Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom

........Social exclusion is a relatively new concept in the United Kingdom1. This is particularly so for academics studying in the area of social work and social policy analysis. Indeed, for some social scientists the emergence of the concept has been a challenge to ways of thinking about the analysis of society (Levitas 1996; Byrne 1997). Historically the United Kingdom has had a paradigm of social science that viewed social division with a distinctively different perspective from the current European usage of the concept of social exclusion. The nearest discourse to this in Anglo Saxon social science is the approach to the study of deprivation that focuses on poverty. Booth and Rowntree in the later part of the nineteenth and in the early part of the twentieth century established this tradition (Fraser 1973). Their works established a particular orientation to viewing deprived people in society from the perspective of poverty. The most significant component of poverty as they understood it was the lack of personal financial resources. Historically there has been an association of poverty studies with the academic study of social policy in the United Kingdom. In parallel the profession of social work has been informed by and is increasingly contributing to this analysis. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, however, alongside this analysis there has been a concern about stigmatisation and the problems of labelling people: there has been fierce debate in the UK about the use of terms such as 'the poor', 'the underclass', 'the excluded'. These words have been used to blame individuals. This has caused a certain amount of concern about the usage of such terms (see Rodger 1992). Social workers have been at the front line of intervention with people thus labelled. To a marked extent they have had the opprobrium of this labelling reflected on their profession.

........ In spite of opprobrium related to poverty in the United Kingdom, the growing usage of the concept of social exclusion within the European Union has (somewhat reluctantly) pushed both academics and policy formulators to undertake a shift in thinking. Almost all of the social policy initiatives of the Union in the 1990's have included a dimension that is related to social exclusion and social integration. Debates regarding the nature and extent of poverty in the United Kingdom have now to acknowledge that the condition and process of social exclusion are a necessary part of the dialogue. The Labour Government elected in 1997 established a Social Exclusion Unit. In April 2000 this Unit published a Consultation Document on a National Strategy for neighbourhood Renewal which recognised that social exclusion had social and economic causes and that an integrated approach was required to combat these.

........ The intention of this paper is to examine aspects of developments in the United Kingdom over the past decade or so with particular reference to the process of social exclusion and finally to consider the implications of this for social work. Initially however we intent to sketch the usage of the concept of social exclusion in the context of the European Union. In 1989, the then European Community had been involved in interventions in the social area for 15 years and had initiated two Poverty Programmes. Prior to the commencement of the Third Poverty Programme, which commenced in this year, the Council of the Community adopted a Charter (1989a) which eventually became the social policy annex to the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht. The Charter's concern was with people in employment and their rights. The discussion around the content of the Charter, however, went broader than work and employment included a concern about the properties of citizenship in the Community (Hantrais 1995). It moved the debate into the area of the rights of non-workers. High amongst those for whom the Community had an interest were those on the margins of society. Although there was not complete agreement about this, the interest became an issue for intervention at a European level. The issue involved both the shift in thinking from poverty to social exclusion but also the propriety of the then Community taking action above the level of Member States. The validity of this action was based on the powers contained the social policy annex from which the United Kingdom had opted out. This annex was eventually was incorporated into the Basic Treaty of the European Union in Amsterdam in 1997 and became binding on all Member States. It reflects an impetus from some of these Member States for a clear move by the Union into the social as well as economic arena. A major feature of this impetus has been the growing importance of social exclusion in the analysis of social and economic problems facing the Union in the 1990's.

........ This shift in thinking from poverty to social exclusion was noted in a European Council Resolution on September 29th 1989 that emphasised social exclusion as:

not simply a matter of inadequate (resources), and that combating exclusion also involves access by individuals and families to decent living conditions by means of measures for social integration and integration into the labour market.    

........ The Community's interest was not only with the process of exclusion but also with the process of integrating marginalised people into society and the Council accordingly requested the Member States:  

to implement or promote measures to enable everyone to have access to: education, by acquiring proficiency in basis skills, training, employment, housing, community services and medical care. (Council of Ministers of the European Community 1989b)    

........ The Resolution of the Council introduced The Third Poverty Programme which had a duration to 1994. The change in thinking of the Council was reflected in the title of the Programme:

Community programme for the economic and social integration of the least privileged groups in society. (Council of the European Community 1989c).

........ The Poverty 3 Programme aimed at developing a multi-dimensional approach to social exclusion and focused on projects which had social as well as economic integration as their objective. To augment this, the Programme sought to gain the partnership of public and private institutions and to promote the active involvement of the governments of the Member States involved (Commission of the European Communities 1995). The Poverty 3 Programme was a major component of the Social Action Programme of 1989 to 1994. This Social Action Programme also involved the establishment of a group of experts in each Member State to report on the policies undertaken to alleviate the condition of social exclusion. These experts formed the Observatories on Policies for Combating Social Exclusion. They commenced their Reports in the early 1990's. The first Co-ordinator of the Observatories developed a definition to guide their work:

(Individuals) suffer social exclusion where they; a) they suffer generalised disadvantage in terms of education, training, employment, housing, financial resources, etc.: b) their chances of gaining access to the major social institutions which distribute these life chances are substantially less than those of the rest of the population; c) these persist over time (Room 1990)    

........ This definition of social exclusion draws on both the European intellectual influence and also from a variant of the United Kingdom perspective on people who are socially deprived. Peter Townsend has made a distinctive contribution to this aspect of the study of poverty. From the 1960's onwards he developed a definition of poverty different from the official government definition. He moved away from an income resource base for the measurement of poverty to a conceptualisation that examined poverty in relative terms. That is it related poverty to the resources that people possessed in relation to the expectation society had of 'normal living'. This measured the experience of poverty not just in terms of income resource but of access to other resources in society such as health, education, housing and the environment. It established marginalisation as well as deprivation as major components of the study of poverty. In using this approach as a basis for research Townsend (1970) concluded that in 1968/1969 some 22.9 % of the population were in a condition of poverty as compared to 6.1% measured by the state supplementary benefit standard. Clearly establishing that poverty was more extensive than had been previously assumed

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........ Townsend and colleagues (1985) specifically using multiple deprivation have undertaken further work in this area as a key conceptual tool in the study of poverty. This further study conducted in London confirmed that the marginalisation and deprivation of people was well beyond the threshold of the state income support level.

........ This analysis of the United Kingdom will take poverty as an important variable in the understanding of social exclusion. The details of poverty measurement are not within the scope of this paper (see Abrahamson and Hansen 1996; Room 1996). They are complex and varied but they ...

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