Crisis and the Impacts of Crisis on the Inhabitants of Rural Space: the Case of a Village in North West Portugal

Résumé 0

After suffering the impact of the 2008 crisis, both for internal and external reasons, Portugal requested in 2011financial assistance from the Troika (IMF/ECB/EU). The Portuguese experienced company bankruptcies, cuts to salaries and pensions, rising unemployment, job insecurity, and difficulties in paying their mortgages. Despite severe austerity programs and formal exit of the Troika, Portugal failed to reduce public debt. After giving a brief overview of development models, in this article we will focus our attention on the impacts of the crisis in rural areas and the diverse perceptions of crisis by different groups and families. As a case study, we will consider the strategies employed by residents of a parish in the municipality of Barcelos (Braga, Minho); strategies deployed in order to reduce the damage caused by the crisis. Against the mainstream liberal perspective and the traditional Marxist thesis, we sustain that rural people adopt an attitude of resiliency in relation to the austerity program and, on the basis of empirical qualitative research methods, we can witness creative familial strategies to survive: migration, exploitation of the potentialities of the land, as well as actions that take advantage of artisanal and commercial opportunities in order to cope with the difficulties caused by the crisis.