In the last decade Portugal had three governments with very different political orientations and proposals for the legislative organization of society, each one claiming to initiate a process of transformative politics that would have a positive impact upon Portuguese society. Social policies, legislation on labor, health, education, housing and security have been profoundly altered with each legislative change, impacting in different ways upon the institutions concerned and upon people's lives.

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The project aims at reflecting on how different sectors of the Portuguese society experience their livelihoods through a permanent relation with state institutions throughout a decade of profound sociopolitical transformations. Our objective is to understand how politics, and in a certain way, the state, is always present in people’s livelihoods. Through ethnographic research in different social contexts of the contemporary Portuguese society, LIVEPOLITICS will analyse the daily expression of transformative politics, how they are ever present on livelihoods, overcoming the idea the State as an abstraction.