The rise and decline of the European struggle against social exclusion

Atkinson, Rob

Abstract

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, addressing social exclusion and achieving greater social inclusion figured prominently in the “social policy” discourse of the European Union and of many national governments within it. This chapter discusses social exclusion and why it came to largely replace, or subsume, poverty and associated notions such as the “slum” in the EU and wider European debates. However, despite its apparent recent prominence, social exclusion has always been subordinate, to a greater or lesser degree, to the enhancement of economic competitiveness through the pursuit of a neoliberal policy agenda. Since the crash of 2007–2008 and the prolonged subsequent period of austerity and welfare state restructuring/retrenchment, social exclusion has been further downgraded in pursuit of the “holy grail” of economic competitiveness.

• Online Publication Date: Aug 16, 2023
• Publication Date: Aug 16, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 30, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 17, 2025
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Pages: 162-179
• Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of the Modern Slum
• Chapter Number: 9
• ISBN: 9780190879457
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190879457.013.10
• Keywords: Social Exclusion, Europe, Neo-liberalism
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11072311
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/46860/chapter-abstract/413921292?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
• Contract Date: Feb 2, 2023