Rural Vulnerabilities in Southern Spain: Beyond Material Deprivation

Abstract

Research on vulnerability has mainly focused on urban contexts, which has shaped and conditioned the research that has been developed in rural contexts. In this sense, research in rural contexts is not only scarce but also limited in several respects: (1) in the concept of vulnerability (almost exclusively limited to material deprivation and poverty or environmental disasters and climate change); (2) in the methodological approach (almost exclusive use of quantitative data based on national or regional macro‐statistics) and (3) in the cases in which the research has been conducted (mainly developing countries, with the Global North almost completely absent). In this article, we delve deeper into the identification and understanding of rural vulnerability. We developed a qualitative‐ethnographic research, at a double scale (county and local) in Andalusia (Spain). This approach to rural vulnerability has allowed us (1) to characterize it from a broad and multidimensional perspective and (2) to appreciate the importance of the qualitative methodological approach at the local/micro level as a way of accessing realities that are not reflected in national/macro statistics. Both of these aspects are essential to sustain the rural proofing strategies implemented by public policy.