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Based on the study of unemployment experiences of female ex-workers in a ceramics factory in Coimbra (Centre Region of Portugal), that went bankrupted in 2001, this article consists of two main parts. The first part discusses the outline of the analytic grid used in the qualitative research to understand unemployment experiences, and presents some of the main results obtained. The second part highlights the unemployment lived experiences of two women - Teresa and Andreia. It is argued that for unemployed older women in Portugal two main trends emerge: traced destinies, which express themselves through a higher investment in the private sphere; and, foreclosed futures, visible by a sharp reduction in the possible professional options available. These are two trends that, although always present in the Portuguese social configuration and in the labour market organisation, are also relevant to women’s unemployment experiences.

This paper aims to extend the knowledge about how ad hoc accounting and accountability practices arose and were used in the past to face a situation of crisis in the context of local government. With this purpose, it addresses a health public problem in a specific context, the yellow fever epidemic in Cadiz in 1800. The specific characteristics of the setting, where acquaintance with accounting was usual, allow setting the following specific objectives: (1) to explain the genesis of the accountability systems and the accounting itself used for local government management of the epidemic and (2) to explore the versatility and plasticity that accounting background provides to the records produced in this context. To accomplish them, primary sources as well as publications of the time have been considered. The evidence obtained shows that both an accountability system and a basic bookkeeping system influenced by the local accounting and medical background arose in the local context. Moreover, the findings suggest that the generalized accounting background promoted the self-serving use and interpretation of the records by local government, local Church, trade association and medical profession. The value that local society attributed to accounting books was important in this sense.

This article analyses the intrinsic relationships between risk, catastrophe, victims and the questions of trauma. A sociology with disasters is proposed that, beyond a mere sociology of disasters, interrogates and analyses disasters as extreme events that reveal existing social structures, the State, public policies, the dynamics of affected communities and of the dispositives that produce victims and/or citizens. The role of victims and their representative associations in claiming belongings and rights is also analysed. The study of affected communities and of the different emergent social configurations, leads to the discussion about trauma and how victims’ associations and public policies produce trauma communities, and if these can assume an emancipatory nature, bringing along justice, rights and dignity.

Based on an empirical study of the unemployment experiences of middle-aged people who lost their jobs following the closing of a ceramic factory in Coimbra (Portugal), this article shows the extent to which unemployment at a critical moment of workers' personal and professional trajectories reduces the opportunities in the employment market and, when associated with the fragility or absence of mobilizable family resources, amplifies the protective function of the Welfare State. Our empirical evidence points out some of the limitations of the uncritical application of the familialism model of social regulation of unemployment to understand unemployment experiences in Southern Europe countries.