The article deals with the new condition of vulnerability experienced today by a heterogeneous aggregate of persons living a regular social and professional life. From the subjective point of view, these different biographies share the same un-certainty: after a relatively solid and stable existence, the risk of vulnerability is spreading out and one cannot be sure of one’s future anymore. This is the fate of the working poor, i.e. people who, though regularly working, are below the pov-erty threshold and find it harder and harder to come out of the precariousness they live in. Pain, fear, loneliness, uncertainty, shame, guilt, and uselessness are the commonest feelings of these individuals unable to think themselves as part of a human community.
