CLASS STRUCTURES AND CLASS TRAJECTORIES IN PORTUGAL
A systematic survey and analysis of class structure and processes of social mobility in Portugal based on Erik Olin Wright’s analytical model, establishing some international comparisons with other countries included in the University of Wisconsin Madison/USA database.
The neo-Marxist typology used in this study was supplemented with references to other currents, notably those inspired by the work of Weber and Pierre Bourdieu. The results illustrated a set of contrasts and divisions between class categories, at the same time verifying the lack of correspondence between class
“positioning” and “class consciousness”, which orthodoxy has failed to explain.
Issues related to identity, subjectivity, leisure practices and involvement in associations and collective action were some of the aspects highlighted by this project. The diversity of (objective and subjective) positions, primarily within contradictory categories (including the middle class), revealed the relative weakness of these categories, as well as the intensive processes of change, displaying patterns of social mobility in both directions. The statistical weight of the “proletarianised” strata was another feature of Portuguese population which this study revealed in the 1990s, thus anticipating a trend that has been verified in the past decade.