ABSTRACT
At all project sites, interviewees mention the family as an important resource on which they would rely in a difficult situation, especially their family of origin. However, the samples also encompass a range of situations – such as exclusion from other social relations or the inability to take up paid work – which people attribute to family relations (child care, care for elderly or handicapped family members). Ferrera highlights how the recent critical situation is connected with both external bonds – an extra-market integration crisis, which centred overwhelmingly around the family – and internal bonds, caused by the so-called ‘distributive groups’ set up: ‘social groups whose reason to be has to be found in the acquired right to obtain certain kinds of state services’. Furthermore, the redistribution of the functions of protection and care within the family implies making sacrifices at the level of money, work and personal opportunity.
