We will begin the 2024-2025 academic year with the first seminar led by Alba Lanau, a member of our research group. She is a tenure-track professor and Ramon y Cajal fellow at the Social and Political Science department at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She holds a PhD in Social Policy from University of Bristol. Her main areas of research are poverty and social policy. She has authored over 30 publications on child poverty, child well-being, poverty dynamics and the welfare state using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

On this occasion, she will present the results of joint work with Teresa Habimana Jordana, Tomás Rojas, Maida Juni, Anna Ortiz, Miguel Solana and Toni Lopez-Gay.

The presentation will take place on September 18th, 2:30-3:30 pm, in Room 40.249 (Roger de Llúria building). If you can´t attend in person you can join us online: https://upf-edu.zoom.us/j/97281492427

Abstract: Almost one in three children in Spain live in poverty. Addressing child poverty requires understanding how households' economies are affected by external and internal events, and how they respond to these. To that aim we developed a new timeline based technique: ‘event interviews’. The method complements rather than replaces traditional interviews and allows interviewees to take an active role in recounting their experiences of coping with economic vulnerability and allows a more detailed understanding of the strategies they implement and the barriers they encounter. This talk will present the results of a set of interviews with parents experiencing difficulties to make ends meet, and with service providers in three neighbourhoods in Barcelona. The parent sample is diverse in terms of duration and intensity of economic difficulties.

We find that when faced with economic instability households actively manage resources to cover their needs. Rather than relying on a single source of support, all interviewed households combine multiple responses. We find eight responses families display to respond to shocks: reducing expenses, saving and planning, increasing labour market participation, family support, social and community organisations, housing changes, applying for benefits, and using public services. Both the strategies implemented and their outcomes vary depending on pre-existing resources. Welfare provision is central to households’ strategies. Public services play a set of interlinked roles as providers but also points of identification, diagnosis and coordination of service providers. However, their effectiveness in playing these secondary roles varies spatially. Understanding households’ strategies is particularly relevant in the current context framed by the aftermath of the COVID pandemic and the recent increases in energy prices which affected the most disadvantaged the most.