Strategies and images with regard to the crisis in the social space of «new poverty». Social representations and causal attributions

Abstract

This article is based on qualitative research that was carried out in the region of Madrid, which took as objective the exploration of the social space —enormously diverse— linked to that which we might tentatively and problematically call ‘new poverty’. This space is in the process of unbridled amplification, suggesting the emergence of a new ‘social question’. Based on empirical evidence, this paper analyzes the diversity of discursive positions and social representations with regard to the crisis (and in extension about poverty and deprivation), also considering the strategies articulated to confront it. These dimensions would be conformed from the complex and dynamic confluence of ideological spaces, social contexts, and prototypical vital attitudes. Finally, the paper addresses and discusses the attribution of responsibilities that this collective of ‘new poor’ takes upon themselves because of the crisis with respect to distinct political and economic institutions, and social actors.