ABSTRACT
While other contributions in this book define class boundaries as the limits between different social classes, we focus on the “outer boundary” of class analysis, understood as the limit separating individuals who are assigned a class position and those who fall outside of this categorisation. We show that this limit has been the subject of many theoretical debates over the last 50 years, centred on the importance of occupation in the definition of social class. Based on a comparison between France and Portugal, we argue that this limit is also highly dependent on methodological constraints related to the available data. This comparative work further shows that women, immigrants, and members of the working classes are over-represented among those excluded from class analysis.
