A desqualificação social da classe média em Portugal: uma abordagem qualitativa

The present investigation, has the purpose to analyze the vulnerabilities that affect middle class families, pursuing the comprehension of the dimensions related to economical crisis, income and family breakdown, social disqualification and social suffering.This work was based, as one of the main theoretical axes of research, in Serge Paugam's essay on the new poverty. Based on this concept as representation and analytical category, a proposal was made to re-read the concept of social disqualification faced to the challenges of the middle class in the face of the contemporary economic crisis.This empirical research adopts a qualitative approach and is based on twenty interviews of middle-class citizens who experience or experienced social disqualification. The interviews have the principle of maximum heterogeneity. To apply coding and categorization, it was used MAXQDA software for the analysis of qualitative data.This research suggests we are facing citizens who deviate from the attributes pointed out by the literature to the middle class, as a result of the trajectories of downward social mobility or stagnant upward mobility caused by the processes of economic and social vulnerability to which they were subjected.All the interviewees suffered from processes of downward social mobility or dynamics of stagnant ascensional mobility, and that a large part of the citizens do not seek for social services, mobilizing support networks and family solidarity instead.