Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is not everywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Lo c Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos. It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'. Comparing the US 'Black Belt' with the French 'Red Belt' demonstrates that state structures and policies play a decisive role in the articulation of class, race and place on both sides of the Atlantic. It also reveals the crystallization of a new regime of marginality fuelled by the fragmentation of wage labour, the retrenchment of the social state and the concentration of dispossessed categories in stigmatized areas bereft of a collective idiom of identity and claims-making. These defamed districts are not just the residual 'sinkholes' of a bygone economic era, but also the incubators of the precarious proletariat emerging under neoliberal capitalism. Urban Outcasts sheds new light on the explosive mix of mounting misery, stupendous affluence and festering street violence resurging in the big cities of the First World. By specifying the different causal paths and experiential forms assumed by relegation in the American and the French metropolis, this book offers indispensable tools for rethinking urban marginality and for reinvigorating the public debate over social inequality and citizenship at century's dawn.

Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse andconventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the readerinside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializingbanlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is noteverywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, surveyand historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involutionof America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergenceof an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and statefostered by public policies of racial separation and urbanabandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread ofdistricts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos.It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories underthe press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and theethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urbanformations akin to 'anti-ghettos'.Comparing the US 'Black Belt' with the French 'Red Belt'demonstrates that state structures and policies play a decisiverole in the articulation of class, race and place on both sides ofthe Atlantic. It also reveals the crystallization of a new regimeof marginality fuelled by the fragmentation of wage labour, theretrenchment of the social state and the concentration ofdispossessed categories in stigmatized areas bereft of a collectiveidiom of identity and claims-making. These defamed districts arenot just the residual 'sinkholes' of a bygone economic era, butalso the incubators of the precarious proletariat emerging underneoliberal capitalism.Urban Outcasts sheds new light on the explosive mix ofmounting misery, stupendous affluence and festering street violenceresurging in the big cities of the First World. By specifying thedifferent causal paths and experiential forms assumed by relegationin the American and the French metropolis, this book offersindispensable tools for rethinking urban marginality and forreinvigorating the public debate over social inequality andcitizenship at century's dawn.

Detailed Contents ixGhetto, Banlieue, Favela, et caetera: Tools for Rethinking Urban Marginality 1Prologue: An Old Problem in a New World? 131 The Return of the Repressed: Riots, 'Race' and Dualization in Three Advanced Societies 15Part I From Communal Ghetto to Hyperghetto 412 The State and Fate of the Dark Ghetto at Century's Close 433 The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in 'Bronzeville' 924 West Side Story: A High-Insecurity Ward in Chicago 119Part II Black Belt, Red Belt 1335 From Conflation to Comparison: How Banlieues and Ghetto Converge and Contrast 1356 Stigma and Division: From the Core of Chicago to the Margins of Paris 1637 Dangerous Places: Violence, Isolation and the State 199Part III Looking Ahead: Urban Marginality in the Twenty-First Century 2278 The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Specifications and Implications 2299 Logics of Urban Polarization from Below 257Postscript: Theory, History and Politics in Urban Analysis 280Acknowledgements and Sources 288References 291Index 330