ABSTRACT

The idea of social exclusion has only recently arrived, though it is now widely used. Consequently, the term is often used interchangeably with other words, as a synonym for social segregation, marginalisation or poverty. Such a broad and careless use of the concept risks diluting and transforming the idea of social exclusion into a term which can characterise any unwanted social situation. Thus, the major aim of this book has been to clarify how processes of social exclusion affect groups of people living in specific neighbourhoods. Such spatial groupings of disadvantaged people may best be described as ‘pockets of poverty’ or ‘pockets of disadvantage’, and the book explores how processes of social exclusion lead to the situation of people living in such neighbourhoods, whether they are described as impoverished, disadvantaged or deprived and whether they are found in the decaying inner city areas or isolated peripheral areas of European cities. The main approach throughout the book has been to concentrate on people living in their immediate socio-spatial world. Statistical data about individuals or households may help to identify these neighbourhoods, but it does not provide a sufficient basis for fully appreciating the social processes which have created and maintain these neighbourhoods. Nor does statistical data provide an adequate basis for understanding what these processes mean to people caught within them. Thus, this book contributes to understanding the meaning of social exclusion by concentrating on the everyday lives of people living in specific places and how the processes of social exclusion inhibit human flourishing, in whatever form this may take.