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Social Exclusion: re-examining its conceptual relevance to
tackling inequality and social injustice
Purpose: This paper rationalises the continued conceptual utility of social exclusion, and in so
doing addresses the prevailing question of what to do with it. This is relevant from social
exclusion’s declining relevance in contemporary UK social policy and academia, where its
consideration as a concept to explain disadvantage is being usurped by other concepts, both
old and new.
Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyses criticisms of limitations of social
exclusion which have typically centred on the operationalisation of the concept, but I will argue
that there are distinctive operationalisation and conceptual strengths within social exclusion
which make it value-added as a concept to explain disadvantage. Specifically, there will be an
analysis of both New Labour’s and the present Coalition government’s conceptualisation of the
term in policy in relation to work.
Findings: The analysis highlights the significant difference that a focus on processes rather
than outcomes of social exclusion can make to our understanding of inequality and social
injustice, and locates this difference within an argument that social exclusion’s true applied
capabilities for social justice requires a shift to a conceptualisation built on the processes that
cause it in the first place.
Originality/value: The paper acts as a rejoinder to prevailing theoretical and political thinking
of the limited and diminishing value of social exclusion for tackling disadvantage. In particular,
the paper shows how social exclusion can be conceptualised to provide a critical approach to
tackling inequality and social injustice, and in doing so foregrounds the truly applied
capabilities of social exclusion for transforming social justice.
Key words: social exclusion, conceptualisation, social justice, critique, relevance, policy
analysis
Article Classification: conceptual paper
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This paper rationalises the continued conceptual utility of social exclusion, and in so doing
addresses the prevailing question of what to do with it. This is an important point to make
because, considering recent changes of direction by both the previous UK government and the
current one, social exclusion is evidently of declining relevance in contemporary social policy,
with poverty making a significant comeback. This has also been evident in an academic
context, as will be outlined below. But I will outline definitional differences between poverty
and social exclusion which give make it value-added as a concept to explain disadvantage.
Additionally, through an analysis of New Labour’s, and very briefly the current Coalition’s,
conceptualisation of the term in policy specifically in relation to work, I will outline the
significant difference that a focus on processes as opposed to outcomes of social exclusion
can make to our understanding of inequality and social injustice, and in doing so articulate the
differences that a strong conceptualisation of the term makes to its applied capabilities for
social justice.
Social exclusion’s declining relevance in contemporary UK social policy is evident in both
policy and academia. In policy, the distinctive shift at the heart of government in the
significance of social exclusion to policy from its heyday in the late 1990s when social
exclusion policies abounded to early 2000s was signified firstly by downgrading of the role of
the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) into the much smaller Social Exclusion Task Force (SETF), at
the Cabinet Office. As Stewart et al (2009:12-13) observed, ‘the fate of the SEU is perhaps
symbolic of a gradual shift in priorities over New Labour’s second and third terms…with a
much narrower focus on the most severely excluded’. Moreover, whereas initially policy was
linked firmly to the consideration of social exclusion, over time it was the promotion of social
inclusion which came to the fore (Spandler, 2007), and over the last decade or so, various
policy initiatives have been launched under the banner of social inclusion (France et al, 2010).
More recently, the SETF has been abolished by the current Coalition government and its
function subsumed into the Office for Civil Society, which is perhaps not surprising in the
context of the Coalition’s emphases on austerity and ‘The Big Society’. Subsequently, a
practical example of social exclusion’s continued declined relevance is the recent publication
of The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults, commissioned by
the Prime Minister to provide a new strategy to meet the Government’s target of abolishing
child poverty (Field, 2010), wherein social exclusion was mentioned once in the text of the
Report. More recently with the publication of the Social Justice Outcomes Framework (HM
Government, 2012), there was no mention of social exclusion, although poverty was
mentioned several times.
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In academia, the use of the term seems to have diminished substantially in recent years,
notwithstanding the erstwhile Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School
of Economics, and while this undoubtedly reflects its diminished relevance in policy, whether
social exclusion represents a genuinely new concept or simply the reformulation of old poverty
has been a prevalent issues in the history of the concept (Hills, 2002; Byrne, 1997). Debate
has typically centred on the operationalisation of the concept, and two recent papers have rearticulated questions about the relevance of social exclusion built around its operationalisation,
raising questions about the continued relevance of the concept itself when combined with its
policy decline. This question of the relevance of the term is the focus of the paper, and I will
start by outlining the nature of the claims set out in the two papers.
MacKenzie et al (2012) and Hick (2012) argue respectively for the utility of ‘hard to reach’ and
‘capabilities’ as more relevant concepts for policy, and in doing so provide critiques of social
exclusion as a concept to analyse disadvantage. Their criticisms are divided into two main
themes. Firstly, that social exclusion suffers from both poor conceptualisation and a lack of
definitional clarity (Mackenzie et al, 2012), meaning that there is confusion as to whether it
should be conceptualised in a broad or narrow way (Hick, 2012). Secondly, that social
exclusion is a morally charged term, as it can ‘implicitly at least, carry the suggestion that
those who are not included are partly to blame for their exclusion’ (MacKenzie et al, 2012:5),
and exacerbated by the extremely contested nature of the term, which causes confusion as to
whether social exclusion relates to a process or an outcome, ultimately leading to a lack of
clarity as ‘what it is we want the concept to do’ (Hick, 2012:297, italics in original).
The interesting point when considering Hick’s critiques of the concept is that he actually works
for the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion! This in itself encapsulates the rejection of
social exclusion in academia for other concepts which together with the policy shift evident
within government, posits social exclusion as a problematic relic, deservedly consigned to the
history of social policy. Somewhat appropriately, it with Hick’s claim of confusion in terms of
social exclusion’s definitional clarity that we begin the discussion.
Specific Differences between Poverty and Social Exclusion
The UK was one of the last countries in the EU to accept usage of the term social exclusion,
and this was only as a consequence of ‘poverty’ becoming unacceptable at a political level
(Walker, 1998; Burchardt et al, 2002). In one sense this observation relates the shift towards
the term social exclusion in British social policy as occurring more from political expediency
than from substantive conceptual distinctiveness, and hence the lack of definitional clarity as
argued by Hick. Byrne (2005) argues this can be related to a cultural embeddedness of
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theoretical notions of ‘positive individualism’ in Britain over notions concerned with citizenship
(see also Clasen and Clegg, 2003). In contrast, Lister (2004) argues that Weber’s ‘social
closure’ provides the theoretical roots of social exclusion, as Weber’s concern was with how
some groups secured and maintained privilege at the expense of others different from their
own group. Similarly, Barnes argues that social exclusion:
…derive[s] from an idea of society as a status hierarchy comprising people bound
together by rights and obligations that reflect, and are defined with respect to, a
shared moral order. Those excluded from the moral order often experienced
marginalisation in times of employment and their relationship with the state.
(Barnes, 2002: 5)
The reference here to ‘relationship with the state’ also corresponds to Silver’s (1994)
observation of the emergence of concern with ‘les exclusifs’ in France between the 1960s and
the 1980s. This concern was grounded particularly in the emerging social problem of spatial
isolation of certain groups between banlieues or big cities in terms of their citizenship
(Kronauer, 1998), which is a perceptibly different meaning from that of Weber’s as outlined
above, but is a more familiar usage of the term social exclusion as contemporarily understood.
This difference between the two can be expressed distinctly by the fact that while people on
low incomes are always in poverty, they may not necessarily be socially excluded in some
factors, such as participation and community activities, students being an example.
Conversely there may be people or groups, more rarely, who are not in poverty but are socially
excluded, for example on the grounds of ethnicity or mental illness or disability (Oppenheim,
1998: 14), and sexual minorities (Walker, 2013), suggesting that the difference between the
two can be fairly concrete. This is especially relevant in relation to a narrower incomeconsumption understanding of poverty (Sen, 2000) as argued by Hicks, in which poverty is
understood as determined by the ability of individuals or households to purchase goods and
services that allows them to subsist above a predetermined poverty line (Nadvi, 2004: 25).
Thus, whereas the term ‘poverty’ typically implies ‘an absolute or relative access to material
welfare’, social exclusion:
…[is] a broader concept which usually implies that some people or households are
not just poor, but that they have additionally lost the ability to both literally and
metaphorically connect with many of the jobs, services and facilities that they need
to participate fully in society. (Church et al, 2000:197)
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This difference is reinforced further by the active and passive linguistic differences between
the two terms. ‘I am in poverty’ is the stock phrase which is applicable to those in poverty. It is
an active phrase, implying that poverty is a causal outcome for those involved. On the other
hand, ‘I am socially excluded’ is a passive phrase, implying that exclusion occurs as a
consequence of an outside agent, although not always clear. These linguistic differences
reinforce important conceptual differences between the two terms. This is one of the most
prominent ‘value-added’ claims of social exclusion – that it ‘necessitates a relationship with the
wider society or subsections of society from which an individual or group is excluded‘(Lister
2004: 88). Typically, within social exclusion, this relationship with wider society is expressed in
terms of participation in wider society, and thus, according to Burchardt et al, ’a genuine new
development’ occurring from the focus on social exclusion has been that:
…it allows the phenomena of interest to extend beyond non-participation due
to lack of material resources…measures of social exclusion attempt to
identify not only those who lack resources, but also those whose nonparticipation occurs in different ways: through discrimination, chronic ill
health, geographical location or cultural identification, for example. (Burchardt
et al, 2002: 6)
For example, poverty and social exclusion have been placed on a continuum, with poverty at
one end and social exclusion at the other, and ‘relative deprivation’ mediating between the two
(Barnes, 2002; Rogaly et al, 1999), suggesting at least an overlapping relationship between
the two (Lister, 2004; Bhalla and Lapeyre, 1997). Moreover, Townsend’s (1987) and VeitWilson’s (1987) earlier call for greater relativity in poverty descriptions suggests much closer
linkage between poverty and social exclusion. Their notion of ‘relative deprivation’ highlighted
the importance of non-material services and amenities to an individual’s ability to participate in
the norms and customs of a particular society, with Veit-Wilson (1987: 186) stating that
‘deprivation can be caused by factors other than poverty, and money can meet only those
needs which in turn can be satisfied by the markets’. This highlights, as Smith outlines, that:
…as the term has become more popular in its usage, and is now common in British
newspapers … its meaning has tended to become diluted…In the UK ‘social
exclusion’ has also come to be equated with poverty although this promotes a
narrower meaning - an economic state of deprivation - rather than the broad
meaning of economic, political, legal and social processes which bar people from
full social participation. (Smith, 1999: 65)
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However, Berghman (1995) argued that an important distinction should be made between
poverty, relative deprivation and social exclusion. He argued that poverty and relative
deprivation both essentially emphasise an indirect (in terms of income) measurement of
poverty, in the sense that they both refer to the income threshold needed to participate in
(social) activities. Social exclusion, he argues on the other hand, emphasises a direct (in terms
of consumption) measurement of poverty, more concerned with the actual living conditions for
individuals and households (Berghman, 1995: 16-17; see also Mack and Lansley, 1985;
Ringen, 1988; Kangas and Ritakallio, 1998). This means that, whereas poverty and relative
deprivation’s recreational, educational and social features all entail a necessary degree of
income to be fulfilled, this is not necessarily the case for social exclusion’s economic, social,
political or cultural facets, which are more concerned with the actual participation that occurs
within these spheres. In this sense, ‘poverty’ can be viewed as part of a specific form of social
exclusion (Berghman, 1995: 20), while social exclusion itself is more of a social process than
an economic process, occurring from a breakdown or malfunctioning of major societal
systems. For example, social exclusion has been rationalised as entailing a quantitative break
from poverty, whereby:
To use the notion of social exclusion carries the implication that we are speaking of
people who are suffering such a degree of multidimensional disadvantage, of such
duration, and reinforced by such material and cultural degradation of the
neighbourhoods in which they live, that their relational links with the wider society
are ruptured to a degree which is to some considerable degree irreversible. We
may sometimes choose to use the notion of social exclusion in a more general
sense than this: but here is its core. (Room 1999: 171)
From this perspective, as Saunders and Adelman (2005) argue, the emphasis on a wider
range of measurements within social exclusion can be seen as addressing the credibility and
judgement weaknesses of the poverty approach. Thus, a number of factors important for
participation, and the inclusion of political, civil and broader human rights to the concept of
social exclusion, have been key to the claims of social exclusion being broader than both
poverty and deprivation (Lister, 2004). For example, in comparison to poverty, at least five
‘value-added’ dimensions to social exclusion have been argued, as shown in Table 1 below.
These dimensions suggest that, rather than simply being a semantic representation of the
same phenomena, it is possible to rationalise real differences between poverty and social
exclusion. This means that, as Alcock (2004: 410) observes, whereas poverty is concerned
with material deprivation, social exclusion also includes consideration of access to
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employment and family networks, and to public and private services, so that in this sense,
social exclusion is defined as inescapably ‘social’ in essence. This means that it ‘…can only
be understood as a lack of necessary resources to take part in the life of society’ (Golding
1995:213), and therefore is made up of a broader analysis of the causes and conditions of
disadvantage than poverty, additionally encompassing both the social relations and the
processes by which people become excluded, to greater or lesser extents, from wider society
(Alcock and Erskine, 2003: 66).
Table 1. Five value-added dimensions of social exclusion
Relativity
‘People are excluded from a particular society…The concrete
implementation of any criterion for exclusion has to take account of the
activities of others.’ (Atkinson 1998:12; see also Lister, 2004; Room,
1995)
Processes
‘Exclusion implies an act with an agent or agents…we may be concerned
not just with a person’s situation, but also the extent to which he or she is
responsible.’ (Atkinson 1998:13; see also Alcock and Erskine, 2003;
Barnes, 2002)
Dynamics
‘People are excluded not just because they are currently without a job or
income but because they have little prospects for the future. By
‘prospects’, we should understand not only their own but also those of
their children. Social exclusion may apply across generations.
Assessment of the extent of social exclusion has therefore to go beyond
current status.’ (Atkinson 1998:13; see also Whelan and Whelan, 1995;
Burgess and Propper 2002).
Spatial
‘…referring not so much to spaces where there are poor persons but to
poor areas themselves’ (Berghman, 1995:15; Cass et al, 2005).
Multidimensionality ‘…whereby individuals and groups are excluded from taking part in the
social exchange, from the component practices and rights of social
integration and identity’ (Commission of the European Communities,
1992, cited in Lister, 2004:92; Shucksmith and Philiph, 1999).
Furthermore, in contrast to debates about absolute and relative poverty, these dimensions
‘explicitly and implicitly necessitate a relative measure of poverty … relative measures are
theoretically consistent with social exclusion’ (Brady, 2003: 724). Perhaps this is not surprising,
as ways to measure peoples’ experiences become more sophisticated and there is more of an
emphasis on lived experience in social research than on absolute measures (Brady, 2003),
meaning that in 10 years time, what we think of now as not necessary for ‘social coping’ may
well be considered essential. In this sense, a shift from poverty to social exclusion in terms of
relativity can be seen as a continuation of the process of defining such terms as a matter of
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belief and opinion rather than simply a calculation of income (Golding 1995: 228), as ‘the value
of social exclusion lies in the fact that it offers explanatory insights beyond that of poverty’
(Walker, 2013: 29).
These clear conceptual differences between poverty and social exclusion go some way to
answering MacKenzie et al’s (2012) and Hicks’s (2012) claim of social exclusion lacking
conceptual and definitional clarity, when the clear basis for social exclusion can be seen to rest
on it having real differences from poverty. In particular, social exclusion can be seen as a
direct measurement of disadvantage, something which Hick (2012) argues as relevant to his
preference to the capability approach. Conversely, it possibly contributes to the extremely
contested nature of the concept, as its value added dimensions enable protagonists to pick off
different elements and argue that it is made up of conceptual concepts with definitional
problems. This is evident from the numerous definitions that have been applied to the term, as
shown below in Table 2.
Table 2. Selected Definitions of Social Exclusion
Author
SEU (1997)
Definition
Social exclusion is about more than income poverty. Social exclusion
happens when people or places suffer from a series of problems such
as unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes, poor
housing, high crime, ill health and family breakdown. When such
problems combine they can create a vicious cycle. Social exclusion
can happen as a result of problems that face one person in their life.
But it can also start from birth. Being born into poverty or to parents
with low skills still has a major influence on future life chances
Burchardt et al (1999) An individual is socially excluded if (a) he or she is geographically
resident in a society, (b) he or she cannot participate in the normal
activities in that society, and (c) he or she would like to so participate,
but is prevented from doing so by factors beyond his or her control.
Pierson (2001)
Social exclusion is a process that deprives individuals and families,
group and neighbourhoods of the resources, economies and political
activity of society as a whole. This process is primarily a consequence
of poverty and low income, but other factors such as discrimination,
low educational attainment also underpin it. Through this process
people are cut off from their institutions and services, social networks
and developmental opportunities that the great majority of society
enjoys.
Rogaly et al 1999
The process which brings about a lack of citizenship, whether
economic, political or social
Richardson and Le
Grand (2002)
An individual is socially excluded if he or she does not participate in
key activities of the society in which he or she lives
Room et al 1992
Social exclusion to refer, first to multidimensional disadvantage, which
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is of substantial duration and which involves disassociation from the
major social and occupational mileux of society
The definitions differ in terms of the specificity and dimensional capacity in which they orient
social exclusion, and Levitas (2005: 7) has argued that these differences highlight the way that
‘social exclusion is embedded in different discourses’.
For McKenzie et al, this is
problematic, as a significant discourse of social exclusion’s relates to its morally charged
aspect and the fact that it ‘…can implicitly at least, carry the suggestion that those who are not
included are partly to blame for their condition’ (McKenzie et al, 2012:5). On the other hand:
Linguistically, hard-to-reachness is arguably more clear-cut. Regardless of
policy intent (as we discuss later), the term carries an explicit message that it
is people (individuals or communities) who are ‘hard’ to reach in the face of
services that have been ‘reaching out’ to them (McKenzie et al, 2012:6)
This is a tenuous claim to make, since it is often the case that ‘hard to reach’ is often a term
that as Brackertz and Meredyth (2008:14) observes ‘In the service context, … often refers to
the ‘undeserved’, namely minority groups, those slipping through the net, and the service
resistant’, especially in relation to their lifestyle such as drug users, and homeless. Thus, to
deride social exclusion as lacking utility because it is a contested concept would be to dismiss
almost any relevant conceptual term in use in social policy, especially the notion of poverty, as
the contested nature of absolute versus relative poverty has never really been resolved,
Niemietz’s (2011) analysis being a recent example of how contested this debate continues to
be. Moreover, while there are some limited instances of self exclusion, such as in relation to
gated communities, these are not things as seen as positive to social exclusion. Rather, as
outlined above, the active linguistic emphasis in social exclusion tends to imply that someone
else is doing the excluding, as in ‘I am being excluded from specific aspects of society such as
access to employment, family networks, public and private services etc’. This is where VeitWilson’s (1998) distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ social exclusion makes itself very
relevant, as:
Exclusion is an active term: someone is doing the excluding. Even if poor people
are not excluded directly by overt discrimination, they are excluded from access to
the political resources required for participation, since conflict between social
groups over the distribution of limited resources (material and coercive) is at the
heart of politics. (Veit-Wilson, 1998: 67)
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This highlights that processes that lead to social exclusion are an important theoretical
consideration, and this brings me to address the second strand of criticisms related to social
exclusion, whether it relates to processes or outcomes.
New Labour policy conceptualised - outcome v process?
The mistake that many in UK policy and academia make when talking about social exclusion
is they fail to distinguish conceptually between the processes that cause it, and outcomes that
happen from its occurrence, when actually for social exclusion these crucially reflect different
ideological and philosophical approaches to countering social exclusion. This mistake is
evident in Hick’s and McKenzie’s criticisms outlined above, and most evidently exemplified in
New Labour’s SEU definition of social exclusion, as shown in Table 2 above, which is in fact
simply an outline of what it sees as the ‘key features’ of social exclusion (Stewart and Hills,
2005). This definition’s emphasis on the outcomes that happen from its occurrence over the
processes that cause it are evident in important ways.
Firstly, the use of the words ‘can happen’ in the SEU’s definition means that:
…what we are left with is a description of examples of circumstances that may lead
to exclusion rather than a definition of exclusion itself – although it is fairly obvious
that the implied fate behind the wording is one of being ‘shut out’ from society in
some sense. (Micklewright, 2002: 3)
And secondly, the definition significantly ‘makes no reference to the processes that create the
problem identified in the definition’ (Percy-Smith, 2000: 4), and which is something which
Pierson (2001) argues signifies the confusion of ‘causation’ with ‘correlation’, as:
‘Indicators do not identify the ‘causes’ of social exclusion …They are merely
quantifiable signposts – ways of estimating the degree of exclusion within a
particular area’. (Pierson, 2001: 8)
Furthermore, whilst using such a wide range of indicators can be useful in providing a general
picture of the extent of social exclusion and also to focus on its specific aspects, in general the
approach is limited as it presumes that one thing will lead to another without attempting to link
them together theoretically. For example, reducing unemployment may lead to a reduction in
social exclusion, but there is no explanation as to what extent or how, meaning that for New
Labour, ‘government is about solving discrete problems’ (Lister, 2001: 433), which to a large
extent undermined its acclaimed ‘multidimensional’ approach. Consequently, as Atkinson et al
argue:
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…it is not clear how the headline indicators can be used to measure whether [the
overall objective] has been halved, or eradicated at a particular date, especially
when the overall objective has not been specified at all. (Atkinson et al, 2002: 67)
The next sections provide an analysis this conceptualisation of social exclusion as
operationalised in policy by New Labour and the Coalition government. This leads on to the
articulation of the need to move social exclusion policy away from such an outcomes focused
approach, to one which puts processes at its heart.
New Labour policy operationalised – the failure of the individual as the outcome
New Labour’s definition above is particular in its narrow focus on specific problem groups,
wherein its emphasis on ‘states of multiple deprivation’ gave prominence to specific groups as
the defining feature of social exclusion (Porter, 2000). This was reflected within policy which
focussed on ‘concentrated’ forms of social exclusion at the expense of ‘wider’ forms (Miliband,
2005) and in this sense, it is arguable that New Labour’s approach was an example of
‘problem selection’ over ‘problem definition’ (Schram, 1995: 125). In particular, Gingrich
(2006: 6-7) states that the concept of social exclusion as used by New Labour reflected the
idea that it is incumbent upon a kind or category of individual, and so does not signify a shift of
perspective ‘beyond the poverty paradigm’, with its focus on material outcomes, through the
indirect measurement of poverty that the 60% of median income represents, and which may
also account for its apparent failure (Lansley and Mack, 2011).
In one respect, there was at least consistency between New Labour’s conceptual and
methodological approaches to tackling social exclusion, as its focus on the resources
commanded by individuals rather than their actual living conditions can be conceptualised as
an indirect approach to the measurement of poverty rather than a direct approach, which
necessitates policy concerned with equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome
(Ringen, 1988). Thus, while both ‘welfare to work’ polices such as the New Deal and ‘making
work pay’ polices such as through the National Minimum Wage and Working Tax Credits were
an promoted as a conceptual break with the past, operationally their focus was on equality of
opportunity rather than equality of outcome. Indeed, Gordon Brown (cited in Levitas, 2005)
made the explicit rejection of equality of outcome in favour of equality of opportunity a specific
policy focus of New Labour, meaning that the question of social inequality between different
groups was not the focus of government policy in tackling exclusion, as evident in the high
levels of inequality that remain (Joyce and Sibieta, 2013). Rather, a continuation can be seen
with previous governments’ emphasis on equality of opportunity for those deemed to be
disadvantaged, with any redistribution through equality of outcome rejected on economic and
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moral grounds (Goes, 2004). What limited redistribution that did take place, for example
through tax credits, did so by ‘stealth’ (Levitas, 2001), and was constrained to ‘improving the
situation of those at the bottom relative to the middle with the position of those at the top
considered unimportant’ (Stewart and Hills, 2005:15). This suggests that New Labour’s focus
on social exclusion was not as distinct as posited, which is somewhat ironic when considering
that the impetus for the shift to social exclusion was rationalised by New Labour as a
substantial shift from previous policy, encompassing the need to reflect the broader and
multiple components of social disadvantage (Nunn et al, 2007). Indeed, as Hills et al
(2009:354-355) observe, the SEU was described by Tony Blair as ‘the defining difference
between ourselves and the previous government, but its replacement with the Social Exclusion
Task Force signified a much narrower focus on policy than was originally outlined, specifically
on the ‘hardest to reach’ (ibid.).
Moreover, by focusing exclusively on the negative features of social exclusion in its definition,
New Labour’s ‘individualisation approach’ ‘constructed the problem of poverty as being ‘the
poor’, wherein policy focused ‘only on people in poverty, rather than the processes and
structures which lead and keep them there’ (Smith, 2010: 128). When combined with the
absence of causal factors in its definition as highlighted above, this can be seen as supporting
Lund’s (2002: 206) claim that ‘because New Labour has not identified any structural causal
agents, the implication remains that the excluded have caused their own exclusion’. Thus, it is
arguable that ‘agency’ constituted a significant aspect of New Labour’s social exclusion, but in
what Labonte (2004: 117) argues is a ‘subtle form of victim blaming’, whereby ‘their
disadvantage is seen to lie in their exclusion, rather than in excluding structures’. This
discursively placed the unwanted characteristics of the socially excluded as outside those of
mainstream society, the effect of which was, according to Levitas (2005), to distract attention
from the essentially class-divided character of society and to make conformity to mainstream
society the focus of policy.
Thus, New Labour’s policy focus on the outcomes of social exclusion oriented policy away
from a consideration of the processes by which people become excluded, which can be seen
reflective of a specific ideological and philosophical approach to countering social exclusion.
The Coalition of the unwilling
In this sense, similar limitations are applicable in relation to the recent publication of the
previously mentioned Social Justice Outcomes Framework by the Coalition government,
focuses specifically, as the name suggests, on the outcomes of social exclusion, rather than
the processes that cause social exclusion. This is reflected further in the domination of terms
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like ‘worklessness’ and ‘dependency’ ‘constructs the persistence of poverty and unemployment
as originating in the poor choices and behaviour of individuals’ (Wiggan, 2012:400), a narrative
which goes above and beyond New Labour’s individualisation approach to poverty. There are
a number of polices which reinforce this approach, the most evident of which is the emphasis
on paid work through paid labour market employment. However, a major limitation of such an
emphasis on the labour market as the route out of poverty is its inherently unstable and
insecure nature for those at its lower end, vis-à-vis Standings (2011) ‘precariat’. While such
instability and insecurity is not problematic within an emphasis on poverty as defined by
income at or just above minimum income poverty thresholds (i.e. 60% median income), it is for
social exclusion, as the value-added of social exclusion’s dynamic dimensions is its focus on
such process over time, wherein:
What the dynamics research clearly shows is that movement above the income
threshold does not reliably translate into movement out of poverty. Genuine escape
from poverty involves sustained economic well-being and a stable, secure
reasonable income. On this basis, point-in-time exits from income poverty
associated with movement into work should not be over-rated or interpreted as
necessarily significant movement out of poverty. (Smith, 2010:131)
A good recent example of this is Fitzpatrick et al’s consideration of Multiple Exclusion
Homelessness (MEH), wherein they observed that:
…our evidence strongly supports the contentions of Clinks et al. (2009) and others
about the very high degree of intersection between deeply socially excluded groups
and the need to co-ordinate responses across all aspects of their lives, rather than
view them through a series of separate professional lenses. (Fitzpatrick et al,
2013:163)
Furthermore, the Coalition emphasis on ‘dependency’ frames the debate on relational rather
than distributional issues, which explicitly presents dependency as ‘a failure of capabilities as
opposed to a manner of being within a social structure or society (Allman, 2013:11). This is
significant because such a focus translates into policy the ‘sins of the excluded’, in the sense
that their powerlessness relegates them to the periphery through accusations of ‘nonnormative or deviant behaviour’ (Allman, 2012:12), an outcome that has been evident in
discourse which as mentioned above foregrounds the poor choices and behaviour of
individuals.
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What can be done with social exclusion?
This brings us on to the last question posed by Hick of what do we want the concept of social
exclusion to do.
Firstly, I argued above that social exclusion is relevant because it is qualitatively different from
poverty as it conceptualizes the causes and conditions of disadvantage much broader than
poverty does, and this is evident in Hall’s (2012:156) observation that a focus on poverty:
…avoids an intellectual encounter with the magnitude of the problem itself and the
political and cultural reconstruction required to recover a sense of solidarity and
begin a process of renewal.
Simply put, poverty limits our scope of enquiry to the conditions which people are
experiencing, and the implicit understanding that those in poverty are the cause of their own
conditions. This has been evident in the emphasis on poverty in the UK Coalition government
policies, especially in relation to the squeezing of benefits for the ‘shirkers’ rather than the
‘workers’. On the other hand, social exclusion broadens our scope of enquiry to the cause of
the conditions which people are experiencing, and the implicit possibility that the conditions
they are experiencing are caused by factors outside of their control. This means that
conceptually, social exclusion:
…provides a justification for intervention both against the most extreme forms of
poverty and in order to protect the rights of all citizens. It presents a counter
perspective to that of free market theory. (Smith, 1999: 65)
A key reason for this is because of the focus on the relational aspects of disadvantage that
social exclusion facilitates, meaning that there is the possibility of theoretical coherence
between different aspects of disadvantage that is occurring. This is because social exclusion
additionally encompasses both the social relations and the processes by which people
become excluded, to greater or lesser extents, from wider society. This is what makes social
exclusion conceptually relevant to us as academics, an understanding of the processes that
lead to disadvantage and not just the outcome. It should be noted, however, that such
intellectual curiosity to want to know the causes of disadvantage is not something that all
academics have, Niemitz (2011) being a prime example.
Just as significantly, social exclusion also makes itself relevant for those who are social
excluded. This is because in terms of the conceptualisation of social exclusion, as noted
above, there is an important active and passive difference between ‘I am in poverty’ and ‘I am
socially excluded’. This provides two relevant implications for those who are social excluded.
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Firstly, because social exclusion encompasses the idea of active exclusion itself as a process
by which people become excluded, on the one hand it distinguishes itself from passive
explanations of poverty which underplay the ‘powerlessness’ of the excluded through
‘accusations of non-normative or deviant behaviour’ and a lack of applied focus on enabling
them to overcome their powerlessness (Allman, 2013:11-12). This symbiosis between active
exclusion and powerlessness is evident in two specific ways. Firstly, there is the way that the
powerlessness of those socially excluded has occurred and is occurring from the active 'death
of the social', meaning the active closing down of 'organised and political mass to carry
forward the collective concerns of exploited workers, the underemployed and the
underemployed' (Winlow and Hall, 2013:147). For example, trade unions have been made
almost irrelevant and political parties which in the past served the interests of the excluded
now serve the interests. Rather, there has been a decisive countering of the possibility of such
social collectivity, and which may go some way to explaining why there is a lack of collective
action on the part of the excluded.
Secondly, and linked to this is society’s ‘dialectical’ creation of exclusion, whereby exclusion is
occasioned first by the creation of stigma in specific facets of society (such as in relation to
locality, work, low pay, networks, education, consumer culture and welfare benefits), and then
by the objectification of individuals subjective experiences within these facets (McAuley 2007).
Indeed, the contribution of such powerlessness to social exclusion has been observed in
relation to both young people (Sealey, 2009) and work (Southwood, 2011). This lack of power
is also evident in the way that the excluded have become overdetermined and over regulated
by others in terms of what they can do (Winlow and Hall, 2013), the exemplar occurrence of
which is the latent emphasis in policy on work as the route out of poverty. The fact that this
policy fails both in terms of finding work and making work pay (Southwood, 2011) not only
makes the powerlessness of the excluded has even more readily apparent, it also goes a long
way to explaining why there has been little evidence that it has enabled significant progress
towards a more inclusive society (Walker, 2013). but in the articulation of the conditions of the
positions of the ‘precariat’ and the ‘squeezed middle’ during this period of austerity as shown in
Table 3 below.
Table 3. Precariat v Squeezed Middle
Precariat
Squeezed middle
Unemployment
Zero hours contract
High debt
Low pay/low benefits
Social immobility
Underemployment
Job insecurity
Low disposable income
Pay freezes
Low social mobility
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What such conditions have made evident is that there are many more people for whom such
positions of disadvantage is but a single injustice away, as a consequence of their
powerlessness. Thus, the idea of active exclusion which is at the core of the conceptualization
of social exclusion is that it makes evident that the conditions of disadvantage are caused by
the lack of power which individuals have, rather than the expression of their deviant agency.
This is relevant because it means that the emphasis is on the analysis of the processes that
cause exclusion rather than the outcomes of social exclusion. In football parlance, you are
playing the ball, not the man, which should entail a more meaningful and constructive
engagement with those who are socially excluded, and therefore a more nuanced
consideration of the nature of disadvantage. Most importantly, such engagement should go
some way to countering the argument that individualized poverty is the cause and the solution
to austerity which the UK Coalition government seems to have won with the majority of the
population, even those socially excluded.
Secondly, and explicitly linked to this, is that the idea of powerlessness from active exclusion
portends a focus on who is doing the excluding.
This is because such powerlessness is not
something which just occurs, but which is caused by active agents with a specific zero-sum
game assertiveness to power, and the maintenance of such power. A good example of this
powerful/powerless dynamic is in relation to the growth of social exclusion caused by low
incomes. It is becoming increasingly clear that rather than such income inequality being
caused by the laziness of the poor, it is actually caused by the fact that those at the top have
been actively willing and able to take a greater share of the cake (Fuentes-Nieva and Galasso,
2014). And what Thomas Piketty’s (2014) work has shown is that such expression of power
by one group over another is not an unfortunate side-effect of the functioning of capitalism in
society’s such as the UK, but is the correct function of capitalism in such societies. This
means that unless such powerlessness is first identified, then it cannot be tackled, and is why
the recent pronounced prominence on the concept of social inclusion in policy, as opposed to
social exclusion, offends the senses in important ways. Specifically, it ignores the observation
that ‘a society that makes strong demands for inclusion may be more exclusive’ (Smith,
2007:2), due to the fact that ‘privileged groups within society sustain a whole range of social
structures to maintain their positions of privilege’ (Raffo et al, 2007: viii). This is a latent
‘hegemony’ which means that rather than social inclusion being ‘beyond ideology’ as is
sometime posited (Hall, 2012), social inclusion as an alternative to social exclusion has a
limited utility in terms of social justice, because:
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Uncritical use of social inclusion can blind us to the use, abuse and distribution
of power… We should not let the warmth of our inclusive ideal smother our
anger over exclusivity’s unfairness. Anger is often the magnet of mobilization,
and mobilization is often the tool for social transformation that shifts power
relations in ways that allow societies to become more inclusive. (Labonte, 2004:
118)
This means that you cannot have an inclusive society before you transform the social relations
within it, particular those which limit the power of those excluded in obvious and not so obvious
ways. This is where social exclusion’s idea of powerlessness from active exclusion has
particular relevance, not only for those who are socially excluded but also for those who
believe in tackling inequality and social justice. It is only with such a focus on the active
causes of such powerlessness that the true nature of exclusion as deeply embedded in the
deliberate and organised death of the social for those who are socially excluded. For those
who are not socially excluded, this goes a long way to an explanation for the lack of collective
action to overcome their exclusion; for those who are privileged enough to be in a position to
fight such exclusion, it should draw attention to the fact that it is only by first working to enable
those who are socially excluded to overcome such deliberate and organised powerlessness
will the possibility of social justice become apparent.
Conclusion
Social exclusion is dead, long live social inclusion, capabilities, hard to reach or any other
conceptualisation of disadvantage, or so the current policy mantra seems to go. Analyses of
both policy and academia would suggest that if this is not the case, it is not far from the truth.
These claims are built around two main claims, firstly, that social exclusion suffers from both
poor conceptualisation and a lack of definitional clarity meaning that there is confusion as to
whether it should be conceptualised in a broad or narrow way, and secondly, that social
exclusion is a morally charged term, exacerbated by its extremely contested nature, which
causes confusion as to whether it relates to a process or an outcome, and which is leads to a
lack of clarity in what is the point of the concept. This paper has outlined clear value added
conceptual differences between poverty and social exclusion which obviate the claim of social
exclusion lacking conceptual and definitional clarity, and wherein the clear basis for social
exclusion can be seen to rest on it having real differences from poverty. Therefore, to deride
social exclusion as lacking utility because it is a contested concept would be to dismiss almost
any relevant conceptual term in use in social policy, especially the notion of poverty, which
17/25
also relates to whether it is a process or outcome. In this respect, the mistake that many in
academia make when talking about social exclusion is to fail to distinguish conceptually
between the processes that cause it, and outcomes that happen from its occurrence, when
actually for social exclusion these crucially reflect different ideological and philosophical
approaches to countering social exclusion. Simply put, this is firstly what makes social
exclusion conceptually relevant to us as academics, the understanding of the processes that
lead to disadvantage and not just the outcome of such disadvantage, meaning that there is the
possibility of theoretical coherence between different aspects of disadvantage that is occurring.
And for those socially excluded, the idea of active exclusion at the core of the
conceptualization of social exclusion makes evident that their conditions of disadvantage are
caused by the lack of power which they have, rather than the expression of their deviant
agency. This highlights that there has been a decisive countering of the possibility of social
collectively for those socially excluded, which may go some way to explaining why there is a
lack of collective action on the part of the excluded. Acknowledgement of this death of the
social provides the potential for a more meaningful and constructive engagement with those
who are socially excluded, and therefore a more nuanced consideration of the nature of
disadvantage. The idea of powerlessness from active exclusion also portends a focus on who
is doing the excluding, as such powerlessness is not something which passively occurs, but
which is caused by active agents, as exemplified by the growth of social exclusion caused by
low incomes. This is where the contrast between social exclusion and social inclusion makes
itself readily apparent, as you cannot have an inclusive society before you transform the social
relations within it, particular those which limit the power of those excluded. These practical
applications capture the inescapably ‘social’ essence of social exclusion as a rejoinder to
prevailing notions of social inclusion and other notions of disadvantage, as it articulates a
critical approach to tackling inequality and social injustice focussed on tackling the processes
that cause social exclusion rather than a focus on it outcomes as has been evident within
policy and theory. Such a focus as argued in this paper doing so makes more apparent the
truly applied capabilities of social exclusion for transforming social justice.
18/25
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