Urban Studies, Vol. 36, No.

10, 1639± 1647, 1999

Urban M arginality in the Com ing M illennium

L oõ È c Wacquant

[Paper ® rst received, A pril 1998; in ® nal form, August 1998]

Su m m ary. This paper sketch es a characteri sation of the regim e of urban m argin ality that has
em erged in advan ced societies since the close of the F ord ist era, highligh ting four logics that
com b ine to p rod uce it: a m acrosoci etal d rift tow ard s inequ ality, th e m utation of wage labour
(entailin g both deproletari anisation an d casu alisation ), the retren chm ent of w elfare states, and
the spatial con centration and stigm atisatio n of poverty. The rise of this new m argin ality does not
sign al a tran satlan tic con vergen ce on the Am erican pattern : Europ ean neigh bourh ood s of
relegati on are deeply penetrated by the state and ethn oracial ten sion s in them are fuelled , not by
the grow ing gap betw een im m igran ts and natives, but by their increasin g p rop inquity in social
and ph ysical space. To cop e with em ergen t form s of urban m argin ality, societies face a
three-p ron ged altern ative: they can patch up existin g program m es of the welfare state, crim i-
nalise poverty via the p unitive con tain m ent of the poor, or institu te new social righ ts that sever
subsisten ce from perform ance in the labour m ark et.

Introduction
All social phenom ena are, to som e degree,
the work of collective will, and collective
will im plies choice betw een different poss-
ible options. ¼ The realm of the social is
the realm of modality (Mauss, 1929,
p. 470).
This paper analyses the modalities whereby
new form s of urban inequality and marginal-
ity have arisen and are spreading through out
the advanced societies of the capitalist West.
The argum ent unfolds in tw o steps.
First, I sketch a com pact characterisation
of what I take to be a new regim e of urban
marginality. This regim e has been ascendant
for the past three decades or so, since
the close of the Fordist era de® ned by
standardised industrial produc tion, mass con-
sum ption and a Keynesian social contract
binding them together under the tutelage of
the social welfare state. Yet its full im pact
lies ahead of us because its advent is tied
to the most advanced sectors of our econom -
iesÐ this is why I refer to it here as
`advanced marginality’ . Identifying the
distinc tive prope rties of this consolidating
regim e of urban marginality helps us to
pinpoin t what exactly is new about the `new
poverty ’ of which the city is the site and
fount.
Secondly, I turn to the question that im -
plicitly inform s or explicitly guide s E uro-
pean debates on the resurgence of destitutio n,
division and tension in the metropolis:

Loõ È c Wacquant is at the Centre de sociologie europeÂenne du ColleÁ ge de F rance and the Department of Sociology, University of
California -Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA . Fax: 510-642-0659. E-mail: loic@uclink4.berkeley.edu. This is the revised text
of the plenary address to the Nordic Sociological A ssociation Meetings, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15 June 1997. The author would like
to thank the many colleagues (among them, M argaret B ertilsson, Peter Gundelach, Inge Pedersen, Trond P etersen and Annick Prieur)
w hose efforts and enthusiasm made his visit to Scandinavia possible as well as imm ensely enjoyable.

0042-0980 Print/1360-063X On-line/99/101639-09 Ó 1999 The Editors of Urban Studies

1640 LO IÈC W A CQUA NT
nam ely, are we witnessing an epochal con-
vergence of urban poverty regim es across the
Atlantic? It is argued that we are not: urban
relegation follow s different social and spatial
dynam ics on the two contine nts. Yet Eu-
ropean societies must beware of pursuin g
public policies that isolate distinct urban
zones and populations, thereby encouragin g
them to pursue divergent and even opposi-
tional life strategies that can set off self-
reinforcing cycles of social involut ion not
unlike those that underlie ghettoisation in the
US.
Despite its title, then, this paper is not a
contribution to the fadish celebration of
`2000’ . Rather, it is an attempt to diagno se
the social forces and form s with which our
current urban predicament is pregnant and
that prom ise to shape the metropolis of to-
morrow Ð unless we exercise our `collective
will’ and act to check m echanism s and steer
trends in a different direction.
Sym ptom s of Advan ced M argin ality
The close of the 20th century is witnessing a
mom entous transformation of the roots,
make-up and consequences of urban poverty
in W estern society. Along with the accelerat-
ing econom ic modernisation caused by
the global restructuring of capitalism , the
crystallisation of a new international division
of labour (fostered by the frantic velocity of
® nancial ¯ ows and workers across porous
national bounda ries) and the growth of novel
know ledge-intensive industries based on
revolutionary inform ation technologies and
spaw ning a dual occupational structure, has
com e the modernisation of miseryÐ the rise
of a new regim e of urban inequa lity and
marginality. (For a fuller argum ent, see
W acquant, 1996a.)
W here poverty in the W estern metropolis
used to be largely residual or cyclical,
embedded in working -class com munities,
geographically diffuse and considered reme-
diable by means of further market expansion,
it now appears to be increasingly long-term if
not perm anent, disconnected from macroeco-
nom ic trends and ® xated upon disreputable
neighbo urhood s of relegation in which social
isolation and alienation feed upon each other
as the chasm betw een those consigned there
and the rest of society deepens.
T he consolidation of this new regim e of
urban marginality is treading diverse routes
and taking different form s in the various
countries of the First W orld. In the US and in
the UK, it has been greatly facilitated by the
policy of wholesale state retrenchm ent pur-
sued by conservative and liberal parties alike
over the past two decades and by the rigid or
rising spatial and social separation of white
and coloured in the major urban centres. In
other nations with strong corporatist or so-
cial-democratic welfare states and less segre-
gated cities, such as the countries of northern
Europe and Scandinavia, it has been partly
attenuated but not wholly de¯ ected. And it
has becom e embroiled with the vexed ques-
tion of the integration of T hird W orld mi-
grants and refugees, as expressed in the
anguish over the crystallisation of im migrant
`ghettos’ grippin g the continent from M ar-
seille to MuÈ nchen and Brussels to Brindisi
(see, for example, Hadjim ichalis and Sadler,
1995; Mingione , 1996).
W hatever the label used to designate itÐ
`underclass’ in the US and in the UK; `new
poverty ’ in the Netherlands Germany and
Northern Italy; `exclusion’ in France, Bel-
gium and Nordic countriesÐ the telltale signs
of the new marginality are im mediately fam-
iliar to even the casual observer of the West-
ern metropolis: hom eless men and families
vainly scrambling about for shelter, beggars
on public transport spinnin g heart-rending
tales of personal disaster and dereliction,
soup kitchens teeming with not only drifters
but also the unem ployed and the underem-
ployed; the surge in predatory crime and the
boom ing of inform al (and more often than
not illegal) street econom ies spearheaded by
the trade in drugs; the despondency and rage
of youths shut out from gainful employm ent
and the bitterness of older workers made
obsolete by deindustrialisation and techno-
logical upgrading; the sense of retrogression,
despair and insecurity that pervades poor
neighbo urhood s locked into a seemingly un-
 URBAN MA RGINA LITY
stoppable dow nw ard spiral of deterioration;
and mounting racial violence, xenophobi a
and hostilit y towards and amongst the poor.
Everywhere, state e lites and public policy
experts have becom e acutely concerned with
preventing or containing the `disorders’
brewing within and around expandin g
enclaves of urban decline and abandonm ent.
Hence the sprouting of research on urban
decline and destitution suppor ted by various
national and transnationa l bodies, including
the European Com mission (with its Targeted
Socio-econom ic Programme on exclusion
and integration), the OECD, and even
NATO on the European side, and major
philanthropic foundations in the US.
Four Structural Logics F uel the New
M arginality
But the distinctive structural properties of
`modernised misery’ are much less evident
than its concrete manifestations. Schemati-
cally, the emerging regim e of marginality
may be characterised as the product of four
logics that jointly reshape the features of
urban pove rty in rich societies. These fea-
tures stand in stark contrast with the com -
manding traits of poverty in the era of
Fordist expansion from the close of W orld
W ar II to the mid-197 0s.
The M acrosocial Dynam ic: The Resurgence
of Social Inequality
The new urban marginality results not from
econom ic backw ardness, sluggish ness or de-
cline, but from rising inequality in the con-
text of overall econom ic advancement and
prosperity. Arguably the most puzzling attri-
bute of the new marginality is that it is
spreading in an era of capricious but sturdy
growth that has brough t about spectacular
material betterment for the more privileged
members of First W orld societies. Notwith-
standing ritual talk of `crisis’ among politi-
cians, all leading capitalist countries have
seen their GNP expand and collective wealth
increase rapidly over the past three decades.
Opulence and indigen ce, luxury and penury,
1641
copiousness and deprivation have ¯ ourished
right alongside each othe r. Thus the city of
Hamburg, by som e measurem ents the richest
city in E urope, sports both the highest pro-
portion of millionna ires and the highest inci-
dence of public assistance receipt in
Germany, while New York City is hom e to
the largest upper class on the planet but also
to the single greatest army of the hom eless
and destitute in the W estern hem isphere
(Mollenko pf and Castells, 1991).
T he tw o phenom ena, though apparently
contradictory, are in point of fact linked. For
the novel form s of productivity and pro® t-
seeking in the `high-t ech’ , degraded manu-
facturing and business and ® nancial service
sectors that drive ® n-de-sieÁ cle capitalism are
splittin g the workforce and polarising access
to, and rewards from , durable employ-
ment. Post-industrial modernisation trans-
lates, on the one hand, into the multiplication
of highly skilled positio ns for university-
trained professional and technical staff and,
on the other, into the deskilling and outrigh t
elimination of millions of jobs for unedu-
cated workers (Sassen, 1991; Carnoy et al.,
1993). W hat is more, today, jobless pro-
duction and grow th in many econom ic sec-
tors are not a utopian possibility but a
bittersweet reality. W itness the virtual emp-
tying of the harbour of Rotterdam, perhaps
the most modern in the world and a major
contributor to the rise of unem ploym ent in
this Dutch city to above the 20 per cent
mark.
The more the revamped capitalist economy
advances, the wider and deeper the reach of
the new marginality, and the more plentiful
the ranks of those thrown into the throes
of misery with neither respite nor recourse,
even as of® cial unemploym ent drops and
income rises in the country. In September
1994, the US Bureau of the Census reported
that the US poverty rate had risen to a 10-year
high of 15.1 per cent (for a staggering total
of 40 million poor persons) despite 2 years
of robust economic expansion. Meanwhile,
the European Union of® cially tallies a
record 52 million poor, 17 million unemployed
and 3 million homelessÐ and countingÐ
1642 LO IÈC W A CQUA NT
in the face of renewed econom ic grow th and
im proved global com petitiveness.
Put differently, advanced marginality
appears to have been `decoupled’ from cycli-
cal ¯ uctuations in the national econom y. The
consequence is that upsw ings in aggregate
incom e and employm ent have little bene® cial
effect upon life-chances in the neighbo ur-
hoods of relegation in Europe and the US,
while dow nswings cause further deterio-
ration and distress within them . Unless this
disconnection is som ehow remedied, further
econom ic growth prom ises to produce more
urban disloc ation and depression am ong
those thrust and trapped at the bottom of the
emerging urban order.
The Econom ic Dynam ic: The M utation of
W age Labour
The new urban marginality is the by-pro duct
of a double transformation of the sphere of
work. The one is quantitative and entails the
elimination of millions of low -skilled jobs
under the com bined press of autom ation and
foreign labour com petition. The other is
qualitative, involving the degradation and
dispersion of basic conditions of employ-
ment, remuneration and social insurance for
virtually all but the most protected workers.
From the tim e when Friedrich E ngels
wrote his classic exposeÂon the condition of
the working class in Manchester’ s factories
to the crisis of the great industrial heartlands
of Euro-A merican capitalism a century and a
half later, it was rightly assumed that ex-
pandin g wage labour supplied a viable and
ef® cacious solution to the problem of urban
poverty. Under the new econom ic regim e,
that assumption is at best dubious and at
worst plain wrong.
First, a signi® cant fraction of the working
class has been rendered redundant and com -
poses an `absolute surplus popula tion’ that
will probably never ® nd regular work again.
At any rate, given the loosening of the func-
tional linkage between macroeconom ic ac-
tivity and social conditions in the poor
enclaves of the First World metropolis,
and considering the productivity increases
perm itted by autom ation and com puterisa-
tion, even miraculous rates of growth could
not absorb back into the workforce those
who have been deproletarianisedÐ that is,
durably and forcibly expelled from the wage
labour market to be replaced by a com bi-
nation of machines, cheap im migrant labour
and foreign workers (Rifkin, 1995).
Secondly, and more im portantly, the
character of the wage±labour relation itself
has changed over the past tw o decades in a
manner such that it no longer grants fool-
proof protection against the menace of pov-
erty even to those who enter it. W ith the
expansion of part-tim e, `¯ extim e’ and tem-
porary jobs that carry fewer bene® ts, the
erosion of union protection, the diffusion of
two-tier pay scales, the resurgence of sweat-
shops, piece rates and famine wages, and the
grow ing priva tisation of social goods such as
health coverage, the wage labour contract has
becom e a source of fragm entation and pre-
cariousness rather than of social hom ogene-
ity and security for those consigned to
the peripheral segments of the employm ent
sphere (see, for example, European Econ-
om ic Com munity, 1989; Mabit, 1995;
MacDonald and Sirianni, 1996). In short,
where econom ic grow th and the correlative
expansion of the wage sector used to provid e
the universal cure against poverty, today
they are part of the malady.
The Political Dynam ic: The Reconstruction
of W elfare States
The fragm entation and desocialisation of
labour are not the only factors fuelling the
rise of the new urban poverty. For, alongside
market forces, welfare states are major pro-
ducers and shapers of urban inequality and
marginality. States not only deploy pro-
gram mes and policies designed to `mop up’
the most glaring consequences of poverty
and to cushion (or not) its social and spatial
im pact. They also help to determine who gets
relegated, how , where and for how long.
States are major engines of strati® cation in
their ow n right and now here more so than at
the bottom of the socio-spatial order (Esping-
 URBAN MA RGINA LITY
Andersen, 1993): they provid e or preclude
access to adequate schooling and job train-
ing; they set conditions for labour market
entry and exit via adm inistrative rules for
hiring, ® ring and retirement; they distribute
(or fail to distribute) basic subsistence goods,
such as housing and supple mentary incom e;
they actively support or hinder certain family
and household arrangements; and they co-
determine both the material intensity and the
geographical exclusivity and density of mis-
ery throug h a welter of adm inistrative and
® scal schemes.
The retrenchm ent and disarticulation of
the welfare state are tw o major causes of the
social deterioration and destitutio n visible in
the metropolis of advanced societies. This is
particularly obvious in the US, where the
popula tion covered by social insurance
schem es has shrunk for two decades while
programmes targeted to the poor were cut
and increasingly turned into instrum ents of
surveillance and control. The recent `welfare
reform ’ concocted by the Republican con-
gress and signed into law by President
Clinton in the sum mer of 1996 is emblem atic
of this logic (W acquant, 1997a). It replaces
the right to public aid with the obligation to
work, if necessary at insecure jobs and for
sub-standard wages, for all able-bodied per-
sons, including young mothers with depen-
dent children. It drastically dim inishes
fundin g for assistance and creates a life-time
cap on welfare suppor t. Lastly, it transfers
adm inistrative responsibility from the federal
government to the 50 states and their
counties, thus aggravating already existing
inequalities in access to welfare and acceler-
ating the incipient privatisation of social
policy.
A similar logic of curtailm ent and devol-
ution has presided over whole sale or piece-
meal modi® cations of social transfer systems
in the UK, Germany, Italy and France. E ven
the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries
have im plem ented measures designed to re-
duce access to public suppor t and to stem the
growth of social budgets. Everywhere the
mantra of `globalisation’ and the ® scal stric-
tures im posed by the Maastricht Treaty have
1643
served to justify these measures and to
excuse social disinvestment in form erly
working -class areas highly dependent on
state provision of public goods. T he growing
shortcomings of national welfare schemes
have led regional and local authorities to
institute their ow n stop-gap support
programmes (especially in response to
hom elessness and long-term unem ploym ent).
T he irrelevance of the `national state’ has
becom e a com monplace of intellectual con-
versation the world over. It is fashionable
now adays to bemoan the incapacity of cen-
tral political institutions to check the mount-
ing social dislocations consequent upon
global capitalist restructuring. But large and
persistent discrepancies in the incidence
and persistence of poverty , as well as in the
living standards, (im )mobility and spatial
distinc tiveness of the urban poor in different
countries suggest that news of the passing of
the national welfare state has been greatly
exaggerated. As of the late 1980s, tax and
transfer programmes lifted most poor house-
holds near the median national incom e level
in the Netherlands (62 per cent) and France
(52 per cent); in W est Germany only a third
of poor families escaped poverty thanks to
government suppor t and in the US virtually
none. E xtrem e destitution has been elimi-
nated among children in Scandinavian coun-
tries, while it plagues one child in six (and
every other black child) in the US (these data
are drawn from McFate et al., 1995; a more
analytical overview can be found in Kangas,
1991). States do make a differenceÐ that is,
when they care to. Therefore, it is im perative
to bring them back to the epicentre of the
com parative sociology of urban marginality
as generative as well as remedial institutions.
The Spatial Dynamic: Concentration and
Stigm atisatio n
In the post-w ar decades of industrial expan-
sion, poverty in the metropolis was broadly
distribu ted throug hout working -class districts
and tended to affect a cross-section of man-
ual and unskilled labourers. By contrast, the
new m arginality displays a distinct tendency
1644 LO IÈC W A CQUA NT
to conglom erate in and coalesce around `hard
core’ , `no-go ’ areas that are clearly
identi® edÐ by their own residents, no less
than by outsidersÐ as urban hellholes rife
with deprivation, im morality and viole nce
where only the outc asts of society would
consider living.
Nantua in Philadelphia, Moss Side in
Manchester, Gutleutviertel in Hamburg,
Brixton in L ondon, Niewe W esten in Rotter-
dam , Les Minguettes in Lyon’ s suburbs and
Bobigny in the Parisian periphery: these en-
trenched quarters of misery have `made a
nam e’ for themselves as repositories for all
the urban ills of the age, places to be
shunned, feared and deprecated. It matters
little that the discourses of dem onisation that
have mushroom ed about them often have
only tenuou s connections to the reality of
everyday life in them . A pervading territorial
stigm a is ® rmly af® xed upon the residents of
such neighbo urhood s of socioeconom ic exile
that adds its burden to the disrepute of pov-
erty and the resurging prejudice against eth-
nic minoriti es and im migrants (an excellent
analysis of this process of public stigm atisa-
tion is offered by Damer, 1989, in the case of
Glasgow).
Along with territorial stigm atisation com es
a sharp dim inution of the sense of com mu-
nality that used to characterise older work-
ing-class locales. Now the neighbour hood no
longer offers a shield against the insecurities
and pressures of the outside world; it is no
longer a familiar and reaf® rming landscape
suffused with collective meanings and form s
of mutuality. It turns into an empty space of
com petition and con¯ ict, a danger-® lled bat-
tleground for the daily contest of survival
and escape. T his weakening of territorially
based com munal bonds, in turn, fuels a
retreat into the sphere of privatised consum p-
tion and strategies of distancing (`I am not
one of them ’ ) that further underm ine local
solidarities and con® rm deprecatory
perceptions of the neighb ourhoo d.
W e must remain alert to the possibility
that this may be a transitional (or cyclical)
phenom enon eventually leading to the spatial
deconcentration or diffusion of urban mar-
ginality . But for those presently consigned at
the bottom of the hierarchical system of
places that com pose the new spatial order of
the city, the future is now. Relatedly, it must
be stressed that such neighb ourhoo ds of rele-
gation are creatures of state policies in mat-
ters of housing, urban and regional plannin g.
Fundam entally, then, their emergence, con-
solidation and eventual dispersion are essen-
tially political issues.
The Spectre of Transatlan tic Convergence
One question is at the back of everyone’ s
mind when it com es to the deterioration of
social conditions and life-chances in Old
W orld metropolis: does the rise of this new
marginality signal a structural rapproche-
ment betw een Europe and the US on the
model of the latter (see, for instance, Cross,
1992; Musterd, 1994; van Kempen and
Marcuse, 1999; HauÈ û erman et al., in press).
Framed in such simplistic, either/or, terms,
the question hardly adm its of an analytically
rigorou s answer. For regim es of urban mar-
ginality are com plex and capricious beasts;
they are com posed of im perfectly articulated
ensembles of institut iona l mechanisms tying
together econom y, state, place and society
that do not evolve in unison and, moreover,
differ signi® cantly from country to country
with national conceptions and institutions of
citizenship. It is therefore necessary ® rst to
rephrase this query.
If by convergence, one means the whole-
sale `Americanisation’ of urban patterns of
exclusion in the European city leading down
the path of ghettoisa tion of the kind im posed
upon Afro-Am ericans since they urbanised at
the beginning of this century (i.e. the form a-
tion of a segmented, parallel, socio-spatial
reality serving the dual purpose of exploi-
tation and ostracisation of a bounded ethnora-
cial category), then the answer is clearly
negative (Wacquant, 1996b). Contrary to ® rst
impressions and super® cial, media-driven ac-
counts, the changeover of the continental
metropolis has not triggered a process of ghet-
toisation: it is not spawning culturally uniform
 URBAN MA RGINA LITY
socio-spatial ensembles based on the forcible
relegation of stigm atised popula tions to
enclaves where these populations evolve
group- and place-speci® c organisations that
substitute for and duplicate the institutional
framework of the broader society, if at an
inferior and incom plete level.
There is no Turkish ghetto in Berlin, no
Arab ghetto in Marseilles, no Surinamese
ghetto in Rotterdam and no Caribbean ghetto
in Liverpoo l. Residential or com mercial clus-
ters fuelled by ethnic af® nity do exist in all
these cities. Discrimination and viole nce
against im migrants (or putative im migrants)
are also brutal facts of life in all major urban
centres of Europe (W rench and Solom os,
1993; BjoÈ rgo and W hite, 1993). Com bined
with their typically lower-class distribution
and higher rates of joblessness, this explains
the disprop ortionate representation of for-
eign-origin popula tions in urban territories of
exile. But discrim ination and even segre-
gation are not ghettoisation. Such im migrant
concentrations as exist are not the product of
the institutional encasem ent of the group
prem ised on rigid spatial con® nem entÐ as
evidenced by rising rates of interm arriage
and spatial diffusion when education and
class position im prove (T ribalat, 1995). In-
deed, if anythin g characterises the neigh-
bourho ods of relegation that have sprouted
across the continent as mechanism s of work-
ing-class reproduction have ¯ oundered, it is
their extreme ethnic heterogeneity as well
as their incapacity to supply the basic
needs and encom pass the daily round of their
inhabitantsÐ two properties that make them
anti-gh ettos.
If conve rgence im plies that self-
reinforcing cycles of ecological disrepair,
social deprivation and violenc e, resulting in
spatial emptying and institutional abandon-
ment, are now operative on the continent,
then again the answer is negative because
European areas of urban exile remain, with
few exceptions (such as southern Italian
cities), deeply penetrated by the state. The
kind of `triage’ and purposi ve desertion of
urban areas to `economise’ on public
services that has befallen the American
1645
metropolis is unim aginable in the European
politica l context with its ® ne-grained bureau-
cratic monitoring of the national territory. At
the same tim e, there can be no question that
the capacity of European states to govern
territories of relegation is being severely
tested and may prove unequal to the task if
recent trends tow ard the spatial concentration
of persistent joblessness continue unabated
(Engbersen, 1997).
Finally, if convergence is intended, more
modestly, to spotligh t the grow ing salience
of ethnoracial division s and tensions in the
Europea n metropolis, then the answer is a
quali® ed and provisional yes, albeit with the
follow ing strong provisos. First, this does not
necessarily im ply that a process of `racialisa-
tion’ of space is underw ay and that the socie-
ties of the Old W orld are witnessing the
form ation of `minoriti es’ in the sense of
ethnic com munities mobilised and recog-
nised as such in the public sphere. Secondly,
ethnora cial con¯ ict is not a novel phenom -
enon in the European city: it has surged forth
repeatedly in the past century during periods
of rapid social and econom ic restructuringÐ
which means also that there is little that is
distinc tively `American’ about it (Moore,
1989).
Finally, and contrary to the American pat-
tern, putatively racial strife in the cities of the
Old W orld is fuelled not by the grow ing gap
between im migrants and natives but by their
greater propinq uity in social and physical
space. E thnonational exclusivism is a nativist
reaction to abrupt dow nw ard m obility by the
autochthonous working class before it ex-
presses a profou nd ideolog ical switch to a
racist (or, rather, racialist) register. Notwith-
standing fadish blanket pronoun cements
about the `globalisation of race,’ the in-
creased salience of ethnicity in European
public discourse and everyday life pertains as
much to a politics of class as to a politics of
identity .
Coda: Coping with Advance d M arginality
In their effort to respond to emergent form s
of urban relegation, nation-states face a
1646 LO IÈC W A CQUA NT
three-pronged alternative. The ® rst, middle-
ground , option consists of patching up the
existing programmes of the welfare state.
Clearly, this is not doing the job, or the
problems posed by advanced marginality
would not be so pressing today. The second,
regressive and repressive, solutio n is to crim-
inalise poverty via the punitiv e containm ent
of the poor in increasingly isolated and stig-
matised neighbo urhood s, on the one hand,
and in jails and prisons, on the other. This is
the route taken by the US follow ing the
ghetto riots of the sixties (W acquant, 1997b;
Rothm an, 1995). One cannot dism iss its ap-
peal among segments of the European ruling
class, even in the face of the colossal social
and ® scal costs entailed in the mass
con® nem ent of poor and disruptive popula-
tions. Incarceration rates have risen throug h
much of the continent over the past two
decades and im prisonm ent is a seductive
stop-gap solution to m ounting urban disloc a-
tions even in the most liberal societies
(Christie, 1997). But, aside from the pow er-
ful political and cultural obstacles to the
wholesale con® nem ent of misery inherent
in the make-up of social-dem ocratic states in
Europe, punitiv e con® nem ent leaves un-
touched the root causes of the new poverty.
The third, progre ssive, pathway points to a
fundam ental reconstruction of the welfare
state that would put its structure and policies
in accord with emerging econom ic and social
conditions. Radical innovat ions, such as the
institution of a universal citizen’ s wage
(or basic incom e grant) that would sever
subsistence from work, are needed to expand
social rights and check the deleterious effects
of the m utation of wage labour (van Parijs,
1996). In the end, this third option is the only
viable response to the challenge that
advanced m arginality poses to dem ocratic
societies as they prepare to cross the
threshold of the new millennium .
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