What do we mean by the ‘underclass’?

Recent evidence points to the failure of the ‘troubled families’ programme launched by the Coalition government in 2011, a programme designed to intervene in the lives of the estimated 120,000 most behaviourally anti-social families in England and Wales. As John Macnicol argues, the concept of the ‘underclass’ underpinning this initiative has a long history, and has resurfaced in various forms for over a century in British politics and policy-making