Social vulnerability determinants in Greece from the economic crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic: Towards a protracted turbulence?

Although social vulnerability has been a long-debated issue in the field of politics and sociology for the last three decades or so, the post-economic crisis period opens a new chapter and offers a great opportunity to delve into this multifaceted issue from a more critical perspective. Undoubtedly, the deepening of the economic crisis and austerity measures in a hard-hit Member state such as Greece resulted in significant setbacks, the emergence of new social risks , and a widening of inequalities in the field of social policy. While Greece’s strenuous efforts and economic strides to get out of the economic crisis have been publicly lauded, the maintenance of certain economic commitments in the post-memoranda era in conjunction with the outbreak of the coronavirus clouded the prospects of a robust and quick recovery and cast a long shadow on social vulnerability issues. Consequently, this study seeks to examine the effects of the economic crisis and the recent pandemic on the development of social vulnerability in Greece from (2017) – the last phases of the economic crisis - to the early pandemic era (2020) through comparing the two periods and analysing the main variations occurred. To serve this goal, the paper will focus on the aspects of poverty and social exclusion, inequality, severe material deprivation, labour precarity, and inability to meet health needs in order to give a finer-grained analysis and an updated understanding of the social vulnerability dynamics in a hard stricken country of Europe's Southern Periphery.