Social Exclusion – UGC NET Geography – Notes

Introduction

• Social exclusion remains a malaise in all societies. Social exclusion is a process by which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live. The term “social exclusion” was originally coined by Rene Lenoir, in France in 1974 to refer to various categories of people such as “mentally and physically handicapped, suicidal people, aged invalids, abused children, substance abusers, delinquents, single parents, multi-problem householders, marginal, a social persons, and other social misfits”.
• But this term encompasses many dimensions: social, economic, legal and political. In India, unique forms of exclusion are observed where certain group like the dalits, experience systematic exclusion in regard to accruing the benefits of development, and institutional inequality and discrimination have been prevailed in the society. It hampers democracy, development, and social integration.
• Dalits are excluded in every walk of life. The Indian social system, which was based on the principle of purity and pollution, was a system of inequality. This system denied equality before law, equal opportunity of the law and equal protection of the law. Thus, it was a source of social exclusion, and thereby a source of violation of human rights as well.

Social Exclusion: Concept and Meaning

• Exclusion as a social phenomenon is expressed in different forms all over the world. Social exclusion and discrimination are practiced on the basis of ethnicity, gender and religion. In Indian society, mainly, the caste and patriarchal systems are the source of social exclusion.
• Social hierarchy of traditional social system in India presents inequality between the highest and lowest castes. But in reality, the downtrodden communities are excluded from interaction and denied access to resources through iniquitous social arrangements.
• The concept of social exclusion has been defined differently among social scientists, by western and Indian. According to Silver ,social exclusion is multidimensional process of progressive social rapture, detaching groups and individuals from social relation and institutions and preventing them from full participation in the formal, normatively prescribed activities of the society in which they live. Amartya Sen observes that social exclusion emphasizes the role of relational feature in deprivation.
• Bauvinic summarizes the meaning of social exclusion as the inability of individual to participate in the basic political, economic and social functioning of society and goes on to add that it involves “the denial of equal access of opportunities imposed by certain groups in society upon others.”
• On the whole, social exclusion may be termed as a process by which, certain groups are wholly or partly denied from full participation in the development activities-social, economic, cultural and political life of societies. Thus, social exclusion refers to process in which individuals and entire communities of people are systematically blocked from rights, opportunities and resources (e.g. housing, employment, healthcare, civic engagement, democratic participation and due process) that are normally available to members of society and which are key to social integration.
• Social exclusion is about the inability of our society to keep all groups and individuals within reach of what we expect as a society. It is about the tendency to push vulnerable and difficult individuals into the least popular places, furthest away from our common aspirations.
• The term social exclusion is of relatively recent origin; however, it encompasses a wide range of social and economic aspects. Different scholars decipher this notion in various contexts. Broadly, it indicates the relative deprivation of any person or group of persons on various predetermined criterion.
• Caste- based occupational groups in India, like that of manual scavengers, constitute one such socially, economically, psychologically and politically marginalised section of the society. In India, social exclusion revolves around some sections of the population, particularly, dalits, adivasis, women and minorities.
• They are the victims of social exclusion by caste, sex, ethnicity and by religion. In the society, they are isolated, discriminated and deprived of equal access to social and economic opportunities.
• Therefore, in the Indian context, the core feature of social exclusion is the denial of equal opportunities by certain groups of the society which impose themselves upon others that leads the inability of an individual to participate in the basic political, economic and social functioning of society.
• Amartya Sen believes the concept of social exclusion is useful because of its emphasis on the role of relational issues in deprivation. He then goes further, arguing that it is important to distinguish between exclusion which is in itself a deprivation (that is, the exclusion has constitutive relevance) and exclusion which is not in itself negative, but which can lead to other deprivations which do not have constitutive relevance.
• Sen cites landlessness and lack of access to the credit market as examples of this latter type of exclusion, which have what he calls ‘instrumental importance’. That is, landlessness or not having access to the credit market may not be impoverishing in themselves, but may lead to other deprivations (such as income poverty) through causal consequences, such as the inability to take advantage of income-generating activities that require collateral or an initial investment and use of credit.

Factors of Exclusion

Spatial Factors

• Spatial inequalities include disparities between rural and urban areas, and also between geographically advantaged and disadvantaged areas. Spatial disadvantage may result from the remoteness of a location which makes it physically difficult for its inhabitants to participate in broader socio-economic processes.
• Or it may operate through the segregation of urban environments and the ‘subcultures’ of violence, criminality, drug dependence and squalor which can often characterize urban slums and excluded neighbourhoods. In some cases, ghettos of marginalized religious or ethnic groups can form as the direct result of communal violence. In many countries, these disparities are increasing, partly as a consequence of the uneven impact of trade and globalization. These disparities are particularly worrying where they overlap with political or ethnic divisions.
• The spatial dimension of exclusion cannot be entirely separated from its resource and identity dimensions since it is usually culturally and economically marginalized groups that inhabit physically deprived spaces. Activities of economic and political importance are often concentrated in urban centres.
• These centres also benefit from a constant inflow of new material, and financial and human resources from the peripheries. Government policies can also be biased towards these areas. As a result of this, and the constant leakage of resources to the central regions, peripheral areas often have difficulty in self-sustaining economic development.

Migration

• Migration can act both as a way of moving out of poverty, and a cause of social exclusion. For example, foreign remittances can help receiving households to increase their income and consumption levels, as well as their capabilities to face socioeconomic shocks. However, rural-urban migrants for example, often do not benefit from the same political, social and economic rights as other urban citizens. They often find themselves in insecure, low-paid jobs, or become concentrated in vulnerable areas such as slums and deprived housing estates, with high levels of criminality and violence.
• Similar conditions can also sometimes affect foreign immigrants or refugee groups, generating mutual mistrust and resentment. ‘Host’-immigrant tensions can be increased by perceptions of religious, ethnic or cultural ‘otherness’ that can sharpen social divisions and potentially contribute to conflict. (However, findings from West Africa suggest that cultural similarities between immigrants and host populations can actually worsen immigrant host relations.)
• Where policy directly or indirectly discriminates against migrant and immigrant populations – through, for instance, the targeting of immigrants by law enforcement in the first case, or the failure to provide language assistance to foreign migrants in the second – this process may become cyclical, with structural exclusion driving low educational attainment, low employment, vulnerability to crime and consequent community tensions. There are thus fears that the exclusion of migrants can pose a threat to stability.