ABSTRACT
Ever since the Maastricht Treaty prioritised the fight against poverty and social exclusion, European policy discussions have paid much attention to social inequality and to the convergence of living conditions in the European Union. The challenge to preserve social stability and to promote inclusion throughout Europe has even become greater when the new member states joined the EU in the eastern enlargements of 2004 and 2007. Policy debates now make frequent reference to the term ‘social exclusion’ even though there is little consensus on how to define the concept or how to operationalise it for empirical measurement. Whereas some scholars consider the concept as a new paradigm in social inequality research that leaves behind the conventional restriction to distributional issues by emphasising instead the importance of social integration, others vigorously doubt its innovative potential, considering it a politically driven change in terminology without any theoretical value added.
