Popay, J. (2010). Understanding and tackling social exclusion. Journal of Research in Nursing, 15, 295 – 297. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987110370529
Abstract
More than 300 million Indigenous Peoples around the world experience systematic racism and oppression including Europe’s Roma people.Millions of people including asylum seekers in the UK are ‘Citizens of Nowhere, forgotten by governments, ignored by census takers, amongst the World’s poorest and most disenfranchised.’ (Mydans, 2007). In 2001, 1% of the World’s population owned 40% of the World’s wealth whilst 50% of the population owned 1% of the wealth. Globally, around a billion people are living on less than US$1 a day including half of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa. In the UK in 2004/5, 3.4 million children were living in relative poverty. Are these the contours of social exclusion? Disadvantaged groups are an important part of the problem but this approach to understanding may be a significant barrier to effective action to address social exclusion. The concept of social exclusion was originally developed in Europe. Despite resistance in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where concepts such as human rights, sustainable development, poverty and basic needs have greater salience, the concept has spread rapidly around the world partly due to its adoption by powerful organisations such as the World Bank. There are two broad approaches to defining social exclusion and different actions flow from each.