Cascading Exclusion and Fragile Success: Relational Mechanisms in Persistent Poverty Across Social Fields

Persistent poverty is best understood not as a collection of separate disadvantages but as a relational process in which setbacks compound across social fields. This article develops the concept of cascading exclusion to capture how disadvantage in one field (e.g., employment, welfare, housing) triggers knock‐on losses in others, generating self‐reinforcing cycles of marginalization. Using qualitative interviews with 216 individuals in late‐1990s Dutch urban neighborhoods, we identify three mechanisms that sustain these cascades: blocked capital conversion, cross‐field chain effects, and symbolic misrecognition. We also examine rare cases of “fragile success,” where downward spirals were temporarily interrupted through the alignment of supportive ties, institutional flexibility, symbolic recognition, and temporal alignment. These findings advance relational poverty theory by showing how structural constraints, social relationships, and agency interact to reproduce or mitigate exclusion.