Older and newer forms of vulnerability are manifesting themselves today, denouncing a suffering which is both material and existential, individual and societal. It is particularly evident within urban contexts and amplified by the crumbling of collective belonging and the increasing scarcity of places of participation where responsibility and the commitment to building one’s own personal biography are increasingly delegated to each individual, both materially and symbolically. Two separate pedagogical studies will explore some processes of signification of the experiences connected to (...) new poverty, emphasizing the risks of simplification and normativity identified in some of the current interpretations in the common sense, such as the problematic proximity which these are in danger of sharing with the interpretative premises that shape the same local educational services dedicated to new poverty itself. (shrink)