Search

A broad discussion and a large number of documents and reports on inequality and poverty have been published in Spain during the last years, mainly as a consequence of the intense worsening of poverty and inequality levels during the economic crisis. After some explanations on the main concepts related to these concepts, the paper offers some data of inequality and poverty ratios and tries to yield some light on the main causes that can help to understand such results. In this respect, market income distribution and the redistributive capacity of the public policies are given special emphasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the impact of poverty during the process of transition to adult life in Spain within the context of the current crisis. It conceptualises young people by means of social criteria, through a multidimensional analysis of vulnerability and a methodological triangulation that combines quantitative analysis (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, EU-SILC, 2011) with qualitative analysis, through biographical interviews. It localizes the existence of socially differentiated juvenile social groups within the contemporary social structure of Spain. It also shows how each social position is affected by specific forms of vulnerability. Finally, it evaluates the process of integration of this social position in the subjectivity and practices of Spanish youths in terms of reaction strategies in the face of poverty, degradation of identity, and social isolation: everything from the alternative search (often alegai, illegal and/or stigmatized) for material resources, to subjective mechanisms for relief from or relativization of their living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis presented shows the existence of different forms of social vulnerability distributed heterogeneously among different young social groups. This assertion is sustained in a methodology of construction of social juvenile groups whose aim was to break the artificial homogenization usually used for the concept of youth. Youth is not considered here simply as a set of individuals who share the same cohort of age, but as a heterogeneous group of individuals who share similar social conditions of existence as they integrate into the labour market and become independent from their families. The result has been the detection of seven ideal types of juvenile social groups in Spain: young prosperous adults, rural adolescents, disadvantaged adolescents, wealthy urban teens, disqualified youth, young precarious adults, and juvenile elite. Finally, we have analyzed how each one of these juvenile groups presents a specific morphology of vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]