Infraclases rurales

Procesos emergentes de exclusión social en España

Abstract

From the early 1980s, the sociological discourse on poverty has undergone a process of deruralization,
being dominated by the concept of «underclass». This has become the term
to explain a particular type of poverty stemming from a dual problem of economic exclusion
and social isolation in spacially concentrated urban areas. In rural areas, these types of social
dislocations have remained hidden, meaning that the idea of rural poverty has been relegated to second
position. However, the most outstanding features of «underclasses» (long-term unemployment,
unqualified work in sporadic jobs, social isolation and welfare dependency) are particularly
relevant for analysing social exclusion processes in the Spanish rural environment. This article
examines the emergence of a collective «underclass» in rural Spain. The new resultant processes
of social exclusion in the Spanish rural environment would be related to agricultural unemployment
in southern Spain and the use of illegal immigrant labour in Mediterranean coastal farming.