The "marginalised/marginalized" answers lay the blame at the door of the rest of the world, whereas "syrjäytynyt" is really reflexive. Especially in the context of the other questions today--school--I would talk about someone being withdrawn and shy, not marginalized (although that definition is better in the political-social way this word is often used in Finland).

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Note added at 1 day8 hrs (2007-09-03 16:08:45 GMT) Post-grading
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I don't disagree with the previous definitions, but I do think there is an interesting linguistic and cultural difference here. This idea of social exclusion is really big in Europe (syrjäytynyt is a surprisingly common term in Finnish political discourse), but very much less so in the US. I think here we still tend to assign more responsibility to the individual than to keep themselves engaged, which of course is problematic in many situations. Here's another term I like: "the dispossessed".

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Note added at 2 days4 hrs (2007-09-04 12:36:38 GMT) Post-grading
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Well, that's really my point. In the US, we generally fundamentally reject the notion that individuals are not responsible for their own welfare. This is why the true welfare state has not developed here. Right or wrong, the generally view is that when people are excluded, it is generally their own fault. The opposing view, more common in Europe, and here represented broadly by the Liberal/Democratic approach, has an amazing ability to lose easy elections.