To be poor is to be more vulnerable than others in society. The poor and the marginalized are more exposed than the average to risks, shocks and precarious processes. These shocks and processes, in turn, may perpetuate or even aggravate their experience of poverty into the future.

Oftentimes, the vulnerability of the poor is said to manifest in terms of their defenselessness against natural weather patterns and calamities, health ailments and famines, and macroeconomic fluctuations, policy changes and irregularities. Yet in truth, the forms of vulnerability which the poor may encounter are endless. The poor are far more likely to bear the brunt of conflict impacts and socio-political unrest; they are also far more likely than the average to be directly acquainted with manifestations of violence such as petty crime and violence against women. They, too, bear the brunt of new labour regimes of contractualization, superexploitation and tenure insecurity, and they especially, are the social segment worse afflicted by large-scale financial, ecological and political stresses.

It is not only the material needs of the poor that thus need to be addressed but, moreover, the precarious and insecure environments in which we find them making a living. At the minimum, such sources of risks must be smoothed over by means of safety nets, yet in the long run, only carefully-developed measures that promote the rootedness of the poor will likely ameliorate the traumatic effects of being vulnerable.