Naples: Unemployment and Spatial Exclusion

Abstract

The processes of deindustrialization that have produced an increase in unemployment and poverty in many western cities, have also affected Naples, the third industrial city of Italy. As a result, the number of workers in the manufacturing sector has practically halved in only 25 years, declining from 70,000 in 1970 to just over 32,000 in 1996. However, it would be inadequate to refer exclusively, or even primarily, to recent phenomena of industrial decline to explain the tendencies toward social exclusion; they have, indeed, a much longer history.