Understanding Limerick: Social Exclusion and Change

This edited collection features contributions from a range of leading Irish scholars in the fields of sociology, social policy, criminology and urban geography. Limerick city currently has the highest crime rate in Western Europe and contains the areas of most severe urban deprivation in the Republic of Ireland. The collection explores how this profound social exclusion emerged and critically assesses proposed solutions—including the Regeneration programs—to this social disadvantage. The evaluation of social exclusion in Limerick also provides a key opportunity to link the Irish experience of social exclusion to European and American literatures on ghettoization and urban poverty.