The book deals with the processes of social exclusion that are reflected in the lives of the destitute, and the ways in which social policies attempt to manage them. Lives that fail to enjoy the civilized existence that the founders of modernity, urban culture, and especially post-war consensus preached. Lives that are transformed into invisible by the dominant discourse on well-being. However, they exist. And as long as they exist, they remind us of the failures of contemporary capitalist democracies to fulfill the fundamental conditions of the social contract they co-signed.

The multiplication of these lives in the years of crisis highlights the impact of austerity policies on the shrinking of the welfare state and the social position of citizens. A position that is no longer governed by equality of opportunities, access, and prospects for redistributing resources to mitigate social inequality. The 'bare lives' multiply and their multiplication indicates that the 'new' social policy being conceived does not aim to preserve the greatest ideological-political achievement of urban democracies, the social status of the citizen, but, on the contrary, to the marginal management of human survival.