Lives escaping from poverty: social mobility in working-class contexts of relocation (2007-2010)

Abstract

Evidence gathered since the late 2000s has suggested that a part of the working class goes through episodes of poverty without becoming chronically poor. Drawing on a project conceived to capture successful movements that escape severe or extreme destitution and deprivation, and based on an ethnography of28 families in two public housing estates in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, this article shows how poverty emerged in their lives, under what conditions it was possible to overcome it, and how they identify the positions they have conquered within structures of inequalities and social hierarchies.