ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates how two different social policy structures can operate on the individual level. That is, how interviewees in the Swedish versus the Spanish material define and perceive their own situation and their social surroundings in terms of available resources and the conditions for coping with social exclusion. The Swedish welfare model even involves the duty of the public system to actively search for and identify unfulfilled needs, but on the other hand the public system reserves the right to decide about the welfare assistance offered in specific situations. In most of the stories collected in Stockholm, the welfare state is the taken-for-granted ‘frame of reference’. The narratives are informed by an understanding, on the part of the interviewee as well as the interviewer, that they live in a welfare society with a specific ideology of collective and state-based solutions and a basic level of social protection.
