From images to social identities: stories of working class families on the move - José Cavaleiro Rodrigues

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 with 28 families in two public housing estates in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, this article will start by exposing 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.

Article by José Cavaleiro Rodrigues, illustrated by Animal Waves