Governments also need to take account of the perceptions of the most excluded members of their population, regarding their sense of belonging in society, since these groups would be most prone to feelings of disorientation and uncertainty generated by globalization processes, which would compound the potential adverse psycho-social repercussions of opportunity structures that are traditionally highly asymmetric. At the same time, a widening of the gap between expectations and effective material achievement among the poorest members of society could threaten inclusion and cohesion policies, owing to their potential effects in terms of frustration and destabilization of democracy. Nor have any regional quantitative studies analysed the perceptions and feelings of exclusion and gaps between aspirations and expectations of mobility prevailing among the poorest and most excluded sectors, against a backdrop in which major inequities converge with changes in economic, social, and cultural structures. In particular, repercussions on the social structure of the transformations associated with globalization (Hopenhayn, 2001), greater precariousness in the labour market and a weakening of the social protection system, revealed the need to take a broader view of problems of deprivation.