Throughout Europe, standardised approaches to social policy and practice are being radically questioned and modified. Beginning from the narrative detail of individual lives, this book re-thinks welfare predicaments, emphasising gender, generation, ethnic and class implications of economic and social deregulation.

Contents: Introduction: from biography to social policy ~ Michael Rustin and Prue Chamberlayne; Suffering the fall of the Berlin wall: blocked journeys in Spain and Germany ~ William Hungerbühler, Elisabet Tejero and Laura Torrabadella; Guilty victims: social exclusion in contemporary France ~ Numa Murard; Premodernity and postmodernity in Southern Italy ~ Antonella Spanò; A tale of class differences in contemporary Britain ~ Michael Rustin; The shortest way out of work ~ Numa Murard; Male journeys into uncertainty ~ Elisabeth Ioannidi-Kapolou and Elizabeth Mestheneos; Love and emancipation ~ Birgitta Thorsell; Female identities in late modernity ~ Antonella Spanò; Gender and family in the development of Greek state and society ~ Elizabeth Mestheneos and Elisabeth Ioannidi-Kapolou; Corporatist structure and cultural diversity in Sweden ~ Martin Peterson; 'Migrants': a target-category for social policy? Experiences of first-generation migration ~ Roswitha Breckner; Second-generation transcultural lives ~ Prue Chamberlayne; Biographical work and agency innovation: relationships, reflexivity and theory-in-use ~ Tom Wengraf; Conclusions: social transitions and biographical work ~ Prue Chamberlayne.

"... a series of fascinating and very different accounts of the experiences of people such as those made redundant, migrants, single parents, people leaving school without qualifications ... an empirically grounded, theoretically informed and truly analytical work." SPA News "... this book can be seen as scientific proof that the personal and the human need to be reintroduced into the social political process." European Interests, newsletter, (ESOSC) "A highly exciting and innovative book. This development in ethnographic methods in social research is immensely valuable and relevant to key questions in contemporary societies." Walter Lorenz, Department of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland