Summary

Setting the Stage

Thursday March 27, 2003: First Plenary

Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology at Bristol University, drew warm applause for her opening comment that she welcomed the chance to visit a country that is not at war. She told participants that social inclusion “is now the central legitimating concept of social policy, in Europe and elsewhere”. But while there is general agreement that inclusion is good and exclusion is both unfair and damaging to social cohesion, there is very little clarity about what the terms mean.

She suggested that the definition of social inclusion can be either ideological or utopian as defined by Karl Mannheim, for whom “a utopia is a transformative idea” that can shatter established orders when it passes into practice. In this context, Levitas said the key question is not what social inclusion means, “but rather what is meant by it, by whom”.

In the U.K., Levitas said, social inclusion is broadly defined within three different frameworks:

• A redistributive discourse, in which social exclusion is seen as a consequence of poverty, and the definition of needed resources extends beyond cash income;

• A social inclusion discourse which defines exclusion as an absence of paid work, but disregards the value of unpaid work as well as the impact of jobs in which long hours and poor pay only perpetuate social exclusion;

• A moral discourse, in which exclusion is seen as a matter of workless households and in which specific groups, such as young unemployed men and never-married single mothers, become the focal point.

Jean-Pierre Voyer, Executive Director of the federal Policy Research Initiative (PRI), said Canada’s approach to poverty and exclusion has traditionally relied on a mix of taxes, transfers and services aimed at the population as a whole, supported by special programs for people who are unemployed. He said policy has evolved over time toward the broad goal of a guaranteed annual income, but progress has been uneven, with poverty now highly concentrated in five at-risk groups:

• People with work-related disabilities;
• Recent immigrants;
• Single mothers;
• Unattached older adults;
• Aboriginal peoples.

With a lot of new research in place, Voyer stressed the importance of studying the implications of emerging insights for practical policy, “especially when they would be superimposed on an existing policy framework that, on balance, works reasonably well”. He suggested six steps to a practical strategic framework that would enable researchers, policy designers, politicians, and front-line advocates to discuss future directions and better harmonize their activities:

• Agreeing on terminology;
• Rethinking our goals and vision of a better future;
• Determining the size of the policy envelope;
• Identifying emerging trends in poverty and exclusion in a way that anticipates future needs;
• Developing new measurement tools and policy research priorities;
• Ensuring that the discussion includes the institutional participants with a mandate to take action.

Anver Saloojee, Professor of Politics at Ryerson University, said the concept of social inclusion has tremendous potential to build solidarity that transcends the fragmenting and silo effects of identity politics. Although it may not be the only useful entry point for social enquiry, he said, it may be one of the most illuminating and compelling.

The utility of the concept depends on the extent to which it deals with exclusion and fosters inclusion in a society that is fractured along numerous lines, Saloojee said. This means distinguishing between weak versions of the social inclusion discourse—which focus on integrating the excluded, primarily into the labour market—and stronger versions that take a much more structural approach. At its best, he said social inclusion is concerned with rights, responsibilities, citizenship, and restructuring the relationships between marginalized groups and the institutions of society.

He said a social inclusion research agenda should be developed within the context of:

• Demographics;
• Politicization of rights;
• The need to move from numerical to substantial representation in the political process;
• The claims of First Peoples to sovereignty and self-determination.

Session moderator Rianne Mahon, Director of Carleton University’s Institute of Political Economy, summed up the opening presentation in three ‘P’s: The potentiality of the concept of social inclusion, potential pitfalls in some of the ways the concept has been framed, and the power of defining weak versus strong versions of social inclusion. In the discussion period, a participant added a fourth ‘P’—practicality—suggesting that the challenge is to translate a compelling idea into tangible change at the levels of policy and community. “We can describe it,” she said, “but what does it mean, and how does it make peoples’ lives better?”

Another audience member said it would be important to reconcile Ruth Levitas’ concept of utopian thinking with the “political and institutional realities” facing policy-makers and social policy advocates. He also expressed concern about “policy incoherence” among federal departments, and between levels of government.

A participant suggested that social inclusion and exclusion can co-exist in practice. For example, Canadian policy supports multiculturalism, even though some members of the public believe there is too much diversity.

Levitas replied that social inclusion has far greater implications than simply overcoming exclusion. But she acknowledged the challenge of defining inclusion within a practical context. “If we simply take those realities as fixed, we won’t have more than a weak program for inclusion,” she said. “We’re operating in a context of widening inequalities and polarization, within countries and globally,” in an era when even the United Nations “is being whittled away as we speak. So it seems to me that we have to address those kinds of institutional questions,” beginning with the assumption that wages can be a just or equitable way of distributing the social product.

She acknowledged Canada’s success in placing basic entitlements in the context of children’s services, noting that “it’s easier to get people to see that meritocratic assumptions are not naturally acceptable or positive in terms of producing the kinds of social outcomes we want.”

Saloojee identified citizenship as a centrepiece of any national framework on social inclusion, and a national education strategy as “the critical building block for a sustained notion of citizenship. Without a well-rounded, funded public education system, we’re going to replicate and reproduce forms of exclusion that are only going to come to haunt us in 10, 20 or 30 years. Reinvesting in public education has to be the answer that drives all forms of inclusion.”

Voyer agreed that coherence is the biggest challenge, noting that coordination among federal departments is an important part of PRI’s mandate. Coherence becomes that much more important given the range of policy levers that fall under provincial jurisdiction. “From a practical point of view, the first step for us is to develop a framework and define its scope.”

He added that a key challenge for social research is to create a smoother information flow from data producers to end users.

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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