Urban marginality - anti-ghettos in British cities

Loic Wacquant's new book Urban Outcasts provides a panaromic view of neoliberal urbanism and its effects on those most vulnerable to welfare retrenchment, labour market deregulation, and the rolling out of the penal state. Particularly compelling to geographers is his observation that urban marginality is not everywhere the same - whereas American cities see deepening misery in its black ghettos, European cities see deepening misery in its anti-ghettos (multi-ethnic settlements still heavily dependent on the welfare state and tied to the rest of the metropolis, unlike their American counterparts). This project would explore Wacquant's "anti-ghetto" thesis as it applies to British cities, offering a mixed-methods analysis of the emergence of UK neighbourhoods of relegation, and the implications of the ongoing debate about whether or not Britain has ghettos.