Download Social exclusion-discourses, rhetoric or the

Social exclusion-discourses, rhetoric or the Tower of
Babel?
Nicholas Walters University of Surrey, UK
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 33rd annual conference, University of Wales, Bangor,
1-3 July, 2003
While the idea of social exclusion is often seen in terms of economic exclusion and initiatives
to counter unemployment are based on the ideal of ‘a labour market open to all’, there has
been increasing attention given to the concept of social inclusion. This tends to address the
phenomenon from a more liberal position and concentrates on ideas of promoting integration
and addressing issues of diversity. This may at first sound a more attractive approach than the
economic one, but there are caveats. There is a danger that we engage in social engineering
by promoting a society where we are instrumental in integrating those who are labelled by
‘us’ as not integrated. Implicit in this is a concept of a static society where some who are
‘out’ are invited ‘in’. It is suggested that this model is in danger of being essentially
unrealistic and ultimately unhelpful. The recognition of diversity implies that the nature of
society itself is in a state of change and development. Any failure to address these
developmental processes is likely to result in interventions that are unhistorical and
unrealistic, as they disguise an underlying principle of assimilation.
The concept of social exclusion itself is not universally accepted. There is an approach that is
perhaps more Marxian in origin, and interprets the phenomenon in terms of poverty. For
example the literature from the World Bank stresses ‘the fight against poverty’. Social
exclusion as a concept is largely neglected in American literature. Mastropietro (2001) draws
a distinction between poverty being a condition and social exclusion being a process. This is
perhaps too simplistic and the debate about poverty and unemployment quickly gets high
jacked by issues of relative poverty, but it is necessary to ask what is the difference between
social exclusion and poverty. In its most extreme case social exclusion results in civil conflict
and ultimately genocide, while poverty leads to hunger and famine. This hypothesis is not
widely debated, but may lead to some clues about its difference. There is too a problem of
cause and effect, where arguments are unclear whether social exclusion is the cause or effect
of unemployment.
In the UK, unemployment rates continue to be low. Statistics published in March 2003
showed an overall rise in employment in the UK, particularly rising in Northern Ireland and
Wales (Labour Market Statistics, 2003).
Unemployment on the international definition was 73,000 down on the previous
quarter and 28,000 down on the previous year. The unemployment rate fell to 5.1%.
The region with the highest unemployment rate was London at 6.8%, (Bivard, 2003,
pp30-31).
This is in sharp contrast to the stubbornly high unemployment figures from other European
Union member states, particularly in Germany. While this phenomenon has exposed the
fallacies surrounding the claims that vocational training somehow magically leads to
sustainable employment and finally puts this approach to rest, it does beg the question, if the
economics of the situation are not now of over-riding importance, of why so many
experiencing prolonged spells of unemployment.
The new situation reveals a complexity of factors and this is prompting a plethora of themes,
not least relating to prejudice and discrimination, human rights, regeneration, capacity
building, racism and xenophobia, empowerment and participation. Each has its promoters
and rhetoric, and each has developed from sophisticated and historical discourses. There is a
need to differentiate between different discourses, and their origins. It is possible to separate
a range of current discourse with which the project will engage.
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The economic discourse which regards training of individuals as key to individual access
and progress, and employability
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The community regeneration approach with emphasis on environmental (especially the
built environment) regeneration
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The empowerment discourse that looks to empower both individuals and communities
through active participation
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The human rights discourse which emphasis the importance of the realisation of Human
Rights at all levels, particularly Equal Opportunities and Multiculturalism
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Professional discourses used by trained social workers, youth workers, careers advisers,
medical doctors, engaged in the field, among others, who are working in the field
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The lifelong learning discourse that responds to learning needs where careers are
disjointed, or for life changes, with emphasis on ‘the Learning Community’ and the
development of ‘the Knowledge Society’.
Each of the above informs and prompts new policy. Lifelong Learning has a role in
developing a response to the above discourses, but a prerequisite is to explore and interpret
the relationship between them, if it is to be more than one more well meaning stakeholder in
initiatives to combat exclusion.
The UK Government’s current employment strategy rests on three elements
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Welfare to Work policies which aim to prevent the unemployed becoming detached from
the labour market and assisting the unemployed back to work
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Targeted measures to help areas of the country and groups of people facing the most
significant barriers to work
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Policies to strengthen work incentives (Webb, 2003, p.4)
To date a favoured model of intervention to counter exclusion has been through innovative
projects rather than changes in statutory mainstream services. European policy has placed
increasing emphasis on including the practice of active participation of beneficiaries in
initiatives to combat social exclusion. This reflects a sharp distinction between policy that is
seen to be ‘top down’- that is initiated by statutory authorities based on their perception of
needs and their value frames and those that are initiated by beneficiaries’ own expression of
need and articulation of values. ‘Bottom up’ initiatives actively encourage the participation of
beneficiaries at all level and at all times in the project process, and ultimately in the
formulation of new policy. While project methodologies can be effective, other more
negative policy may impact on mainstream programmes. An example is the loss of outreach,
which was a key skill for the adult educator, but it has been, and continues to be replaced by
marketing with its emphasis on promotion rather than networking.
The project approach reflects a current loss of confidence by the statutory authorities at local,
regional and national levels to produce effective intervention. It also questions confidence in
the validity of more traditional academic research methodology in informing policy. This is
reflected in the current demand for evidence based research results. These results are
essentially hard indicators and similar to those reflected in Indices of Multiple Deprivation on
which much policy is based. Another approach has been to identify a difference between
objective and subjective indicators. This is developed by such projects as the ‘Tackling
Social Exclusion with Young Children’ - Home-Start project. This has the advantage of
including the experience of those directly experiencing exclusion. A third approach (Walters,
2002) argues that the division between hard and soft indicators is unhelpful and that different
stakeholders have different value sets that need to be measured to reflect the effectiveness of
interventions to counter exclusion.
In practice this dynamic has produced a plethora of self help groups, for example Refugee
Community Organisations, and a growth in the role of the Voluntary Sector. However, there
are a number of paradoxes in this development. The Voluntary Sector is an actor and
stakeholder in publicly funded and publicly accountable programmes. In the UK it is a
significant employer. The role is now politicised rather than that of a altruistic service
provider.
The REP project in Edinburgh is a case study of such development. Set on the council estate
of Wester Hailes, it is a well established community development project that has been
identified as an example of good practice. The project offers a range of services and
activities, for and with residents on a geographically isolated estate built in the 1960s to solve
inner city problems in Edinburgh. The core of the project is a representative residents’
council.
…we ensure the maximum involvement of local people in their community and
decision making…we support 12 independently constituted Neighbourhood Councils
covering all of Wester Hailes, 4 open Forums covering housing, equal opportunities
and local facilities and environment, and 3 Development Groups working to improve
their areas, as well as a wide range of ad hoc short term working groups…”The REP
Council reaches people and does things in a way national and local government just
cannot do (John Reid, Former Secretary of State for Scotland)” , (REP Annual
Report, 2001/2, p.3).
However, REP depends on a degree of public funding to continue, and has currently fallen
between the responsibilities of the local authority and the newly established devolved Scottish
Assembly. This situation prompts the question of where the political responsibility actually
rests and highlights the paradox in the dynamic. Local authorities are said to work in a
culture of saving rather than spending financial resources, but, who is actually the beneficiary
in this paradox, is a radical question that begs to be addressed. The reality is that the nursery
school is threatened with closure. Another question that this raises is the legitimacy of
authorities who control resources. It is possible to be cynical about the way the discharge of
civic intervention has been left to a self help group without any policy participation.
Another feature in the current dynamics is the emphasis on the creation of new partnerships to
address the issues of exclusion. Partnership work is seen as more than interagency working
and stress is put on the desirability of forming partnerships with stakeholders from different
sectors (for example, voluntary groups, statutory services, representative professional bodies),
and in the social exclusion field with employers and employer bodies such as Chambers of
Commerce. The processes of partnership working are still being identified, but the
management of partnerships and stakeholder roles within them is often problematic in
practice. This is not to say that new partnerships do not have within them new potential to
find new solutions. Synergistic approaches, where the total is greater than the sum of the
parts, is a creative approach, but power relationships between organisations need effective
management to be constructive. In a comparison of two project partnerships, Page (2003),
observes,
consultants and partners became skilful ‘bicultural’ partners, operating with different
systems of meaning as they travelled between project and organisational
environments, bringing knowledge and experience from each one to the next,
engaging with colleagues in reflection on experience and testing and acting on new
knowledge as they developed new practice (Page 2003, p.7).
A further feature is the policy concentration on the neighbourhood approach. Deprived
neighbourhoods are visible. The growth in the use of Indices of Multiple Deprivation in
policy development has supported this change. Concentration on neighbourhoods deflects the
charge of individualising unemployment. It also deflects any wider societal responsibility.
The strategy document, ‘New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal - a National Strategy
Action Plan’, 2001, is a key strategic vision for narrowing the gap between deprived
neighbourhoods and the rest of the country.
‘Neighbourhood renewal is about taking a strategic approach in order to improve the
quality of life for people who live in the poorest communities in Britain. It is also
about recognising that residents in hundreds of poor neighbourhoods see their basic
quality of life increasingly detached from the majority of people in this country…it is
the result of …a complex combination of factors. Some of the factors are social and
economic changes which have affected many countries. When these combine they
can create a complex and fast moving vicious cycle’, (White, 2001, p.1).
‘Two thirds of the local authority districts with the lowest employment rates in 1997
were also among the bottom 30 in 2001. These areas include those where established
industries have declined, as well as seaside towns and rural communities. However,
many are close to economic vibrant inner-city areas’, (Social Exclusion Unit, 2003,
p.1).
Social policy for more relatively affluent regions now refers to ‘pockets’ of exclusion.
Hackney is one such area. It directly borders the City of London. The unemployment rate in
the London Borough of Hackney has fallen in step with national trends since 1996, but the
differential between the national average and the Hackney average rate has not really
changed, ‘a Hackney resident is still more than twice as likely to be out of work than the
average person nationally’, (NOMIS).
Although the claimant unemployment rate in the borough of Hackney has fallen in
step with national trends since 1996, the differential between the national average and
the Hackney average rate has not really changed, (NOMIS, 2001).
According to the Index of Multiple Statistics for 2000, Hackney’s average ward ranks make it
the second most deprived area in the country. All 23 old wards in Hackney are in the worst
10% nationally and 9 wards are in the worst 3% (Hackney Borough Council, 2002). The
Audit Commission rates Hackney’s performance among the cohort of 13 ‘poor’ councils, in
terms of the quality of the services they offer, (BBC News, Dec. 2002). The Hackney Report
by the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate, 2001, gives a picture of a local system under stress.
The external evaluation of three community based intervention projects in Hackney, ‘World
Class Cities’ Single Regeneration Budget; Refugee Mentoring and Employment, and
‘Hackney Works’ Intermediate Labour Market, revealed a picture of a rich, if uncoordinated,
series of projects (Walters and Lee, 2002 2003). These very different projects all aimed at
accessing the labour market for the long term unemployed. In some terms all three could be
justifiably described as successful, judged against hard outcomes. All could point to
innovation and new learning methodologies. Significant numbers of project beneficiaries
were finding sustainable employment. However, what emerged as increasingly important was
the relationship with mainstream structures.
This is particular problematic where mainstream services are themselves under threat to the
point where they are effectively dysfunctional. For Lifelong Learning, a model of widening
participation that rests on insertion into an assumed established mainstream is, in reality, no
longer tenable in this situation. The mainstream is no longer so dominant or secure.
However, by definition, these projects are fixed, and more often than not, short term
interventions with little hope of making any lasting policy impact unless lessons are learned
and transferred. Transferability is itself an issue, as the lessons learned can only be
transferred into further projects. Interventions are primarily target group oriented and focused
on demonstrable local need, but the experience remains largely at local level.
This local context can be set against such work as the new EU Community Initiative EQUAL
programme, which is an attempt to set local practice in a wider strategic and policy context,
both in the UK and in other EU member states. Under the EQUAL programme, the SEQUAL
Development Partnership of eight Higher Education institutions, is exploring the relationship
between employability and different grounds of discrimination as identified in the Treaty of
Amsterdam. The premise of this research is the need to explore different discourses
describing the experience of those directly affected by the experience of exclusion in
situations where the economic position is only one of many considerations
(www.surrey.ac.uk./Education.cseinfo).
For those concerned with adult learning this current situation argues for navigation through
the established discourses to promote a more coherent understanding of the contribution that
Lifelong Learning might make, by promoting a dialogue between the discourses rather than
more promotional rhetoric for particular projects. Dialogue depends on engagement, and this
is an engagement that leads to enhanced awareness of other discourses. Failures lead to real
confusion, for example a project developing work with former drug and alcohol abusers led
by principles drawn from the Youth Service with no contact with treatment and rehabilitation
services; or another project working to a medical model with asylum seekers unwittingly
turnied the beneficiaries into patients. This is the foundation for a latter day Tower of Babel,
as each of these two projects could claim to be examples of good practice from within their
own discourse. Facilitating this dialogue is in itself an educational role, but there are further
expectations of the role of the educator. Policy at both UK and EU level continues to identify
education and training as having a key contribution to combating exclusion. The learning
content within the processes of exclusion are still often assumed rather than understood. The
curriculum content is still over-driven by the policy targets of funders, while the reality of
social conditions prove unresponsive to traditional models of both intervention and research
methodologies.
Lifelong Learning can have a more catalytic role in responding to engaging with social
exclusion, and beside direct intervention either in terms of practice or research, can articulate
a dialogue between the discourses, but this depends on the avoidance of ‘eloquently saying
nothing in particular’, or perhaps more cynically just joining in the chase for more financial
resources.
References
Bivard P (2003), Labour Market Report, in Working Brief, April Issue 143, Centre for Social
and Economic Inclusion.
Labour Market Statistics, Office of National Statistics, 19.3.03. www.statistics.gov.uk
Lee S, and Walters N (2002), World Class City, 1995-2002, Single Regeneration Budget, Final
Evaluation Report, Renaisi, London
Mastropietro E (2001), Rapid Appraisal Method of Social Exclusion and Poverty, CERFE,
Rome.
NOMIS-online Labour market Statistics (2001), University of Durham for the Office of National
Statistics,
Page M.L (2002), Challenging partnerships: Consultancy skills for sustaining collaboration
between diverse partners, in ed Lee K, Consulting into the Future: the Key Skills, Hodder and
Stoughton.
REP Annual Report (2002) Building a strong, caring and inclusive community. Edinburgh,
REP Council
Social Exclusion Unit (2003), Jobs and enterprise in deprived areas. Scoping Note.
Walters N., and Lee S. “Hackney Works” Intermediate Labour Market Project-External Evaluation
Report, 2003, London, Renaisi
Walters N, and Lee S (2002), Refugee Mentoring and Employer Network, External Evaluation
Report, Renaisi, London.
Walters N, Lygo-Baker S, and Strkljevic S (2001), Empowerment Indicators: Combating Social
Exclusion in Europe, The Policy Press, University of Bristol.
Webb D (2003), Employment and Training Programmes for the Unemployed, Research Paper
03/13, Economic Policy and Statistics Section, House of Commons Library.
White L (2001), Neighbourhood Renewal, Case Studies and Conversations, focusing on adult
and community learning, NIACE, Leicester.
www.Hackney.gov.uk
www.home-start-int.org/publications/publications/phase2%- Tackling social Exclusion in
Families with young Children.
www.surrey.ac.uk/Education/cseinfo.