ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emergence of networks as strategies for coping with situations of (impending) exclusion. Community and subcultures have been seen as collective responses to situations of poverty and marginalisation, and interest group activity has been a channel for furthering particular causes. The interconnection of agencies offers a variety of activities and services in the locality and plays a significant role in actors’ coping strategies. This is principally because the services offered by the institutions represent the resources closest to hand for those affected by forms of exclusion. The development of sub-culture to counter exclusion was ambiguous in that it was often produced more exclusionary situations through its recourse to illegal activities. In situations of marginal culture such as gypsy life efforts to include had countervailing tendencies by producing street subcultures. The organisation for political mobilisation to counter exclusion was not apparent in the Spanish case, and took a particular form in the English case.
