The Experience of Unemployment in Portugal: Elaboration of a Typology

Abstract

What is the meaning that the unemployed individuals in Portugal give to this specific experience of their active life? In this article, we relate the structural factors of the experience of unemployment with the analysis of the representations that the unemployed make of their situation and their ways of living this social condition. To this end, a typology of unemployment experiences was constructed from a hundred interviews with the unemployed, in a rural area and in an urban area. We show that the social regulation of unemployment in Portugal protects to a certain extent against stigmatization and, at the same time, offers people who are deprived of employment numerous compensations in terms of social integration and economic resources. In fact, most authors refer to Portugal as an "integrated poverty" society. The porposed typology shows that an experience of unemployment of "traditional" characteristics is even more numerous in Portugal than an experience of unemployment, characteristic of the providential wage society that begins to exist.