How class-created vulnerability shapes biographical agency: Α Case-Study Mixed-Methods research design

Our study aims at shedding light on how class-related vulnerability, far from leading deterministically to social isolation, or blocked mobility, potentially gives rise to biographical agency through which dispossessed subjects deal successfully with the problem. Vulnerability is approached as a life-course phenomenon in the sense that working-class people may lack agency in one period of their life course, but they may implement it in a subsequent life period. By means of a case-study mixed-methods research design, we present quantitative data related to dispossessed conditions of working-class people living in the regional units of Piraeus and West Attica, Greece, two areas which share a rich industrial past and have painfully experienced the impact of the recent economic crisis. The analysis of qualitative data follows, highlighting how agency is temporally and relationally shaped within these conditions.