The volume accounts for the state of art of the work and theoretical elaboration of a transnational research group which has worked on account of the European Union within the framework of the program "Poverty 3" on the extreme forms of urban poverty as related to the welfare policies. The main focus is the analysis of the contradictions in the field of extreme poverties.

A common problem arises in the four countries (Denmark, France, Germany and Italy) involved in the comparative research: the analysed welfare systems, beyond their diversities, seem to share a difficulty in catching the specificity of the forms and pathways of the extreme poverties in complex urban areas. In respect to a widespread approach which tends to consider the situations of extreme poverty as a subclass of poverty, the option proposed here is radically different. Between poverty and extreme poverty there is not only a difference in degree and intensity in deprivation, but there is a more profound distinction. Actually, they are two different universes requiring completely different theoretical frameworks, methods, reading instruments, and welfare interventions.

Extreme poverties are regarded as a new emerging topic, an issue typical of societies with a high level of industrialisation and growth, exactly because these phenomena are produced by situations of breaking-up with and dropping out of the traditional life routes. Sociological, anthropological, historical and psychological contributions can enrich the reading framework of the phenomenon, going beyond a diffused economism usually occurring in research on poverty.