and stakeholders in health and social services followed by a member checking exercise. The STC closure has negatively affected health through a web of dispossession where the absence of the bus affects individual former users (through healthcare access, psychosocial and financial impacts), family members (through broken relationships and other burdens), communities (through shrinking commons), and entire systems (such as health services through health worker stress and inefficiencies). Analyses of the health impacts of austerity decisions need to move beyond aggregates of individual users of public services to understand the complex ways in which various communities and systems might be caught up in a web of dispossession through austerity. •Policy choices to cut public transportation deteriorate health outcomes.•Austerity policies affect health through a ‘web’ of negative unintended consequences.•Absence of public transportation has psychosocial health effects.•Austerity is a fundamental driver of poor health and health inequities.