Using biograms to promote life course research. An example of theoretical case configuration relating to paths of social exclusion

The purpose of the article is to present how, if used to aid the conduction and analysis of interviews, biograms enable the peculiarities of biographical narrative to be incorporated more effectively in the life course perspective. The advantage of this tool is to promote the life course not only as an empirical category, but also as an analytical perspective capable of combining time, process and context, in order to bring out possible biographical paths. At the same time, biograms enable different types of identity-building process, such as analytical syntheses, to be drawn up. As a result, empirical cases can be transformed into theoretical cases (referring to the unit of analysis), moving from an individual story to a sociological ideal type in which to embed the biographical story. This article will first present how biograms can facilitate the conduction of a biographical interview by bringing out the main features of the life course as an analytical perspective. Then, it will be described how the device allows the researcher to inductively order, summarize and categorize the empirical materials collected in order to enucleate suitable conceptual categories for outlining possible identity profiles. For methodological purposes, the application of the biogram to three biographies collected to explore paths of social exclusion will be presented, defining conceptual categories for three identity profiles: The Combative Subject Fighting the Risk of Exclusion, The Intermittently Excluded Subject and The Chronic Outsider.