ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social resources as a means to preserve a grip on difficult situations. It concentrates on active measures, embedded in the contexts of the immediate social and institutional opportunity structures. Coping strategies in dealing with neighbourhood related problems of a more general nature were often of a mixed nature, combining network resources and institutional provisions. Coping strategies for shared problems related to hard living conditions or over-burdening demands that were more informally dealt with. Research on coping strategies of young unemployed adults also points to the importance of having access to informal network resources in finding jobs in the (in)formal economy. Within the socio-cultural framing there are possibilities of developing and enhancing social resource structures. After all, the more policy measures address people on existing networks and cultural contacts, the more necessary it is to activate already existing social networks and to mobilise social resources within organised resident groups, an emphasis on bonding resources uniting people locally.
