Definitions of"Social exclusion" in the New Labour years have involved a denial ofstructural inequalities' - Assess the validity of this judgement.

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Definitions of "Social exclusion" in the New Labour years have involved a denial of structural inequalities'.  Assess the validity of this judgement.

The explicit use of the term 'social exclusion' (SE) is relatively recent in origin in the UK.  However it has been utilised in European social policy context for some time in particular through the 1990–94 EU anti-poverty programme focusing on the integration of the ‘least privileged’.

New Labour has adopted the concept as a key policy priority, this is no accident and the term itself was not settled on until months into government.  This thought out policy target was reinforced by the establishment of the 'Social Exclusion Unit' (SEU) in 1997.  The SEU was set up by the Prime Minister to help improve Government action to reduce social exclusion by producing 'joined-up solutions to joined-up problems'.  The SEU website provides the following definition of social exclusion:

        '...a shorthand term for what can happen when people 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'

The above definition is only one in a myriad of explanations.  The expression is so widely engaged in debates about social politics that accepting one definition would not provide the justice required nor the insight of its use and in turn its deployment in policies and hence initiatives.

The term social inclusion seeks to be a more comprehensive and holistic in addressing social disadvantage, it is multi dimensional and hence can be flexible.  

Although flexibility can be advantageous, there are clearly opportunities for those who desire to manipulate to their own advantage.  Hence the terms popularity across the political arena.  

The concept has been increasingly used as an alternative expression of relative 'poverty' (Walker defines this as "lack of material resources, especially income, necessary to participate in British society" (1997:8)

However as Fairclough points out ‘new Labour have replaced 'long standing Labour party objectives of greater equality' with 'the objective of greater social inclusion'.  This move to an 'inclusive society' has been a move away from the previously dominant concept of 'poverty'’.  By doing this the wider issues associated with poverty, inequality and distribution of wealth are side lined.

This enables social exclusion to be embedded in a variety of discourses which are used or 'slipped' into and out of in accordance to political constituencies and methods to gain their support.

Ruth Levitas identifies three types of discourse, a redistributionist discourse (RED) which is mainly concerned with poverty, inequalities and redistribution of wealth; a moral underclass discourse (MUD) which looks at moral and behavioural delinquency of the excluded  which are largely defined in young unemployable men, those with criminal inclinations and single mothers; and a social integrationist discourse (SID) which focuses on paid work as part of a means to socially integrate those that are unemployed or economically inactive.

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New Labour uses the flexibility of the term social exclusion to deploy a inconsistent mix of SID and MUD.  This has seen a marked move away from RED

However Murray provides us with an alternative definition of underclass via its association with ‘a type of poverty’ as opposed ‘to a degree of poverty’ (1990:1.1)

The purpose of this essay is to show that in my opinion New Labour has used the flexibility of social exclusion to move our attention away from wider problem of structural inequalities.

My perception of ‘structural inequality’ equates to an association with ...

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