Poverty Amid Abundance. Poverty and Social Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Europe in an Interdisciplinary Perspective

Early twenty-first-century Europe constitutes a laboratory for one of the most paradoxical phenomena of contemporary security: the persistent and in some places intensifying poverty within the wealthiest societies in the world. Despite an unprecedented level of production, capital accumulation, and welfare state development, in the area of the European Union more than 94 million people — almost one in five inhabitants — are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

 Poverty takes in twenty-first-century Europe heterogeneous and often non-obvious forms: income and material poverty, energy and housing poverty, food poverty, time poverty, digital poverty, both overt and hidden homelessness, child deprivation, the intergenerational inheritance of poverty, and new forms of labour precariat (the working poor). The project assumes that poverty is not merely an economic or social phenomenon but a security problem — a problem of social, health, food, energy, and community security — which threatens the cohesion of democratic political communities, undermines trust in institutions, fosters political polarisation, and creates conditions for the destabilisation of the social order. The aim of the project is an interdisciplinary analysis of poverty and social exclusion in twenty-first-century Europe — its scale, dynamics, structural determinants, and consequences for the security of the political community — taking into account the resilience mechanisms of European social protection systems in the face of the systemic shocks of the twenty-first century.

The project is essentially securitological in character, although it draws extensively on the achievements of several adjacent disciplines. Security studies provide conceptual frameworks for analysing poverty as a problem of the social, health, and community security of the state, as well as analytical tools for studying social risk management mechanisms, critical social infrastructure, and state reserves in the face of supply, price, and energy shocks. Political science enables the analysis of the European Union’s social cohesion policy, the instruments of combating poverty, the processes of the securitisation of poverty in public discourse, and transnational governance in the area of European social policy. Economic history allows us to grasp the longue durée of urban poverty in Europe, the policies of early modern states towards the poor, vagrants, and those living on the margins of society, and historical mechanisms of response to economic and social crises, providing a comparative perspective for contemporary forms of exclusion. Political psychology and the sociology of communication provide tools for studying the social perception of poverty, mechanisms of stigmatisation and counter-narratives of solidarity, the rhetoric of crisis, and the influence of media communication on civic attitudes and the voting behaviour of excluded groups. Complexity theory and the concept of network governance enable the analysis of the resilience and adaptability of European social protection systems in the face of geopolitical, climatic, energy-related, and sanitary shocks. The project also draws on an ethical-normative perspective, reflecting on human dignity in conditions of scarcity, the right to a minimum subsistence, and the responsibility of the political community for the fate of its weakest members.

Specific issues addressed in the project include, among others: poverty and social exclusion as security problems of European states — doctrinal, institutional, and legal determinants; the multidimensionality of poverty in European conditions — the coexistence of income, material, energy, housing, food, and digital poverty; the working poor and new forms of precariat in twenty-first-century European economies; intergenerational inheritance of poverty and child deprivation as challenges for social policy; food security of poor households in Europe — the paradox of abundance and undernutrition; the social cohesion policy of the European Union and instruments of combating poverty in the face of twenty-first-century shocks; historical forms of urban poverty in Europe — longue durée and transformations; the social perception and communication of poverty — stigmatisation, narratives of solidarity, the politics of emotions; poverty, political polarisation, and the voting behaviour of excluded groups; the resilience of European social protection systems in the face of systemic shocks — models of network and adaptive governance; ethical and normative foundations of the responsibility of the state and the political community for the existential security of citizens.

The project involves researchers representing academic centres in Poland and Italy, combining perspectives from security studies, political science, international relations, economic history, political psychology, political theory, and the methodology of the social sciences. The results of the research will be presented in a special issue of the Polish Journal of Political Science (special issue 2027) and in an international collective monograph.

Project duration: 1 October 2025 – 30 September 2027

Project team:

Principal Investigator:

Cezary Smuniewski, Ph.D. with habilitation, Associate Professor (University of Warsaw)

Research team:

Katarzyna Kołodziejczyk, Ph.D. with habilitation, Associate Professor (University of Warsaw)

Agnieszka Rothert, Ph.D. with habilitation, Associate Professor (University of Warsaw)

Ewa Marciniak, Ph.D. with habilitation (University of Warsaw)

Bartłomiej Biskup, Ph.D. with habilitation (University of Warsaw)

Łukasz Młyńczyk, Ph.D. with habilitation (University of Warsaw)

Prof. Andrea Zanini (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy)

Przemysław Ligenza, Ph.D. (University of the National Education Commission in Krakow)

Błażej Bado, MA (University of Warsaw)

Leszek Szczepaniak, MA (University of Warsaw)