The poor, the unemployed, the lowest social class. Wilson (1991–92) Pol. Sci. Quarterly 106, 4, 639 writes of the underclass ‘whose primary predicament is joblessness reinforced by growing social isolation. Outmigration has decreased the contact between groups of different class and racial backgrounds and thereby concentrated the adverse effects of living in impoverished neighbourhoods. These concentration effects, reflected, for example, in the residents’ self-limiting social dispositions, are created by inadequate access to jobs and job networks, the lack of involvement in quality schools, the unavailability of suitable marriage partners, and the lack of exposure to informal mainstream social networks and conventional role models’.