Definitions and Meanings of Social Exclusion

Definitions and Meanings of Social Exclusion


Smyth and Jones (1999, p. 13) note the extent to which the term has been used to describe a broad range of social issues, including the marginalised position of women, disabled children, homeless people, ethnic minorities, young people and nomadic workers.

Smyth and Jones (1999, p. 13) note the extent to which the term has been used to describe a broad range of social issues, including the marginalised position of women, disabled children, homeless people, ethnic minorities, young people and nomadic workers.Within a socio-economic context where independence (or dependence on the labour market) is normative, those individuals who rely on welfare services for income support, housing etc. are easily labelled as deficient and seen to be responsible for their circumstances.

'… what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown' (Cabinet Office, 2000).

Policy from a social constructionist perspective can be seen as a process of argumentation wherein policy constitutes a representation of a political issue. In this context, social exclusion has been conceptualised as:
Disadvantage related to social economic and political norms;
The process through which disadvantage comes about; and
The outcome of processes of marginalisation.


Percy Smith (2000) notes that commonalties include definitions that identify: (i) multiple factors; (ii) the dynamic nature of social exclusion; (iii) policy frameworks; and (iv) views about the need for participation in mainstream society.
Benn (2000), pp. 314-317) notes that the social exclusion paradigm does little to challenge labour market trends towards casualisation and lower wages and, in encouraging people into the resultant low-paid employment, fails to adequately deal with poverty.

The capitulation and failure to address the fundamental inequities of late capitalism is seen by some authors to be a major flaw in the social exclusion discourse.

Ruth Levitas (1998), in an insightful and telling critique, notes the concept of social exclusion is the reduction of complex inequities and divisions into a simple dichotomy that ignores the inequities within the so-called excluded (e.g. the working poor) and minimises considerations of race, class and gender. Her work is critical in providing an analysis of the multiple meanings and political malleability of the term. Such flexibility has a political purpose in that different, often contradictory meanings of the term are used to inform policy that legitimates the current restructuring of social relations and ignores structural inequities, despite a rhetoric that acknowledges them.

Homelessness and Social Exclusion
For the most part, homelessness has been predominately explained at the causal level, however as a function of individual deficit, whether as individual moral failings (e.g. alcoholism, dysfunctional personalities, gamblers etc.) or victims of systemic inequities (e.g. labour market restructuring, housing market changes). In these explanations, the emphasis is on individual change or adaptation to societal norms and priorities.

Foucauldian concepts of discourse, power/knowledge and surveillance to pose a challenge to the construction of homelessness as a social exclusion.
need for researchers, policy and service provision to be more inclusive of the voices of homeless people in the development of both policy and services.

the concept of social exclusion has underpinned the establishment of policy units aimed at addressing the needs of identified groups of socially excluded.
using concepts from a social constructionist, and in particular Foucauldian, perspective on social policy.
the adoption of Chamberlain and Johnson's (2001) 'objective' cultural definition of homelessness


Chamberlain and Johnson (2001, pp. 39-40) argue a case for establishing an objective definition of homelessness based on an understanding of shared community standards of minimum housing requirements.

Within the context of the current discussion, previous observations (Watson & Austerbury, 1986; Keys Young, 1999; Watson, 2000) of the gendered and racialised definitions of homelessness are pertinent. Watson (2000) combines insights from Foucauldian and feminist theory to underline how such objective definitions make women's situation invisible while articulating the potential for developing more comprehensive and critical understandings of how homelessness is both constructed and constituted as a social problem.


These insights are significant in the context of the current discussion when one conceptualises explanations of homelessness as being characterised by the binary concepts, such as 'homed and homeless'. Robinson's (2002) discussion of the meaning of home that those officially or objectively defined as homeless attach to their spatial location underlines the significant shortcomings of objective measures in understanding the diverse experiences of those represented as homeless in policy, research and the media. Robinson's work stresses the importance of incorporating subjectivities and a subject's sense of space in any understanding of the experience of circumstances and is said to constitute the social problem of homelessness.

Exclusion is seen to be a particular property of populations that both symbolically and physically have no stake in society and pose threats to hegemonic principles of independence. Within the British context, such dependencies are to be addressed by programmes that '… assume citizens must exercise personal responsibility by taking up opportunities at school and in the labour market' (Crowther, 2002, p. 204),

A Foucauldian perspective sees welfare practice as a discursive practice in which definitions are contested and administrative, juridical and technical discourses can be seen as expert knowledges that separate the client from the professional. These can be challenged by the discourses of service users and clients (Fraser, 1989, p. 117). An analysis of discursive practices from a Foucauldian perspective translates the politics of needs interpretation, which characterises exclusion/inclusion paradigms to ones that can be seen as politics of discipline, control and subjectification.

homeless populations are constructed within social relations of power that totalise subordinated groups at the expense of a more thorough exploration of their heterogeneity.
the relationship between power and knowledge and how such a relationship is embedded in contemporary thinking and practices in service delivery to 'homeless' people.
that people unable to access resources that are considered necessary for full participation in society are labelled and constructed as excluded, dependent, disinterested and, in some cases, a threat to civic order.

customer service models and public management agenda contribute to a range of client constructions that individualise, and in some cases pathologise, client presentations. In many respects, the structural context in which poverty, social dislocation and disadvantage occur is reduced to the identification of disadvantage in individuals.

Policy discussions around social exclusion are primarily concerned with social cohesion and are characterised by the language of community (Everingham, 2001, p. 105) and a commitment to policies that seek to integrate atomised individuals.


Linked to these concepts are those of normality and otherness, which mark the social divisions and sites where borders of inclusion and exclusion can be drawn (e.g. homeless/homed).

Research and policy understandings of homelessness as social exclusion, while acknowledging contested definitions, assume the category 'homeless' as a given, although radically different explanations about causation, characteristics and potential intervention strategies are provided to address the 'problem'.


The accounts are derived from expert understanding (social scientists policy makers, service providers) and reflect a power/knowledge axis embedded in the social construction of homelessness as a social problem. Usually the experiences and knowledge of the persons who are the object of investigation are missed, or at least reconfigured through an expert gaze.

Foucault's understanding of discursive formation and power (Foucault, 1994a, pp. 326-348) assists in challenging the oppositions that underpin social policy formations based on hierarchical privileging of expert knowledges while creating the space for reclaiming subjugated understandings.

Within the context of homelessness as social exclusion, Foucault's metaphor of the panopticon (Focault, 1979, pp. 195-228) provides an alternative perspective through which to understand the construction of homeless clients. This is manifest as a highly ritualised use of power that identifies, classifies, categorises and subjects individuals to increasing levels of surveillance at the level of both policy development and service delivery.


From these identified problems, planning interventions can be developed and evaluated in terms of their effectiveness in returning individuals to 'normality'. These discourses contribute to the formation of the homeless person as object, with most concern being the management and surveillance of homeless populations in the form of data collection, instalment of support/rehabilitation programmes and the promotion of normative behaviours around independence.

The surveillance that the client undergoes informs a web of documentation and a discourse that serves to objectify and, in many cases, increase the gaze of the expert on the lives of individuals at the expense of broader frames of reference. Given the hegemony of these discourses, there are limitations to the extent to which programmes can be evaluated in terms that consider the distressing effects that broad structural changes have on the lives of people.