Can you tell briefly trace the history of Social Inclusion and Social Exclusion as subjects of policy discussion in Britain and Europe over the past decade or so? And what is your involvement in this discussion?
I am primarily a social theorist, who works both on historical and contemporary political thought and on utopianism. I got involved in the social exclusion debate in the mid 1990s because the term kept cropping up in discussions across the social sciences. It was apparent that no-one really knew what they meant by the term, which in itself is a very interesting phenomenon; and that it did not have the close connection with poverty that I assumed from the work of Peter Townsend, Ruth Lister and the Child Poverty Action Group. And so I started to look at some European policy documents, and went on to look at the evolving policy of New Labour in this area. I am therefore something of an interloper in the field of social policy, but perhaps this just underlines the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to our work.
This came onto the European agenda from France, in the 1980s. By the mid-90s, there were extensive funds available for tackling social exclusion. However, social exclusion (even when clearly involving poverty) was primarily seen as a problem of separation from labour markets, leading to an emphasis on improving opportunities for paid work. This discursive emphasis was underpinned by the fact that most of the available money was directed at projects which at least ostensibly tackled labour market exclusion. At the Portugal and Nice summits in 1999 and 2000, more emphasis was placed on poverty - perhaps because Portugal and Britain have the highest percentage of population in relative poverty in the EU. The requirement that all member states produce a National Inclusion plan derives from this time. It is important, though, to understand that member states all interpret exclusion in different ways.
In Britain, the language of the EU was of course important, because of the available funding.( One might also say that the centrality of social exclusion to policy research was also because it opened up sources of European funding.) But there was an indigenous tradition of poverty research which linked lack of material resources to exclusion from forms of citizenship. However, this was not widely on a public agenda until after the election of the Blair government in 1997, when the Social Exclusion Unit was set up. This was actually targeted at marginal groups, such as rough sleepers, truants, pregnant teenagers, and 'problem estates'. But since then, because of the European agenda, it has become more central to overall policy. It too is primarily concerned with labour market attachment.
What has been your involvement with the ongoing discourse, discussion and debate over these terms?
I have consistently argued that labour market attachment is an inadequate notion of social inclusion. Nor should we accept as a natural fact that those who are not in paid work are poor, and the solution to their poverty is to get a job (although the availability of decent work is of course crucial). There important forms of work outside the labour market, as well as people for whom work is not possible, or not appropriate at particular times. We have to have a wider concept of the 'social'.
I've also been involved in trying to operationalise this with colleagues in the Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey, to try to find indicators that are more appropriate than those in official statistics.
The theme of the conference is Social Inclusion: "What do we know and where do we go?" Based on your research, what can you tell us about how policies based on the discourse of Social Exclusion and Inclusion have played out in terms of improving human rights, quality of life, and democratic participation in all aspects of citizenship and community life?
This is both an enormous and a leading question! And of course answering it fully is beyond my competence. The position is very ambiguous. First, I am not sure that it is right to say that policies are based in the discourse of inclusion/exclusion: to some extent, what happens is that existing policies are legitimised in terms of the rhetoric. Thus the EC's response to the first round of National Inclusion plans was disappointment that they actually re-present existing national policies in new terms. Second, people working in local government have said to me that this is exactly what they like about the inclusion agenda: it enables them to put in place policies they regard as appropriate, and justify them in terms of inclusion. In some cases this involves new ways of involving people in decision-making processes. And individual policies are also ambiguous: for example the idea that paid work delivers social inclusion for lone mothers is certainly helpful for those who want paid work, and necessitates more attention to availability of child-care - but then it stigmatises and impoverishes lone parents who don't think paid work appropriate to their circumstances.
What we do know, by the way, is that poverty prevents social participation in all sorts of ways. But paid work is not the only way of tackling poverty.
At this point, I'd like you to introduce what I've come to think of as your three siblings of social policy: RED, SID, and MUD. Can you tell us a bit about who they are? Would it be accurate to say you feel Social Inclusion is problematic in that it blurs or obscures the motives and objectives of policy as it shifts between RED, SID, and MUD?
It may be important to say that RED, SID and MUD are about discourses surrounding social exclusion, and that I do not think that social inclusion is the simple obverse of this. But briefly, RED is a redistributive discourse in which the poor/excluded have no money; SID is a Social integrationist discourse, in which they have no paid work; MUD is a moral underclass discourse, in which, to oversimplify, they have no morals. The 'Exclusion' agenda does, as you say, blur policy objectives. But whether the fuzzy rhetoric that enables wide mobilisation behind policies to tackle exclusion is a bad thing depends on what the policies are!
Do you think that RED, SID, and MUD are, in essence, the sole choices in terms of social policy approaches? Doesn't the intent and language of Social Inclusion allow for broader and different approaches?
No, these are not the only choices, and in a way they are not policy choices at all, though they have different policy implications. The RED, SID, MUD model is just that, a model, and it is a model of discourses which partly map onto social policy approaches. It is really a model for analysing what is going on, and how the agenda is shifting.
I would want to say two things. One is that the whole approach is problematic, as the exclusion/inclusion dichotomy can be a distraction from the nature and extent of inequalities.
The second is that I agree that the inclusion agenda has greater potential. In an odd way - because it is not the obverse of exclusion - it allows much more attention to different kinds of inequality. But there is a huge problem then about what we mean by an inclusive society, and what we hope inclusion will deliver, and that means we must think about the kind of society we want. That is an important task, which may be helped by a language of inclusion - as long as a rather sloppy adherence to inclusion is not used to avoid the substantive issues.
You note in your writings that European social policy discussion is returning to the subject of poverty as a source of social exclusion, but that reasons for poverty are rarely noted. On the other hand, your fellow conference panelists Anver Saloojee sees Social Inclusion as a good tool for addressing racism (as exclusion) and developing benchmarks to address it. What is the British and European experience of using the language and ideas of the Social Inclusion movement to address racism?
This is very interesting. Certainly inclusion is used in relation to overcoming racism. Indeed, when I talk about inclusion, it is this that is the key issue for many people in the audience. But the policy agenda at the moment treats all the anti-discrimination legislation ( on ethnicity, gender, disability, and soon age, sexual orientation and religion) as what is called 'the equalities agenda' (which is about equality of opportunity), not as part of the inclusion agenda. And the indicators for the 'poverty and social exclusion agenda' don't include any to do with ethnicity (although of course they overlap as ethnic minorities in Britain are far more at risk of poverty than the majority.
Can you cite British and European examples of how the language and ideas of the Social Inclusion movement have been used in a positive and useful way? What, in your view, distinguishes these approaches? What makes for success?
I actually think that the first principle of the criteria for the Social Inclusion plans is very positive and useful, since it talks about access for all to resources (as well as to the labour market). The acceptance of the need to reduce the numbers of people living below the poverty line in Europe is very positive indeed!
What would you say have been the greatest disappointments of Social Inclusion in Britain and Europe? What might Canadians learn from these experiences as they contemplate going forward with new social policy approaches?
For me, the greatest disappointment is the continuing emphasis on paid work as the central means of social integration. I think that work is a greatly overrated pastime, and that we have to recognise that society is more than this.
Is there anything you would like to add that we haven't mentioned yet?
Just to stress that I think the idea of social inclusion has enormous transformative potential, if it encourages us to think holistically about the kind of society we would like to live in, and the policies necessary to get there. In this sense, it is a matter not for 'social policy' as narrowly defined, but a much bigger political question. That is, in my view, why it is important.
Back to Papers
For more information about the conference, contact:
Sarah Zgraggen
The Willow Group
Tel: (613) 722-8796;
Fax: (613) 729-6206;
e-mail: szgraggen@thewillowgroup.com
Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology at the