New Forms of Solidarity Among Poor: What We Can Learn from Russian Case

The paper examines features of solidarity, i.e. patterns of cooperation, key meanings of this phenomenon, the social context and the social mechanism of its formation after economic crisis at the end of 1990s. The analysis is based on the extended case study conducted in one’s Russian region among registered poor mostly from workers. It is argued that workers of the soviet industry are the main victims of the marketization. They were protected in the soviet time and were unified as hegemony from above, but than they were experienced a sustainable down mobility and radical changes of their status. They became one of the “weak resource” groups in case of their insufficient professional skills (assets) and without possibility of their households to accumulate a home economy, to compensate the long-term restructurisation of the wage employment sphere and the former redistributive system. In the focus of our analysis are reactions of those who have experienced the downward mobility, their reflections on it as well as different ways for restoring their position (through solidarity or mutual aids).