ABSTRACT
Keywords Social Dislocation; Youth Crime; Britain; France; Local Government; Community Safety
Social Dislocation and Community Isolation
Many Western states have been subjected to broadly similar structural pressures in the past two decades which have had a profound effect on their internal distributions of income, wealth and opportunity (McFate 19 9 6 ). In Britain, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Inquiry into Income and Wealth (JRF 19 9 5 ) found a considerable growth in economic inequalities since the 19 7 0 s-a widening of the gap between rich and poor (Hills 19 9 6 ). In particular, there has been an increasing polarization of income and wealth at the local level, producing both a greater spatial segregation between better-off and poorer areas (Green 19 9 6 ), and a growth in concentrated poverty amongst communiP ties within urban areas (Noble and Smith 19 9 6 ). Generally, two aspects of the resulting “new poverty” seem common: a widespread failure of entry into the primary labour market for low-skilled and otherwise disadvantaged youth-which has consequences for their present and future capacities to sustain independent living, family formation and public participation; and a spatialized concentration of poverty, characterized by the increasing likeliP hood for the poor to be living in close, residential proximity to those of a similar income level.
