Resilience, agency and coping with hardship: evidence from Europe during the Great Recession

Journal article

Abstract:: This paper aims to contribute to the growing literature on resilience by focusing on coping with hardship during the Great Recession, drawing upon primary data gathered through household and key informant interviews in nine European countries. As the resilience approach highlights agency, the paper examines the nature of household responses to hardship during this period on the basis of the ‘structure - agency problem’. An important contribution of this paper is to identify different forms of agency and discuss their implications. More specifically, we conceptualise three different types of agency in coping with hardship: absorptive, adaptive and transformative. Analysis of the findings indicates that structural constraints remain prominent. Most coping mechanisms fall under the category of absorptive and adaptive agency characterised here as burden-bearing actions that ‘conform’ to changing circumstances rather than shaping those circumstances.

Files:: resilience agency and coping with hardship JSP prepub.pdf

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Keywords:: Europe

hardship

poverty

resilience

Great Recession

structure and agency
Pubs id:: pubs:909647
UUID:: uuid:12843120-4238-4afa-9511-f42dbd3d6fac
Local pid:: pubs:909647
Source identifiers:: 909647
Deposit date:: 2018-08-23
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_1284312042384afa9511f42dbd3d6fac

Copyright holder:: Cambridge University Press
Notes:: © Cambridge University Press 2018. This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from Cambridge University Press at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279418000624. A correction to this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279418000727

Licence:: Terms and Conditions of Use for Oxford University Research Archive

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