RESCuE: Citizens’ Resilience in Times of Crisis

UK Lead and Principal Investigator: Professor Hulya Dagdeviren
Co-Investigator: Professor Ursula Huws
Post-doctoral Researcher: Dr Matthew Donoghue
Funder: EU, Framework Programme 7

A comparative and collaborative research project, involving research institutions across nine European countries to investigate the socio-economic practices of resilience of European households in response to the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.

Aims of the project

1. To analyse the impact of the crisis on households and to examine resilient practices for successfully coping with these impacts of the crisis
2. To deepen the understanding of resilience and contribute to a sociological concept of resilience
3. To explore everyday practices of resilience through ethnographic research and the development of innovative qualitative methods
4. To develop a holistic analytical strategy encompassing economy, society and culture in order to develop a complex understanding of citizens’ resilience
5. To evaluate the role of welfare state institutions and interventions for the resilience of households (as supportive, negligent, or restrictive)
6. To consider resilience as the outcome of practices of individuals, households, and communities
7. To examine differences and similarities of resilience in urban and rural areas
8. To identify and reconstruct different patterns of resilience in a comparative typology
9. To deepen the understanding of how intersecting social inequalities like gender, ethnicity and class are of relevance for the resilient practices of vulnerable households

Project publications