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The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a social class, 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.
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".
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.
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). employs Ethnography 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:
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:
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.
Joel Rogers and James 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).
Thus, the underclass is defined and identified by multiple characteristics. Members are persistently poor and experience high levels of joblessness. However, these trends are generally not seen as sufficient identifiers of the underclass, because, for many, the underclass concept also captures dimensions of psychological and behavioral deviancy. Furthermore, the underclass is generally identified as an urban phenomenon with its members typically living in areas of concentrated poverty.
A few of these propositions are outlined below, including those developed by William Julius Wilson, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, Lawrence M. Mead, and Ken Auletta. The work by these authors' certainly do not compile an exhaustive list of suggested causes or solutions for the underclass, but they are arguably the most read proposals among social scientists. The contrasting causes and solutions highlighted by Wilson and Mead in particular have been popular points for debate. However, because prescription is dependent on diagnosis, much of the debates between Wilson and Mead have been on the causes and conditions of the underclass. Wilson highlights social isolation and the disappearance of quality work (for example, via deindustrialization and offshore labor outsourcing) for ghetto residents, while Mead highlights an overgenerous and permissive welfare state. Massey and Denton link the creation of the underclass to racial residential segregation and advocate for policies encouraging desegregation. Auletta provides a different policy framework discussion by highlighting two extreme positions (the wholesale option and the laissez-faire option) and one middle-of-the-road position (the retail option), but these are more discussions concerning the amount of public resources that should be dedicated to fixing, or attempting to fix, the underclass problem, rather than specific strategies. Auletta seems to support the retail option, which would provide aid to underclass members deserving and hopeful and withhold aid to members undeserving and hopeless.
Wilson proposes a comprehensive social and economic program that is primarily universal, but nevertheless includes targeted efforts to improve the life chances of the ghetto underclass and other disadvantaged groups. Wilson lists multiple examples of what this universal program would include, such as public funding of training, retraining, and transitional employment benefits that would be available to all members of society. With respect to the diagnosis of concentration and isolation, Wilson suggests the promotion of social mobility, through programs that will increase employment prospects for the underclass, will lead to geographic mobility.
Wilson describes his proposed program as having a "hidden agenda" for policy makers "to improve the life chances of truly disadvantaged groups such as the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs to which the more advantaged groups of all races and class backgrounds can positively relate". Universal programs are more easily accepted within the US' political climate than targeted programs, yet the underclass would likely experience the most benefit from universal programs. Wilson notes that some means-tested programs are still necessary, but recommends that they be framed as secondary to universal programming efforts. The following quote summarizes his policy call:
Given the prominent role of segregation in the construction and maintenance of the urban underclass, Massey and Denton call for policies that promote desegregation. They provide a detailed list of policy suggestions in the closing of their book. They argue that policies aimed at desegregation need to target the private housing market, where an overwhelming majority of housing is allocated.
In doing this, the authors call upon the federal government to dedicate more resources to the upholding of the Fair Housing Act, including speedy judicial action against violators (to strengthen deterrent effects of the legislation).
Mead's diagnosis that permissive welfare is a primary cause of the underclass problem is followed by a prescription for a more authoritative welfare program that combines benefits with requirements. This proposal is often called "workfare", which requires welfare recipients to work in order to receive aid. For Mead, such a program design would evoke behavioral change since permissiveness is replaced with authority. Mead summarizes his call to replace permissive welfare with authoritative welfare:
The "wholesale option" includes both conservatives and liberals who are optimistic that government action can solve the underclass problem. According to Auletta, left-wing wholesale proponents call for increased public aid while right-wing wholesale proponents call for government to reduce taxes to increase jobs (inspired by trickle-down economic theory) and charge the government to "get tough" on underclass crime and welfare dependency.
The "laissez-faire option" is pessimistic and its proponents are extremely wary of proposed solutions to a problem they see as unsolvable. Proponents of this perspective call for a drastic withdrawal of public aid for the underclass and are concerned with "quarantining the patient" instead of hunting for what they believe is an imaginary cure.
In other words, the laissez-faire option assumes that the underclass is generally hopeless, and thus the only public effort given to them should be the bare minimum.The "retail option" includes those in between optimism and pessimism, what Auletta calls "skeptics". The retail option advocates for targeted efforts, recognizing the limits of government intervention, but is also aware of the positive impact social policy can have on efforts to fix specific problems of the underclass. This middle ground perspective requests that aid be given to members of the underclass considered to be deserving of aid, but withheld from members considered to be undeserving. However, proponents of the retail option often disagree on which members of the underclass are considered deserving and which are not. This appears to be the approach embraced by Auletta as he closes his book with reflections on some of the people he interviews throughout preceding pages. He says, "I have no difficulty giving up on violent criminals like the Bolden brothers or street hustlers like Henry Rivera. But knowing how a government helping hand made it possible for Pearl Dawson and William Mason to succeed, would you be willing to write them off?"
While journalists' use of the underclass term is vast, a few popular sources are frequently cited in the academic literature on the underclass and journalism. Ken Auletta employed the underclass term in three articles published in The New Yorker in 1981, and in book form a year later.
Auletta is arguably the most read journalist of the underclass and many of his ideas, including his definition of the underclass, are included in this Wikipedia entry.Another notable journalist is Nicholas Lemann who published a handful of articles on the underclass in the Atlantic Monthly during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His 1986 writings on "The Origins of the Underclass" argue that the underclass was created by two migrations, the great migration of Southern blacks to the North and West during the early to mid twentieth century and the exodus of middle class blacks out of the ghetto during the 1970s through the early 90s. In 1991 Lemann also published an article titled "The Other Underclass", which details Puerto Ricans, and particularly Puerto Ricans residing in South Bronx, as members of the urban underclass in the US.
Herbert Gans is one of the most vocal critics of the underclass concept. Gans suggests that American journalists, inspired partly by academic writings on the "culture of poverty", reframed underclass from a structural term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to conditions of social/economic/political structure) to a behavioral term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to rational choice and/or in reference to a subculture of poverty). Gans suggests that the word "underclass" has become synonymous with impoverished blacks that behave in criminal, deviant, or "just non-middle-class ways".
Loïc Wacquant deploys a relatively similar critique by arguing that underclass has become a blanket term that frames urban blacks as behaviorally and culturally deviant. Wacquant notes that underclass status is imposed on urban blacks from outside and above them (e.g., by journalists, politicians, and academics), stating that "underclass" is a derogatory and "negative label that nobody claims or invokes except to pin it on to others".
And, although the underclass concepts is homogenizing, Wacquant argues that underclass imagery differentiates on gender lines, with the underclass male being depicted as a violent "gang banger", a physical threat to public safety, and the underclass female being generalized as "welfare mother" (also see welfare queen), a "moral assault on American values".
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