Life Trajectories as Products and Determinants of Social Vulnerability

Abstract

This chapter aims at uncovering the heuristic potential associated with analyzing family and occupational trajectories holistically for the study of social vulnerability. Empirically, sequence analysis shows that distinct and enduring structuring processes shape individual life courses. Long term historical processes contribute to standardize or to the contrary to diversify life trajectories. Institutional mechanisms based among others on gender differentiation lead to uneven participation in the labor market and in family life for women and men. The ways in which an individual trajectory unfolds in one social domain is influenced by the way it unfolds in another domain. Over their life course, individuals accumulate positive or negative life experiences closely linked to resources availability. For instance, the experience of parenthood can be simultaneously fulfilling and stressful; its actual impact on individuals depends on previous vulnerability as well as on active and dormant resources. Variations regarding cultural, socioeconomic or relational resources embedded in personal networks available to individuals are key indicators to explain the different patterns following which life trajectories are shaped over time and systemically associated with social vulnerability. This chapter shows that life trajectories have to be understood dynamically as being both a product and a determinant of social vulnerability.