Research On The Alienation Of The Urban Underclass

With the expansion of modern society, there appears a new weak groupnamed urban underclass in the city. Because of the lack of the money, social powerand prestige, the urban underclass is alienated from other social groups. Thispaper focuses on explore the situation and reasons of alienation happened in urbanunderclass. By use of quantitative research method mainly and combiningqualitative research method, it investigates the structural alienation, socialparticipating deficiency and psychological alienation, and analyses the influencingfactors.The study shows that there is structural alienation among urban underclass. Itperformances their residential segregation and homogeneous interpersonal relation.They live in the marginal and isolated places, poor living conditions, and theircommunities are forgotten in community management. Therefore, homogeneousinterpersonalship brings relatives and friends almost from their own class withoutcontact with upperclass. At the same time, no matter what gender, educational level,personal income is, the urban underclass live in poor conditions and has residentialsegregation. Males have small scale interpersonal relation and they tend to contactwith similar person. Howerer, females have larger scale relationship and preferperson in better living condition. The higher the level of education, the strongerconsciousness in interpersonal relation.Social participating deficiency is also a promlem in urban underclass. They areexcluded from social security system, and rarely participate in community activities,political activities and organization. They hold low init iative in participating andlow attention to information about state, society and community. Through theanalysis, it shows that females participate less activities than males. The lower level of education, the more social participating deficiency. Rural people participate lessactivities than urban people. Different working groups also have difference in socialparticipation. In addition, the higher personal income leads people to spend moretime to pursue money and ignore social participation. Poor residential area givesdisadvantage to people’s social participation.In psychological, the urban underclass is not negative as supposed. However,they are positive in some ways. But they have a strong feeling about lonely. Studyfinds that there is no difference between male and female in psychologicalalienation. Older people have stronger psychological alienation than younger people,but the degree of psychological alienation would be weakened. Besides, there isnegative correlation between level of education and psychological alienation,personal income and psychological alienation. Poor residential area brings morefeelings in psychological alienation. More interpersonal relation can reducepsychological alienation.Research in social alienation of urban underclass gives a hand to thequalitative research in academia, and it can raise the concern of urban underclassthemselves, groups and the society. It also make efforts to promote socialintegration and harmony through solving problems of urban underclass.