0 a group of people with a lower social and economic position than any of the other classes of society:
The long-term unemployed now constitute a kind of underclass.
1 the lowest economic and social class in society, consisting of people who are considered to have few opportunities to improve themselves
2 the poorest people in a society, especially when discussing their lack of opportunities to find work:
He does not explain how the underclass, thus defined, is to be eliminated as he wants it to be.
Such poor quality housing may be associated with an underclass that was especially numerous in the thirteenth century.
Does this vast underclass have the potential to act as a force for the transformation of state forms, and how do they view the state?
A number of studies testify to their underclass continuities.
Most important here, the defence of class against identity is invariably focused on the working class or 'underclass'.
This in turn detached them from society and created a quasi-permanent underclass trapped into a culture of dependency.
It was also guaranteed to subvert any serious collective challenge by the town's underclass to the new industrial paternalism imposed by the factories.
Otherwise, charity would create an underclass of the slothful poor, which would invalidate the original charitable intent.
