Look up: Underclass

1. Underclass
   A class of individuals situated right at the bottom of the class system, often composed of people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
   Found on http://www.polity.co.uk/giddens5/student
   
   
2. underclass
   a disputed concept implying that there is a class of the population with distinctive cultural traits who are dependent on state benefits and/or poorly paid and are therefore locked into disadvantaged circumstances.
   Found on http://www.polity.co.uk/cbs3/PDF/Glos.pd
   
   
3. Underclass
   a group 'under the class structure' which is economically, politically and socially marginalised and excluded
   Found on http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/wps/media/obj
   
   
4. Underclass
   The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the undeserving poor, and was first used by Gunnar Myrdal in 1962. The usage came into wide circulation in the early 1980s, following Ken Auletta`s (1982) use of the term in three articles published in The New Yorker in 1981, and in book form a year later. Auletta refers to the underclass as a group who do not `assimilat...
   Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclass
   
   
5. Underclass
   The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the undeserving poor, and was first used by Gunnar Myrdal in 1962. The usage came into wide circulation in the early 1980s, following Ken Auletta`s (1982) use of the term in three articles published in The New Yorker in 1981, and in book form a year later. Auletta refers to the underclass as a group who do not `assimilat...
   Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclass
   
   
6. underclass
   (from the article `social class`) ...a core of chronically unemployed persons isolated from the economic mainstream in decaying urban areas. This new urban substratum of permanently ...
   Found on http://www.britannica.com/eb/a-z/u/7