Statutory Resilience and the Roles of Socially Precarious Heads of Households in Abobo (Côte d'Ivoire): Between the Activation of Solidarity Through Strong Ties and the Mobilisation of Resources Through Weak Ties

This article analyzes the strategies for maintaining the roles and social statuses of household heads involved in activities that are contextually perceived as precarious, in this case, laundry, shoemaking and hairdressing in Abobo (Abidjan). Indeed, statutory resilience is observed among these social groups within and outside the household despite the professional and financial disaffiliation that characterizes their social status. Based on an essentially qualitative approach of biographical obedience, it relied on life stories, direct observation and individual interviews to collect information in three neighborhoods of Abobo from a sample of 75 people. Through a thematic content analysis, the study sheds light on the mobilization of strong and weak ties as a form of resilience. To this end, it shows respectively that the mobilization of aid and services coming from family ties, in particular fund transfers and family tontines as well as neighborhood solidarity (gifts and counter-gifts of water and electricity) are strategies of statutory resilience among socially precarious heads of household.