ABSTRACT
Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the social consequences of poverty and social exclusion for the development of children and adolescents, empirical knowledge remains sparse, especially in Europe, and particularly with regard to the question of neighbourhood contextual effects on individual behaviour. Theoretical reasoning as well as common sense have for a long time suggested that living in areas of concentrated poverty restricts the opportunities of residents and aggravates individual disadvantage, fostering subcultural orientations and problem behaviours especially among children and adolescents (Booth ampentity Crouter, 2001; Friedrichs, 1998; Friedrichs et al., 2003; Jencks ampentity Mayer, 1990; Leventhal ampentity Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Murie ampentity Musterd, 2004; Sampson et al., 2002; Wilson, 1987). In most European countries, the issue of poverty and social segregation is inextricably linked to the issue of migration and ethnicity. Among the outcomes most often studied are educational and labour market success, health behaviour and crime. Yet, few European studies have given empirical support to the notion of neighbourhood contextual effects because results are often inconclusive. One direction of research, often following an ethnographic approach, typically focuses on just one or few disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Studies by French sociologists on adolescents’ experiences of daily life in the banlieues are a prominent example (Body-Gendrot, 2005; Dubet ampentity Lapeyronnie, 1992; Wacquant, 1996). While they have produced important and in-depth knowledge, a methodological problem of these case studies is that the basic assumption about exacerbating effects of spatially concentrated poverty on social problems is taken for granted, and not put to an empirical test because data from poverty areas cannot be compared to data from non-poverty areas. Yet, it is by no means self-evident that the social opportunities, behaviour or psychological wellbeing of residents in poverty areas are different from other people, once individual characteristics are taken into account. A contextual effect means, for example, that a child whose parents are unemployed but lives in an affluent neighbourhood has better prospects than a similar child whose parents are unemployed and lives in a deprived neighbourhood (Duncan ampentity Raudenbush, 2001).
