ABSTRACT
The underclass is an issue with which the academic world is having to engage, but it is first and foremost a political issue, and therefore impossible to discuss without reference to current British politics and media concerns. While rhetoric from the Right on ‘the underclass’ is based on a series of deviant stereotypes and emphasises individual responsibility and choice, the response of many on the Left is to stress structural inequalities and constraints. This chapter considers this polarity, and discusses whether homeless young people are responsible for their own predicaments or whether they are new victims of an increasingly uncaring society and a diminishing welfare state. Issues of choice and constraint, agency and structure, are therefore addressed. It is also relevant to note the context in which a ‘moral panic’ (Cohen 1973) has developed about homelessness, and the implications for policy and practice of labelling and treating homeless young people as an underclass. The discussion draws on empirical evidence from a recent study of housed and homeless young people in Scotland (Jones 1995a).1
