Resilience, Coping and Crisis: How European Households Deal with Hardship after the 2008 Financial Crisis

It is well documented that the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 plunged many European countries into financial difficulty, either through sovereign debt crises or crises of the financialised economy. However, what has been less discussed is how European households have dealt, and continue to deal seven years on, with the effects of this crisis on their everyday lives. In particular, little attention has been paid to manifestations of coping and the socio-economic resilience of these households. Resilience has the potential to help academics understand how households deal with hardship in a new light. However, the concept in the social sciences remains largely ambiguous in terms of the characteristics and outcomes of resilience. As part of the EU FP7 funded project RESCuE, we investigate the practices they employ to reduce, protect against, and escape hardship. We find that households employ strategies concerned with: utilising available resources; managing household consumption, and; protecting and increasing household income. We also find that there is a significant physical, mental and emotional toll associated with employing resilient practices, which is particularly true for those households who find themselves experiencing a crisis of hardship for the first time.