Born in Rio de Moinhos – Aljustrel in 1952, he went to secondary school in Aljustrel, Faro and Lisbon, where he lived (in Moscavide), worked and studied from the age of 16. He went to ISCTE-IUL from 1981 to 1985, when he completed his Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and joined the University of Coimbra School of Economics as an assistant, before also joining the team at the Centre for Social Studies in the same university. Since then, he has taught, done research and published on subjects such as classes and social inequalities, the sociology of business and labour relations, trade unionism, youth and social movements. He got his PhD at the University of Coimbra in 1999, with a thesis on the footwear industry, based on participant observation in a factory in the sector (published under the title Between the Factory and the Community, published by Afrontamento, 2000).