In Western Europe, the notion of social exclusion is rapidly diffusing in the late 20th-century. This book investigates the notion of social exclusion as a new way to approach social issues such as the new poverty long term unemployment, precariousness, social polarization and disintegration. Particular attention is paid to both the global relevance of an approach in terms of social exclusion and its value compared to more conventional approaches in terms of poverty of deprivation. It is shown that social exclusion goes beyond these by explicitly embracing the relational as well as the distributional aspects of poverty and emphasizes processes. The authors explore the specific forms of social exclusion in the ongoing processes of globalization, deregulation, crisis of the welfare state, and rise of individualism.