Poverty

Abstract

This chapter moves on from considering the construction of space and place in resident’s lives to explore how living in the estates combined with material circumstances to produce particular categorizations and identifications around notions of ‘poverty’ and ‘deprivation’.¹ We saw in Chapter 2 how from early in the estates’ history the area housed a disproportionately large number of poorer council tenants, but how this had micro-spatial variations. Further, partly through the concentration of ‘problem families’ on a relatively small number of streets and parts of streets, there existed pockets of deep deprivation alongside relatively more affluent households. Thus through unpicking outsiders’ image of the poverty of the area, we began the process of understanding the complexities and nuances of the experiences of estate residents themselves.