Original scientific paper
Social Exclusion: Definitions, Discourses, and Operationalization
Zoran Šućur
Abstract
There is a mismatch between a wide popularity of social exclusion and its theoretical embeddedness and empirical validity. The paper addresses the issues of defining and approaching social exclusion, and gives an example of the operationalization of social exclusion. The author pays considerable attention to the delineation between social exclusion and other concepts or approaches, especially between social exclusion and poverty, since in the beginning the term social exclusion emerged as a substitution for poverty. The paper analyzes advantages and drawbacks of the conceptual shift to social exclusion. An advantage of social exclusion is in that it allows easy move from one to another discourse or paradigm. Different meanings and causes of social exclusion, as well as social integration models have been analyzed through three paradigms: solidarity, specialization and monopoly. So far, there have been no many attempts of the operationalization of social exclusion. The author argues that only a combination of disadvantaged distributional and relational (participatory) dimensions can be used as an indicator of social exclusion. In addition, a call for complex analysis of social exclusion indicators is accentuated. The concept of social exclusion linked material and socio-psychological aspects of living conditions. The tendency in European social policy to substitute poverty by social exclusion is highly contested. In order to target risk groups properly with social policy instruments and to avoid poverty to end up in marginalization and limited social participation, it seems reasonable to maintain both concepts: poverty and social exclusion.
Keywords
SOCIAL EXCLUSION; POVERTY; MARGINALIZATION; DISTRIBUTIONAL AND RELATIONAL DIMENSIONS; SOCIAL INTEGRATION; DEPRIVATION; INCLUSION
Hrčak ID:
14459
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2004.
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