Social exclusion in Europe: old wine in new bottles?
Social exclusion in Europe: old wine in new bottles?

Summary/Abstract: In this article it is first demonstrated how the social sciences have taken the term social exclusion on board, without jettisoning the terms poverty, deprivation and marginalization. Then the definitions of social exclusion and the policies to combat social exclusion, as they are formulated by the institutions of the European Union, are discussed. A number of different explanations of the differences and the relationship between poverty and social exclusion are also discussed with reference to recent political and social scientific discourses. European social science has been speculating as to why this name-change and change in the conceptualization of the disadvantaged segments of our populations has occurred, and a number of explanations have been given. A few illustrations of the incidence and distribution of poverty and social exclusion within the member states of the European Union are also given, in order to point out the persistence and increasing severity ofprocesses and situations ofdeprivation in (Western) Europe. Finally, it is concluded that there exists a multitude of reasons for the promotion of the concept of social exclusion in the present situation of late modernity; and it is argued that social exclusion reflects new processes and situations in what, in early modernity, was called poverty.

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