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A Flawed Construct? Understanding and Unpicking the Concept of Resilience in the Context of Economic Hardship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

Paul Hickman
Paul Hickman*
Affiliation:
Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research (CRESR), Sheffield Hallam University E-mail: p.g.hickman@shu.ac.uk
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Abstract

Increasingly, the construct of resilience has been used by social scientists and (social) policy makers in relation to individual resilience to economic hardship. There are a number of issues within the literature on the subject that are unresolved including: whether it is an attribute or a process; the extent to which resilience is a positive phenomenon; the extent to which individuals living in economic hardship have agency; and whether it is finite. The article unpacks these issues, drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal study in Northern Ireland. It found resilience to be a negative experience for study participants, although they did exhibit a number of attributes that may be described as being positive. They were often unable to exercise ‘positive’, transformative agency, because the choices available were limited and pernicious in nature. The article concludes that as an analytical tool for exploring the experiences of people living in economic hardship, the construct of resilience is not helpful.

Keywords

Resilienceeconomic hardshipdisadvantaged neighbourhoodsstructureagency
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 409 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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