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Understanding Social Exclusion: Introduction
Author: Tania Burchardt, Julian Le Grand, David Piachaud
Date: 2002
Size:
12 pages
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Summary
What are the different approaches to analysing and understanding social exclusion? This chapter introduces a book from the Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. There are three main approaches to social exclusion and these emphasise the roles of: individuals; institutions and systems; and discrimination and lack of enforced rights. Given the complexity of influences on individuals, however, a broad perspective is most helpful.
The concept of social exclusion provides a useful focus on the multidimensional, dynamic and multilevel nature of deprivation. The rhetoric of social exclusion emphasises agency and process but measurable outcomes seem similar to those used for poverty and deprivation. However, while existing definitions of disadvantage may be sufficiently broad to encompass a range of dimensions, take a longitudinal view and look beyond low income, most research has not reflected all these elements.
Social exclusion is a contested term. It is used as another way of talking about poverty, as a broader concept including issues of polarisation, differentiation and inequality, and as a separate concept from inequality. It was originally used in France of those who slipped through the social insurance system and it later came to be associated in Europe with long-term unemployment. The United Nations Development Programme has promoted the development of a global conceptualisation of the term, emphasising basic civil and social rights.
Thinking on the causes of social exclusion is similarly varied and depends on answers to the question of who is doing the excluding, whether individuals themselves, institutions, or the elite. Further findings are that:
- There have been two approaches to operationalising the concept of social exclusion. One concentrates on specific problems taken to be examples of social exclusion and the other characterises social exclusion as lack of participation in key aspects of society.
- These approaches build on the tradition of measuring poverty and deprivation. They reflect an arguably pre-existing shift of emphasis from poverty to social exclusion that involves a multidimensional approach, dynamic analysis and a community-level focus.
- Measures of social exclusion do depart from their predecessors by seeking to identify those people whose non-participation in society arises not just from lack of resources but through broader factors. These factors include discrimination, ill health, geographic location and cultural identification.
- Usefully distinguish between past and present influences on outcomes. Past influences involve human, physical and financial capital accrued by individuals and communities. Present influences involve individuals’ and communities’ external constraints and internal choices.
- Take into account the multidirectional influences of different levels of society (individual, family, community, local, national, global) on each other.
- Recognise that the outcomes of these interactions between levels themselves become present influences, affecting constraints and opportunities.
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Source:
Burchardt T., Le Grand J., and Piachaud D., 2002, 'Introduction', in Hills, J., Le Grand, J. and Piachaud, D., Understanding Social Exclusion, Oxford University Press, Oxford
