A growing proportion of the European population faces situations of vulnerability. Stable employees feel more and more at risk of losing their job or of experiencing a deterioration of their employment situation (Gallie et al. 1998). The share of standard employment relationships are declining, whereas atypical and precarious employment is on the rise (Hipp et al. 2015). In addition, joblessness in different forms—invalidity insurance, social assistance, early retirement—has also grown in recent decades (Paugam 2005). One of the unresolved issues is the relative scope of these phenomena. First, the advocates of what we could call exclusion thesis contend that only a small and marginal group is touched by material poverty and that this deprivation is inherently accompanied by isolation and segregation (Paugam 2005). A second approach, most famously brought forward by Robert Castel (2002), contends that not only the margins but also the larger zones of the labour market are characterised by precariousness. In a third perspective, it is asserted that work, even in formerly prestigious and well-paid occupations, is less and less socially recognised (Bourdieu 2003; Paugam 2000).