Declassed or on the margins of social structure?

Abstract

One of important consequence of technical and technological modernisation is that a large proportion of the structure of the society consists of permanently unemployed and poor and, ultimately, marginalized. Their number gives an incentive to raise the question of whether it is declassed, i.e. those who are outside or beyond the official structures of society or is it a special form of class grouping for which we may say that society is becoming characteristic of societies of blocked economic development. In theory, it was developed the concept of marginal class (underclass), which on this occasion will serve as a framework for the analysis of their class position. It should be added this term include not only unemployed but almost an entire ethnic group - the Roma people, which some authors call ethno-class. It is possible to speak of the existence of marginal class in the structure of society in Serbia, which has two very different but in terms of social structural layer quite similar strata: the unemployed and the poor on one side that are classified according to social criteria and Roma population on the other side of which class affiliations is determined by their ethnical social status.

Keywords

• class
• social structure
• the marginal class
• the unemployment
• poverty
• marginalization
• Roma people