ABSTRACT
Situations of social exclusion should be analyzed in terms of the resources needed to overcome the risk. Situations in which no change seems possible and in which there is a vicious circle with a downward dynamic, are the extreme, not the average case. The model people use in this research is different. Members of a social formation have differential access to the resources of participating in the life of society – from mere survival to being able to change the institutions. The extreme of being completely excluded means to be dead. Labour markets are protected either by rules securing a difference in amount between wages and welfare payments or by particular conditions that have to be fulfilled for legal access to payments or by both. Independent of their insufficiency and/or undesirability from an ‘official’ or a ‘standard’ point of view, resources become more important and attractive if other means are not readily available.
