The borderline between social exclusion and daily survival is increasingly blurred for a growing number of people in all societies. Having lost much of the safety net, particularly for the new generations of the post-welfare state era, people who cannot follow the constant updating of skills, and fall behind in the competitive race, position themselves for the next round of “downsizing” of that shrinking middle that made the strength of advanced capitalist societies during the industrial era. Thus, processes of social exclusion do not only affect the “truly disadvantaged” but those individuals and social categories who build their lives on a constant struggle to escape falling down to a stigmatised underworld of downgrounded labor and socially disabled people (Castells, 2000:376).