exclusion was first implemented in France in the 1960s, where it was first used when talking about the poor, and in the 1970s the term “exclusion sociale” was used when referring to individuals with different kinds of disadvantages such as being mentally and physically handicapped, abused children, aged invalids, asocial persons, substance abusers, etc. Over the years since then, studies on social exclusion have involved even more categories of individuals. Examples include deprived, illiterate, long-term un-employed, poor, single parents, social assistance recipients, substance abusers and residents living in deficient housing and disreputable neighborhoods. Thus, social exclusion is connected with different economical, social, political and cultural dimensions.
Social exclusion is understood somewhat differently in the national debates in different countries, and more weight may be placed on certain aspects of exclusion depending on issues that are crucial in a certain country. The emphasis may, for example, be on issues that are the current subject of policy-making or on problems that are especially evident in a given society at that moment in time. However, in its agenda against poverty and social exclusion the European Union has pointed out some aspects that should be considered when talking about exclusion in the entire union. The following eight aspects have since been identified in a report from the Government Offices of Sweden concerning the national action plan against poverty and social exclusion for the years 2003-2005:
1. Developing an inclusive labor market and promoting employment as a right and opportunity for all;
2. Guaranteeing an adequate income and resources to live in human dignity;
3. Tackling educational disadvantage;
4. Preserving family solidarity and protecting the rights of children;
5. Ensuring good accommodation for all;
6. Guaranteeing equal access to quality services (health, transport, social, care, cultural, recreational, legal);
7. Improving the delivery of services; and
8. Regenerating areas of multiple deprivation.
Essentially, the welfare problems that we treat as social exclusion indicators in this article correspond quite closely to these eight aspects. The overlapping paths of different kinds of disadvantages have constituted a frequent theme in research on social exclusion. Researchers in the field of multiple disadvantages have not always found strong correlations between central welfare problems, and therefore the accumulation of disadvantages has been treated as social exclusion.
Experts have identified three central themes that one should be aware of when discussing social exclusion. These are relativity, agency and dynamics. Relativity means that social exclusion is taking place in a certain society and in the context that is relevant in just that society. For example, the material standard that is considered necessary for a reasonable standard of living in one society may not be the same in another society, or in the same society at a different time period. Thus, technological inventions that were seen as luxury items a few years ago may today be available to the vast majority.
Agency in social exclusion refers to the fact that it is important to identify the agents related to the occurrence of exclusion, that is, who is responsible for the exclusion process. This theme, involving the search after agents causing social exclusion, is especially important in studies in which the emphasis is on the stratification of the life course and on the societal institutions as inequality-causing actors. An example of this would be the stratification that is mediated through the educational system. In this article, we do not pay special attention to the agency aspect or the stratification of the life course aspect.
The dynamics of social exclusion are related to the fact that it is not just the current circumstances that affect the exclusion. What has happened in the past and what the expectations are for the future are also relevant factors in the social exclusion process. This theme is an important aspect in this thesis. We pay, in other words, special attention to changes over time. The dynamic nature of social exclusion has also often been discussed in the literature. For example, some experts define social exclusion as “changes in the whole society which have consequences for some of the people in that society”. Therefore, social exclusion comes from a stratification generating social change. To be able to empirically tell something about the dynamics of social exclusion, there is need for longitudinal data – most preferably with shorter time periods between the observations.
As it is clear by now, social exclusion is a many-faceted concept with several definitions. When performing quantitative analyses on social exclusion, we must also operationalize the concept before the analysis can be conducted, and be aware that even though the definition of social exclusion would be comparable in different studies, the operationalization may differ.
The definition of social exclusion we apply in this article is that an individual is socially excluded when he or she suffers from several central welfare problems. When analyzing exclusion, the problems we refer to as social exclusion indicators are long-term unemployment, economic problems, health problems, experiences of threat or violence, crowded housing and lack of interpersonal relationships. The advantage of this definition is that it is in accordance with the previously cited national action plan against poverty and social exclusion. Furthermore, all the problems we deal with are beyond doubt central welfare problems.
However, some experts have performed an analysis of exclusion in which the lack of opportunity to participate in one of four central dimensions of integration has been treated as social exclusion. These dimensions are consumption, referring to the capacity to purchase goods and services; production, standing for participation in economically or socially significant proceedings; political engagement, which implies engagement in local or national decision-making; and social interaction, which refers to integration with family, friends and the community one lives in. Another group treated the length of sufferance of a certain welfare problem as the threshold for social exclusion.
We define social exclusion as the accumulation of central welfare problems. The welfare problems we discuss therein are the previously mentioned problems. The operationalization is done so that we treat those suffering from two or more problems as socially excluded. There are, of course, other welfare problems one could incorporate into the list of social exclusion indicators. One such problem is homelessness. Unfortunately, most of the surveys do not include homeless people, and this is also the case with the data sets we use in this article.
