They are local in scope and temporally more immediate. Issues, on the other hand, exist at qualitatively different level.
Public issues are beyond the power of any one individual to affect.
So while troubles are typically dealt with in the individual's milieu, issues may be addressed only through collective action, and the most widespread troubles are only ultimately resolvable through organized political responses. It is by grasping the relation between history and biography that we can see how personal troubles and social problems are connected. When we examine black unemployment and income in the context of a racialized social structure and a history of slavery and segregation, we can clearly see that these structural problems and the personal troubles that stem from them are caused by the social problem of racism. Blaming the victim is where people who are oppressed and disadvantaged by social forces beyond their control are held to be the cause of their situation and their suffering. One blames the victim when unemployment is attributed to a lack of motivation on the part of the unemployed person, when in fact unemployment is a macrosocial phenomenon, determined by the structure, cycles, and imperatives of the capitalist economic system and state policy, all forces beyond the control of unemployed individuals.