The article presents the first insights of an explorative research aimed at analyzing poverty from the perspective of the sociology of emotions. It hypothesizes that emotions can represent a useful instrument to combat poverty at an individual and social level. Poverty as well as the policies and measures settled against it, are the result of complex processes of social construction in which cultural, symbolic and relational dimensions intertwined have a great influence. Among these there are also emotions, as confirmed by a cospicuous literature focused in particular on shame. The research presented was aimed at extending the analysis by recognizing what emotions poor people feel, which dynamics trigger them and what role they have in entering and exiting from poverty.
