The ‘Black Magic Roundabout’: Cyclical transitions, social exclusion and alternative careers

This chapter argues that the New Right formulation of the underclass is both empirically deficient and politically malevolent. What follows is based on a review of the relevant research literature and data drawn from my own longitudinal ethnography of youth transitions in a high unemployment inner-city area. I will argue that the alleged formation of a youth underclass constitutes an ideological smokescreen which, to paraphrase C. WrightMills, diverts attention from government culpability, presenting ‘public issues’ of policy failure as ‘personal issues’ of degeneracy and moral turpitude (Craine and Coles 1995; Macnicol 1987; Walker 1990; Westergaard 1992).1