Les travailleurs pauvres dans la crise de la société salariale

This article is focused on the working poor, i.e, the people who, even if they work, have an income lower than the national relative poverty threshold, which does not allow them to have a decent existence and condemns them to precariousness. The first paragraph presents data about the increase of the working poor in Italy and in Europe in general. Based on semi-structured interviews, the second paragraph considers the subjective experience of this category of the population which is still, to this very day, socially invisible, the subjective experience of "in-work poverty" being one of the less investigated aspects of deprivation. Although not excluded from the labour market, these people experience a deep feeling of shame, and partly of guilt, about their condition. The tendency to self-isolation emerges as a strategy to avoid a general attitude that still tends to associate work with full citizenship.