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Middle Class Under Pressure. Experiencing Inequalities By Middle Class Members – a Diagnosis, Conditionings and Challenges for Social Policy on a Global Scale
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC19 Sociology of Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
We propose a new perspective in the studies on social inequalities – the one in which the victims of inequalities and the marginalized populations are not only the sub-class, the popular class or cultural minorities, but the middle class so far perceived by social sciences as the privileged one.
Today, the middle class on a global scale has no chances for a lifestyle traditionally assigned to it. The major challenge out of these is the growing social inequality which is not an issue experienced only by the lowest layers of the social structure. The consequences of the great financial crisis have been borne by the middle class.
We wish to answer the following questions: how to define the affiliation to the middle class today? What kind of lifestyle is available to the middle class representatives in various countries and what are its determinants? Is the middle class actually declining and why? How does it try to resolve its own problems resulting from structural conditionings and how does it relieve its frustrations? What frustrates the contemporary middle class? What effects for the style and quality of life of the representatives of different social classes result from particular models or programs of social policy realized in particular countries? What are the political, social and economic effects of the potential intensification of the middle class outrage? We believe that focussing on the economic dimension of social inequalities leads to blindness to the issues of the middle class resulting from the inequalities.
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