Keywords

Introduction: On the Articulation of Levels

Scholars in social sciences and life course research have always taken a great interest in understanding life trajectories at the articulations among levels of analysis (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Since their genesis, the social sciences have turned their attention to how social reality is stratified into macrostructures, such as social norms, economic opportunity structures or welfare regimes, on the one hand, and microprocesses such as individuals’ actions, behaviours or agency, on the other hand (Alexander, 1987; Hitlin & Elder, 2007). How these levels of analysis interact has already been widely discussed in many disciplines, such as anthropology, social psychology, economics, and sociology, albeit through different perspectives on the specifics of this articulation (Boudon, 2006; Coleman, 1988; Doise, 1986; Turner, 2012). What emerges from this debate is a common need to examine the articulation between macro- and microsocial processes to understand their specificities and mutual influences. This approach means moving beyond the idea that individuals and societal structures can be studied as independent and instead adopting a multilevel perspective to address many complex analytical problems (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000; Spini et al., 2016).

Adopting such multilevel logic is also crucial in a field such as the life course. In particular, it is key to the study of vulnerability processes, their emergence across transitions and turning points, their persistence and the potential overcoming of them (Spini et al., 2017). Vulnerability is a multilevel problem for numerous reasons: not only are macrosocial structures a source of inequality as such, but every biography is nested within multiple intermediate levels in which human lives take place. The lives of individuals, after all, depend on the neighbourhoods that people inhabit, on the network of institutions and organizations in which they are immersed, and, thus, on their social capital and sense of community. In short, a plurality of meso-level contexts mediate the ‘macro’ with individual resources, whether genetic, biological, or cognitive (Bernardi et al., 2019).

While these intermediate dimensions are often little discussed in life course research, this section explores different directions through which it can approach this articulation among levels. A set of complementary multilevel perspectives emerges for studying vulnerabilities through examining the influence of geographic, organizational, or relational contexts on the stressors and resources of individuals. Together, these studies show how vulnerabilities are the result of the complex interactions among levels of social realities and their junctions in neighbourhoods, networks, organizations, institutions and communities.

Understanding Vulnerability: Three Ways ‘Contexts’ Matter

Individual strategies, skills, and resources play a role in the life course as well as the set of constraints and opportunities that are provided by social structures (Settersten & Gannon, 2005). Micro and macro coexist in many ways and explain a plurality of life course phenomena, including, of course, vulnerability. Often, as we stressed in the introduction to this book, vulnerabilities arise due to the lack of resources and reserves needed to cope with the many stressors that can intervene during segments of the life course. However, while structural and individual effects both exert a decisive impact on these processes (see Bernardi et al., 2019), many of them play out primarily in the articulations among these levels in different intermediate dimensions. This characteristic means giving importance to a meso level in which micro and macro are simultaneously rooted and from which processes of vulnerability socially and cognitively emerge (Spini et al., 2017).

A focus on the meso level means giving importance to the multiple contexts in which individual lives unfold. It means looking at the key life-course principles—agency, linked lives, timing, time and space— across social environments that are more proximate than macrosocial structures (Elder, 1979, 1995). Vulnerability, after all, is amplified, shared, and overcome within neighbourhoods, communities, families, networks, institutions and organizations where individuals live and work. Consideration of these different contexts places the meso level at the centre of the study of vulnerabilities, thereby bridging the micro-macro gap.

How to address this articulation is certainly a matter of approaches and perspectives, three of which emerge most clearly from the studies that have been conducted as part of the LIVES research program. First, one way to examine this articulation is to study the geographic context in which human lives take place, i.e., the local economic and social contexts. Second, the focus may be on the intermediary role played by organizations and institutions, their norms and practical functioning, and their influence on vulnerabilities. Finally, a relational approach focused on social relationships can capture the influence of networks, as intermediate structures, as sources of both stressors and resources. (Sapin, Widmer, & Iglesias, 2016; Vacchiano & Spini, 2021).

In the study of geographic context, local social and economic contexts assume a major role (Ranci, 2010). Geographic areas (e.g., neighbourhoods or regions) can act as amplifiers, moderators, or even nullifiers of macrosocial dynamics and provide explanatory mechanisms for individual vulnerabilities. While individual resources play a primary role in explaining vulnerability and resilience, meso-level contexts of this kind implicate the opportunity structures that people can access through the territory they inhabit. Many studies have endorsed this perspective and have convincingly demonstrated that living in a poor neighbourhood, for example, increases the risks related to individual resources or reserves, such as low educational attainment or a more disadvantaged family background. Moreover, we know that relocating residents from more- to less-deprived neighbourhoods improves their competitiveness in the labour market (Mendenhall et al., 2006). In short, studying the local context helps to understand macrodynamics, e.g., social policies, norms, macroeconomic indicators, and their influence on individuals through the study of their immediate social environment (Galster, 2012; Sampson et al., 2002).

As a second lens, organizations and institutions offer another privileged context for studying the articulations among levels of analysis (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000). Human lives unfold in workplaces, educational settings, administrative or health care institutions. The study of vulnerabilities can thus benefit from understanding the weight of institutional norms and obligations, status, practices or values that depend primarily on the organizations and institutions to which individuals belong (e.g., see Vacchiano, Lazega & Spini, 2022). It is important to understand how macrosocial aspects related to norms, social policies or economic structures are fundamentally negotiated within and among the organizations and institutions in which individuals are involved in different areas of their lives: such as education, work or health. At this juncture, it is possible to propose a further point of view on how macro and micro levels meet in the processes of vulnerability (Spini et al., 2017).

Finally, the relational approach conceptualizes networks of relationships as intermediate structures that bridge the micro-macro gap (Alwin et al., 2018; Vacchiano & Spini, 2021). Networks that provide constraints or opportunities, resources or sanctions, stressors or support for people’s lives (Antonucci & Akiyama, 1995; Bidart et al., 2020; Cullati et al., 2018; Settersten, 2018). On the one hand, this approach captures how a plurality of macrosocial forces, such as those related to social stratification, are reproduced within the more proximate social environment of social relationships (Bourdieu, 1986). For example, the study of family ties allows us to capture social inequalities shaped by origin, gender and social class. Positive and negative effects of networks have been attributed precisely to the ability of these close ties to transmit socioeconomic privileges, as well as strategies of social positioning and material support (Portes, 1998; Widmer, 2006). On the other hand, research is also interested in networks as sources of emotional support and bonding social capital (Rostila, 2011), particularly their importance to the emergence of a sense of connectedness, relatedness, belongingness or attachment at the cognitive level, as explanatory factors of mental health and well-being (Berkman et al. 2000, see also Hofmann, Merphour, & Staerklé, this book). Both the instrumental and cognitive implications of networks offer a look at the articulation of the macro, meso, and micro levels.

Vulnerability in Context

Different chapters addressing these multiple facets of the meso level are presented in this section.

In Chap. 8, Bonvin et al. offered insights into how vulnerability processes depend on the implementation of social policies at the meso-level. More precisely, they considered the role played by those intermediary agents in translating and applying the normative regulations of social policies, whom the authors call ‘street-level bureaucrats’. This approach led to a reflection on the normative functioning of many organizations, such as hospitals, welfare agencies, social services, NGOs, and the (often inadequate) working conditions of those representatives who come into contact with potential recipients of social policies.

In Chap. 9, Bühlmann, Morris, Sommet and Vandecasteele addressed the importance of territory and neighbourhoods as meso-level contexts for understanding three specific aspects related to individual vulnerabilities: school-to-work transitions, psychological effects of wage inequality, and unemployment. In doing so, they provided insights into some of the mechanisms (e.g., location of networks, lack of social support, living in a stressful neighbourhood) through which these vulnerabilities emerge from disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts.

In Chap. 10, Rossier et al., offer a classic look at the meso-level addressing the role played by networks of strong ties. By doing so, the authors engage with network and social capital theory, thus emphasizing the role of social relationships as a source of opportunities and constraints, resources and stressors that are still strongly influenced by the closest network environment in which individuals are embedded, such as those of family ties.

In Chap. 11, Hoffman, Merphour & Staerklé offered an interdisciplinary consideration of the meso level by reconstructing the intersections between social networks and social identity theory. The authors offered a broad overview by identifying not only the commonalities among these perspectives but also some of their important conceptual differences. In doing so, they used the notion of social connectedness as a key bridge for combining these two fields of research, thereby fostering understanding about the role of social relationships in vulnerability processes, especially regarding well-being and health issues.

In Chap. 12, Burton-Jeangros and Fargnoli examined how the vulnerability of HIV-positive women is influenced and negotiated within medical and institutional contexts. In doing so, the authors emphasized the functioning of health care organizations and how they have influenced the individual subjectivities of these women through a highly normative gaze. The chapter showed that vulnerability is situated within these women’s social and relational dimensions in the networks of sexual partners, health professionals and relatives through whom HIV-positive women today still suffer from discrimination, stigma and marginalization.

Concluding Remarks

This book advanced the idea that stressors and resources are active not only at the individual or structural level but also in the intermediate space that bridges the micro and macro: the meso level. Networks of relationships, geographical contexts, organizations, groups or communities are all concepts that help researchers examine different ways in which the micro-macro gap can be observed throughout the ongoing flux of social life (Vacchiano & Spini, 2021). Such complexity cannot be fully addressed in a single book, and although we have a sense that much has been accomplished, as the various chapters of this book demonstrate, much remains to be explored in the future. For example, as previously analysed by the exploratory work of Brändle (2018), more research needs to be conducted to analyse the simultaneous influence of territories and organizational and relational contexts to understand vulnerability processes. Additional theoretical and methodological solutions are thus required for further integrating multiple contexts into a single study. Such integration is technically possible (e.g., Spini et al., 2008) but has yet to find systematic fruitful applications in the study of vulnerability processes.

The LIVES research program has established a strategy aimed at providing space for a diversity of approaches to understanding the articulations among these levels. Although most of these approaches have combined different methods, there is a need for greater cross-disciplinary integration to implement a richer multilevel logic. One avenue taken in the final phase of the LIVES research program to foster encounters among disciplines was to develop collaborations among groups of researchers to study a specific community (Ehsan & Spini, 2020; El Ghaziri et al., 2019; Jackson et al., 2019; Zwygart et al., 2016; Spini et al., 2021). Although they have been little explored in this section, community-based longitudinal studies can help analyse vulnerabilities through a more complex multilevel logic. A focus on communities, after all, means closely examining the functioning of a given territory, that of the organizations that operate within it and, of course, that of the networks of relationships among community members. This multicontextual synergy is what makes communities such a powerful study setting and why researchers should further analyse their functioning to grasp how vulnerabilities lie ‘in between’ macro- and microprocesses.