Social Exclusion Of The Average Citizen

In the United Kingdom before the 1997 Labour Government there was hardly any mention of the term ‘social exclusion’ when discussions about social policy were being held.  The expression in normal usage was ‘poverty’ and this was generally utilized as a generic term to describe the sort of situation where people lacked opportunities that were available to the average citizen.  People on low incomes were obviously central to this notion but it also covered other factors that were related to things like severe and chronic disadvantage. 

The term ‘social exclusion’ is fairly self-explanatory in that it relates alienation of certain people or groups of people within society.  The use of this term therefore is a help in highlighting how important the alienation is and how much we all need to understand the full complexities of its causes and its effects.

It was found that the introduction of the term ‘social exclusion’ led some people to assume that alienation and low income were basically unconnected and that in fact they could and should each be considered separately when developing policy.  In turn this led in some circles to the downgrading the importance of addressing issues concerning low income on the grounds that the effect might simply limit the material goods that a household could acquire as opposed to any wider social impact.