"Why is it that, despite widespread sensitivity to inequalities, they persist so stubbornly? And why has this sensitivity not been translated into a coherent and ultimately hegemonic policy for equality and social justice? These questions were addressed by the research project STRAIN – Structural Inequalities in Contemporary Greece: An Empirical Investigation. The project was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research between October and December 2025, with the support and collaboration of the Heinrich Böll Foundation-Thessaloniki Office.

Despite the limitations associated with its small scale, the STRAIN project constitutes a proposal for studying inequalities beyond resource-based analysis. Our central theoretical approach is grounded in the analytical distinction between structural inequality (the vertical dimension) and multiple, intersecting inequalities (the horizontal dimension). The empirical component of the research was based on secondary data from recent representative surveys (EU-SILC, ESS, JustReDI), as well as on interviews conducted with three focus groups (in-work poverty, housing, and socio-spatial inequalities).

The findings indicate that policies such as guaranteed income, the expansion of the commons, the defense of the public character of collective goods and infrastructures (water, energy, health, education, natural resources, and transport), progressive taxation, and initiatives oriented toward de-development, combined with the democratization of production, constitute necessary conditions for halting the trajectory toward intensified class, racial, ethnic, and identity-based conflicts. However, these conditions are not sufficient. Equally important is the cultivation of alternative ways of relating to the natural and social world—that is, the development of institutions and organizations committed to these core directions while simultaneously functioning as moral communities."