Throughout Europe, standardised approaches to social policy and practice are being radically questioned and modified. Beginning from the narrative detail of individual lives, this book re-thinks welfare predicaments, emphasising gender, generation, ethnic and class implications of economic and social deregulation. Taking an innovative socio-biographical approach to comparative social policy, it argues that understanding individually differentiated biographical resources and strategies provides a bedrock for the appropriate training and effective practice of policy-makers, practitioners and researchers. Based on 250 life-story interviews in seven European Union countries, this work: analyses personal struggles against social exclusion to illuminate local milieus and changing welfare regimes and contexts; points to challenging new agendas for European politics and welfare, beyond the rhetoric of communitarianism and the New Deal; vividly illustrates the lived experience and environmental complexity working for and against structural processes of social exclusion; re-fashions the interpretive tradition as a teaching and research tool linking macro- and micro- realities. Students, academic teachers and professional trainers, practitioners, politicians, policy makers and researchers in applied and comparative welfare fields should all benefit from reading this book.