The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. This group is usually considered cut off from the rest of the society.
The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences (for example, lumpenproletariat). However, the specific term, underclass, was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty, and then by American journalists.
The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists. Definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated.
History Gunnar Myrdal is generally credited as the first proponent of the term underclass. Writing in the early 1960s on economic inequality in the U.S., Myrdal's underclass refers to a "class of unemployed, unemployables, and underemployed, who are more and more hopelessly set apart from the nation at large, and do not share in its life, its ambitions, and its achievements". However, this general conception of a class or category of people below the core of the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences, such as through the work of Henry Mayhew, whose London Labour and the London Poor sought to describe the hitherto invisible world of casual workers, prostitutes, and street-people.
The specific concept of an underclass in the U.S. underwent several transformations during the decades following Myrdal's introduction of the term. According to sociologist Herbert Gans, while Myrdal's structural conceptualization of the underclass remained relatively intact through the writings of William Julius Wilson and others, in several respects the structural definition was abandoned by many journalists and academics, and replaced with a behavioral conception of the underclass, which fuses Myrdal's term with Oscar Lewis's and others' conception of a "culture of poverty".
Definitions
Various definitions of the underclass have been set forth since the term's initial conception; however, all of these definitions are basically different ways of imagining a category of people beneath the working class. The definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of the underclass are considered as follows.
Focus on economics Marxian sociologist Erik Olin Wright sees the underclass as a "category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system". The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder. According to Wright, the underclass are oppressed. He believes this is because they are generally denied access to the labor market, and thus they cannot rise above their status easily but also thus are "not consistently exploited" because the opportunity for their economic exploitation is minimal for the classes above.
Unlike the working class, which he believes is routinely exploited for their labor power by higher classes, the underclass in Wright's view, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. Wright argues his highly doctrinaire opinion of class malevolence that:
This quote partly concerns the spaces and locations for the underclass and reflects the leftist view of the other classes as acting against the underclass in unison, as opposed to other sociological views seeing class actors behaving as individuals reacting to individual incentives within society.
Focus on space and place The underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in Urban Sociology, and particularly in accounts of urban poverty. The term, underclass, and the phrase, urban underclass, are, for the most part, used interchangeably. Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American ghetto often include a discussion of the urban underclass. Many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in the U.S., are urban-focused.
William Julius Wilson's books, The Declining Significance of Race (1978) and The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), are popular accounts of the black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as "a massive population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education and low-paying jobs." He generally limits his discussion to those trapped in the post-civil-rights ghetto in the American rust belt (see "Potential Causes and Proposed Solutions" section of this entry for a more detailed summary of Wilson on the underclass).
Elijah Anderson's, Streetwise (1990), employs ethnographic methods to study a gentrifying neighborhood, "The Village" (pseudonym), bordering a black ghetto, "Northton" (pseudonym), in an American city. Anderson provides the following description of the underclass in this ghetto:
Focus on behavior Lawrence M. Mead defines the underclass as a group that is poor and behaviorally deficient. He describes the underclass as dysfunctional. He provides the following definition in his 1986 book, Beyond Entitlement,
Ken Auletta, often credited as the primary journalist who brought the underclass term to the forefront of the American consciousness, describes the American underclass as non-assimilated Americans, and he suggests that the underclass may be subcategorized into four distinct groups:
Controversies amongst definitions Each of the above definitions is said to conceptualize the same general group – the American underclass – but they provide somewhat competing imagery. While Wright, Wilson, and Anderson each position the underclass in reference to the labor market, Auletta's definition is simply "non-assimilation" and his examples, along with Mead's definition, highlight underclass members' participation in deviant behavior and their adoption of an antisocial outlook on life. These controversies are elaborated further in the next section ("Characteristics of the Underclass").
As evident with Mead and Auletta's framing, some definitions of the underclass significantly diverge from the initial notion of an economic group beneath the working class. A few writings on the underclass distinguish between various types of underclass, such as the social underclass, the impoverished underclass, the reproductive underclass, the educational underclass, the violent underclass, and the criminal underclass, with some expected horizontal mobility between these groups. Even more divergent from the initial notion of an underclass are the recent journalistic accounts of a so-called "genetic underclass", referring to a genetic inheritance of a predisposition to addiction and other personality traits traditionally associated with behavioral definitions of the underclass. However, such distinctions between criminal, social, impoverished, and other specified underclass terms still refer to the same general group—those beneath the working class. And, despite recent journalistic accounts of a "genetic underclass", the underclass concept is primarily, and has traditionally been, a social science term.
Characteristics The underclass is located by a collection of identifying characteristics, such as high levels of joblessness, out-of-wedlock births, crime, violence, substance abuse, and high school dropout rates. The underclass harbors these traits to a greater degree than the general population, and other classes more specifically.
Joel Rogers and James D. Wright identify four general themes by which these characteristics are organized within academic and journalistic accounts of the underclass: economic, social-psychological, behavioral, and ecological (spatial concentration).
Economic characteristics The economic dimension is the most basic and least contested theme of the underclass – the underclass is overwhelmingly poor. The underclass experiences high levels of joblessness, and what little employment its members hold in the formal economy is best described as precarious labor. However, simply being poor is not synonymous with being part of the underclass. The underclass is persistently poor and, for most definitions, the underclass live in areas of concentrated poverty. Some scholars, such as Ricketts and Sawhill, argue that being poor is not a requirement for underclass membership, and thus there are individuals who are non-poor members of the underclass because they live in "underclass areas" and embody other characteristics of the underclass, such as being violent, criminal, and anti-social (e.g., gang leaders).
Social-psychological characteristics Many writers often highlight the social-psychological dimensions of the underclass. The underclass is often framed as holding beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and desires that are inconsistent with those held by society at large. The underclass is frequently described as a "discouraged" group with members who feel "cut off" from mainstream society. Linked to this discussion of the underclass being psychologically deviant, the underclass is also said to have low levels of cognition and literacy. Thus, the underclass is often seen as being mentally disconnected from the rest of society. Consider the following:
Behavioral characteristics Not only is the underclass frequently said to think differently, they are also said to behave differently. Some believe that the underclass concept was meant to capture the coincidence of a number of social ills including poverty, joblessness, crime, welfare dependence, fatherless families, and low levels of education or work related skills. These behavioral characteristics, coupled with arguments that the underclass is psychologically disconnected from mainstream society, are occasionally highlighted as evidence that the underclass live in a subculture of poverty. From this point of view, members of the underclass embody a distinct set of thoughts, perceptions, and actions – a "style of life" - that are transmitted across generations. However, just as the conceptualization of a "culture of poverty" in general is debated, so too are the attempts to frame the underclass as members of such a culture.
Ecological (spatial) characteristics The ecological dimension, a fourth theme in the literature on the underclass, is often used as both a description and an explanation for the underclass. The underclass is concentrated in specific areas. Although there are some writings on the "rural underclass", in general the underclass is framed as an urban phenomenon and the phrases "ghetto poverty" and "inner-city poverty" are often used synonymously with the underclass term. However, many scholars are careful not to equate concentrated poverty with the underclass. Living in areas of concentrated poverty is more or less framed as a common (and often necessary) condition of the underclass, but it is generally not considered a sufficient condition since many conceptualizations of the underclass highlight behavioral and psychological deviancy that may not necessarily persist in high-poverty areas. In Wilson's writings on the underclass – a term he eventually replaces with "ghetto poverty" (see section titled "Critiques of the Underclass Concept")– the underclass is described as a population that is physically and socially isolated from individuals and institutions of mainstream society, and this isolation is one of a collection of causes to concentrated poverty and why the "social dislocations" (e.g., crime, school dropouts, out of wed-lock pregnancy, etc.) of the underclass emerge.