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LiVEPOLITICS - Negotiating livelihoods under transformative politics: crisis, policies and practices in Portugal 2008-18

Principal researcher: Antónia Pedroso de Lima

Research group: Governance, Policies and Livelihoods


Keywords

Livelihoods | Public policies | Crisis | Citizenship

Funding Institution

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT)

Partners

ICS-UL

State

Closed

Start date

01-09-2018

End date

31-08-2022

Reference

PTDC/SOC-ANT/32676/2017


Abstract

In the last decade Portugal had three governments with very different political orientations and proposals for the legislative organization of society, each one claiming to initiate a process of transformative politics that would have a positive impact upon Portuguese society. Social policies, legislation on labor, health, education, housing and security have been profoundly altered with each legislative change, impacting in different ways upon the institutions concerned and upon people"s lives. Furthermore, the economic crisis has engendered a crisis in the European model, which are inter-related and reveal a breakdown of social reproduction which puts into question redistribution models both at the macro (market, State), meso (mediating institutions and actors) and micro-scales of social interaction (families, social networks). LIVEPOLITICS focus on the different ways citizens experience the policies which govern their lives in a daily basis, how they implement them and what kind of negotiations can take place in the framework of moral economies. Through a detailed examination of the ways by which specific actors in diverse sectors of society experience legislation and policy orientations through a range of institutions, this project focuses on how perceptions of the legitimacy of policies emerge through policy implementation and negotiation within a wider analytical context of the workings moral economies. The project will focus on: 1) Livelihoods, policies, everyday life strategies; 2) Grassroots economics - definition, value and care regimes, interpretation and ways out of crisis; 3) Public policies, from conception, implementation and impact upon institutions and citizens. The project aims at reflecting on how different sectors of the Portuguese society experience their livelihoods through a permanent relation with state institutions throughout a decade of profound sociopolitical transformations. The strategies to overcome difficulties of provision under an austerity regime that hinders the access to basic social facilities (education and health, p ex.), the creation of new forms of interrelations and support between generations, (material and social) and new forms of solidarity (formal and informal) are the central analytical challenge of LIVEPOLITICS. Our objective is to understand how politics, and in a certain way, the state, is always present in people"s livelihoods. Through ethnographic research in different social contexts of the contemporary Portuguese society, LIVEPOLITICS will analyse the daily expression of transformative politics, how they are ever present on livelihoods, overcoming the idea of the State as an abstraction.

Team

PhD students Full members

Afonso de Castro Bento

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

PhD students Full members

Ana Rita Costa

Practices and Politics of Culture

Full members

Antonio Maria Pusceddu

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Full members

Antónia Pedroso de Lima

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Full members

Catarina Frois

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

PhD students Full members

Cecília Menduni Luís

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Associated researchers

Clara González Cragnolino

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Full members

Cristina Santinho

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Full members

Elizabeth Challinor

Circulation and Place-Making

PhD students Full members

Fernanda Rivas Oliveira

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Full members

João Mineiro

Practices and Politics of Culture

Full members

Manuela Ivone Cunha

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

Full members

Patrícia Alves de Matos

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods

PhD students Full members

Vanessa Iglésias Amorim

Governance, Policies and Livelihoods