Transcript for: Understanding Social Inclusion and Exclusion
[Voiceover] Being an integral member of our society carries
with it many advantages. You can get access to
good social networks, to housing, to educational resources, to all the different
resources of a community. And with that comes a
great deal of opportunity. But one of the things that can happen is that certain individuals
can find themselves being kind of pushed, kind of relegated to the peripheries of society, and when that happens they really lose, or are prevented from participating
in society in many ways. They may have reduced rights, access to legal protection and rights, they may have reduced access to resources, and they may have reduced opportunities. But the thing is, so we
have the core society in the middle here, but we can also have a
variety of different processes that can drag or suck people away into the periphery, into
the fringes of society. So one of the important factors here could be, for example, poverty. So let's draw the poverty magnet, and the poverty magnet can literally drag people away from the core parts
of society, to the fringes. And as we move away from the center these people are
experiencing a greater degree of social exclusion. And this is a process by
which we are derailing people from actively participating in society, and sending people,
effectively relegating people to the fringes of society. Where they may not have,
where they're basically denied access to many resources. Another important magnet that we can draw is the magnet of ill health. Whether that's mental or physical, that's a huge magnet. Again, people who are
physically or mentally ill may have a much tougher time engaging and interacting in society and they too may be dragged away from the core part of
society into the fringes. Also we should bear in
mind that certain groups may face a lot of discrimination. This could be an additional magnet. And these groups can face discrimination based on their race,
gender, sexual orientation, and a whole heap of
other different elements, such as culture for
example, or citizenship, or other preferences, such as politics. Another thing that we can consider is things like education,
housing, employment, these are all very, very,
very important factors. And with a lack of education,
housing, or employment people can again, be very easily relegated to the fringes of society, where they're not really participating, or able to interact, network,
and gain the resources that many people in society have. So as we continue to talk about this really important
concept of social exclusion one of the things I
want you to bear in mind is that we've drawn
these separate magnets, but in reality people who
experience social exclusion, who are really pushed to
the fringes of society, they often have many of these magnets combined. So they're dealing with tremendous forces that are effectively pulling them away into the fringes of society. And when that happens,
when people are pulled away into the fringes of society there's certain consequences
that can happen. Those individuals may not only develop greater degree of ill health, but they may also undertake
criminal activities, because they feel so disenfranchised. So those are two important concepts there, ill health and crime. So as we can see social exclusion can have many different factors at play that we need to consider. There are many different
things I want to consider when we talk about social exclusion and one factor I want you to consider is the concept of segregation. And this concept is pretty important, because this is a way of
separating out groups of people and giving them access to
a separate set of resources within the same society. Sometimes people describe this
as being separate but equal, but we know from historic examples, such as apartheid in South Afric or the treatment of African
Americans in the US historically that this is rarely true. Oftentimes people who are segregated have substandard, or really poor services. So if we consider our society again, perhaps segregation would look like this. One set of individuals
would perhaps occupy only a part of the mainstream
and the fringes of society, and they'd be segregated out. And segregation may be
maintained by things like laws and public institutions, or there may be much
more informal processes, or hidden discrimination. As I mentioned, segregation often affects a lot of different
services and situations, such as schools, housing, and historically in the US
even where you sat on a bus, or which water fountain you drank from. And segregation has often, often meant racial segregation, separation based on the concept of race. Let's talk about another concept and that's one of social isolation. And that's when a community may
actually separate itself out from the mainstream and do so on a voluntary basis. And they may want to
isolate themselves out based on their own religious, or cultural, or other factors. But they want to do that to perhaps preserve part of their identity. The Amish for example,
may be a group in the US that you would consider
undertaking a degree of this voluntary social isolation. And this would be different
to social exclusion, because in social
exclusion there are a lot of external factors at play
that force an individual, or push or pull an individual
to the fringes of society. But social isolation by
some of these communities is often done on a voluntary basis.