The Fragility of Social Status and the Mediocrity of Middle Class Life
in Social Memoirs of the Unemployed
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Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun
Submission date: 2023-02-04
Acceptance date: 2023-07-20
Publication date: 2023-12-13
Polish Sociological Review 2023;224(4):441-462
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
The article contributes to the Polish tradition of research using personal memoirs to illustrate the
experience of everyday life. The authors analyze the experiences of middle-class representatives based on data
collected through a nationwide competition for a diary of an unemployed person. The diarists experienced
unemployment for at least one month between 2016 and 2017. The article shows the fragility of middle-class
status, one that is difficult to achieve and easy to lose. The Polish middle class is under constant threat of being
“washed away” by a wave created by low wages, poor working conditions, insufficient savings, credit burdens, and
the trap of comparing oneself with other representatives of the middle class. The article illustrates the mediocrity
of middle-class life—the disillusionment with the quality of life in the middle of the social structure based on
deficits in health and psychological well-being and disruptions in social relations.
FUNDING
The text was created with funds from the research project “Memoirs of the unemployed. The experience of unemployment and trajectories of exclusion from the perspective of social policy and sociology” (“Pamiętniki bezrobotnych. Doświadczenie bezrobocia i trajektorie wykluczenia z perspektywy polityki społecznej i socjologii”) carried out under an National Science Centre
Poland grant awarded to a research team of Warsaw School of Economics and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in the OPUS 11 competition no: UMO-2016/21/B/HS5/03198.