The Process of Social Reconciliation

Abstract

statistical information. The key finding was that unemployment itself is not the most important indicator in measuring life satisfaction and actual social exclu-sion. Unemployed people who had a supportive social relationship with their family and friends coped well despite their lack of work. When indicators such as unemployment, are used all that is measured is a part of social exclusion, namely exclusion from paid employment which is only part of social exclusion. The process of social exclusion could be described as a hierarchical, develop-mental model (Fig. 1). At the first stage, one has problems at school, at home or within the community. If these problems are not resolved this leads to the second stage failing at school and perhaps dropping out. This could be called the educational exclusion stage. Further, the lack of education might lead to the third stage, of unemployed and thus excluded from working life. The fourth stage is the deprived subgroup of uneducated, unemployed poor people which might then lead to the final stage, which involves criminality, problems with drugs and alcohol, resulting in placement in prison, mental health institution or addiction clinic. This final stage is total social exclusion. This hierarchical model gives an idea of the process at the theoretical level. Looking at individual life-courses it is evident that for some children born in a poor family in a poor suburb, the process might happen quickly and different stages might be activated at the same time because circumstances and culture might not offer any other possibility. It should be noted that while there is always the chance that a person may proceed down the hierarchy, it is more difficult at the more advanced stages, where one has problems in almost all important areas of life. It is also important to note that this hierarchy is only an external interpretation of social exclusion made from the point of view of mainstream culture. Whether people at these various stages feel excluded or not, is a different question. For example, (Jahnukainen, 1997, 1999) one young woman defined as socially excluded said she was used to living in a subgroup of alcoholics, because she had been used to bringing her father home from the pub since she was 4 years old and she felt part of that culture. It is, thus, important to consider social exclusion from a more internal point of view. Social exclusion might then approach the concept of alienation, which refers to the inner state of feeling powerless and perhaps unwilling to participate and accept the means and goals of mainstream society (Merton, 1938). Using only external indicators lead to over simplified conclusions about the situation of people considered as socially excluded.