Resilience among vulnerable households in Europe : questions, concept, findings and implications

The paper shows the results of the RESCuE project, an in-depth qualitative investigation of 250 vulnerable households, their living conditions and socioeconomic practices across nine European countries on the background of the European crisis since 2008. After refining the concept and developing an analytical framework, three major findings are in the focus: First, the concept of resilience proves to be useful and transferable into poverty and social policy research under certain prerequisites. Second, a wide scope of interrelated, substitutable and polyvalent practices allows the very few resilient households to gain their livelihood from mixed sources. Among some of them, direct transfer incomes play only a minor role. Third, there is a surprising high relevance of common goods for low income households. Moreover, certain cultural patterns of knowledge and values, and personal networks also play a crucial role for some doing better than other vulnerable households. Policy implications include first the continuing need for the welfare state, as resilience is vulnerable itself. Second, social policy needs to care for common goods of a considerable scope, available for all citizens, but mostly needed by those living on low income.