Discourses Of Exclusion Research Articles

“I'm a police officer not a social worker or mental health nurse”: Online discourses of exclusion and resistance regarding mental health‐related police work

AbstractDespite estimates suggesting that around 15% of UK police incidents involve people with a mental health concern, officers receive very little mental health training. The police have faced high‐profile criticisms over their handling of mental health‐related incidents, whereas the underfunding and fragmentation of UK mental health services has led to concerns that police officers are being forced to undertake a primary role in mental health care. At a time of austerity and widespread cuts to public services, it is important to explore how particular groups work to justify the parameters of their professional duties. This article therefore explores the discourses surrounding mental health problems on an online police discussion forum, highlighting two distinct ways in which mental health‐related work is represented as being incompatible with policing. First, mental health problems are delegitimised and conflated with “scrounging,” positioning individuals as undeserving of police time; second, mental health problems are reified and associated with violence and extreme behaviour, justifying the use of force by police officers and deflecting responsibility onto mental health services. Findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that mental health work is not perceived to be a valid part of the police role.

Is civic nationalism necessarily inclusive? Conceptions of nationhood and anti‐Muslim attitudes in Europe

AbstractDespite the centrality of national identity in the exclusionary discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular definitions of nationhood are connected to dispositions toward Muslims. Moreover, survey‐based studies tend to conflate anti‐Muslim attitudes with general anti‐immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out‐group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national self‐understanding are predictive of anti‐Muslim attitudes, above and beyond dispositions toward immigrants. Using latent class analysis and regression models of survey data from 41 European countries, it demonstrates that conceptions of nationhood are heterogeneous within countries and that their relationship with anti‐Muslim attitudes is contextually variable. Consistent with expectations, in most countries, anti‐Muslim attitudes are positively associated with ascriptive – and negatively associated with elective (including civic) – conceptions of nationhood. Northwestern Europe, however, is an exception to this pattern: in this region, civic nationalism is linked to greater antipathy toward Muslims. It is suggested that in this region, elective criteria of belonging have become fused with exclusionary notions of national culture that portray Muslims as incompatible with European liberal values, effectively legitimating anti‐Muslim sentiments in mainstream political culture. This may heighten the appeal of anti‐Muslim sentiments not only on the radical right, but also among mainstream segments of the Northwestern European public, with important implications for social exclusion and political behaviour.

Polemika między Starowolskim i Przypkowskim. Przyczynek do badań XVII-wiecznego dyskursu wykluczenia i dyskursu tolerancji

The paper focuses on two types of the 17th century public discourse – of exclusion and tolerance. The research is based on the analysis of the works of Szymon Starowolski (Braterskie napomnienie, Prawdziwe objaśnienie Braterskiego napomnienia) and Samuel Przypkowski (Braterska deklaracyja) which constitute a polemical chain or a series of works combined on the basis of discussion replies. The purpose of the sketch is to characterize the subjects of the discourse, describe the communication strategies used and reconstruct presented attitudes and values. The subject of the discourse of exclusion assumes the approach of a hegemon attempting to discredit the object of the discourse and lead to its isolation. It invokes to insinuation and emotional arguments. The subject of the discourse of tolerance represents an irenic attitude and presents a society based on amicable coexistence, the will of cooperation, respect for law and freedom of conscience.

The labyrinth towards citizenship: contradictions in the framing and categorization of immigrants in immigration and integration policies

ABSTRACT Restrictive policies in Europe are accompanied by exclusionary discourses concerning national citizenship for immigrants, depicting them dichotomously as either ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’. In our analysis of immigration and integration policies in Belgium, we focus on how these political discourses interact to differentiate between categories of immigrants who are included or excluded to some extent in ways that are more complex than the dichotomy suggests. We conduct framing and category analyses of migration and integration policies to reveal a discursive field consisting of four central frames that generate seven categories of immigrants with varying degrees of deservingness. Instead of a linear path towards citizenship, migrants are trapped in a labyrinth. We reveal four important contradictions in the policy discourse, leading to the conclusion that permanently probationary citizenship status is the highest attainable goal for certain immigrants. Finally, we discuss the implications of this labyrinth for the socioeconomic position of immigrants.

Social containers as a tool of social and spatial segregation

Our paper deals with the establishment of the container settlements in Poland and the grassroots response to it: by the inhabitants and by political activists. In particular we are interested in how local authorities strategically frame housing issues to create social acceptance of diminishing standards of social housing in Poland and the involvement of the mainstream media in the process. We are focusing on strategies as well as tactical efforts to overcome structural and discursive opportunities emerging in the process of the anti- container campaign. Exclusionary discourse about the ‘container ghettos’ becomes a justification for local authorities to use social containers as tool of social and spatial segregation as well as to discipline communal tenants. In response of this process activists had to develop new diagnostic mobilizing frames and put considerable effort into frame alignment processes and forged new alliances with other actors. We analyze the campaign from the perspective of social movement studies, in particular structural theories of collective action. One side effect of such policies is unspoken racism, which we - after E. Balibar - interpret mostly in class terms aimed at the economically maladjusted. Empirically, our paper draws upon sociological intervention and 40 in-depth interviews with the inhabitants of the container settlements in Poland in 7 different cities conducted in 2008-2012; participantobservations of the settlements and of the campaign against them due to personal involvement of one of the authors.

Women as Icons in Post-Trauma Societies: “Disappearing” Women in Argentine National Cinema

ABSTRACTIn Argentina, the use of women as symbols of the nation provided a necessary anchor for debates over national identity in the aftermath of state terrorism and neoliberal reforms. Discourses of nation relied on the symbolic status of women as bearers of the nation and “disappeared” them as subjects from the public sphere, reproducing preexisting gender hierarchies. Adopting an interdisciplinary Discourse Historical Approach perspective, this manuscript examines one site of production of national identity, national cinema, through the comparative analysis of two films: The Official Story and The Headless Woman. These films rely on their female protagonists’ iconic status, the Good Mother and the Femme Fatale, respectively, to critically engage with authoritarianism, race and class in discourses of nation. Yet doing so prevents them from simultaneously addressing women’s grievances. Unmasking these exclusionary discourses is critical to understanding why Argentine women continue to be denied some of their fundamental rights.

The Arab Intellectual and the Present Moment

The Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef urgently asks, “Why are the poets silent?/Where have they gone?” These questions underscore the compelling need for the guiding voices of Arab intellectuals at this deeply divided present moment in the Arab world that has effectively seen the destruction of seemingly stable nations and identities. It is important to understand why and how easily “things fell apart” for Arab nations and peoples under the destructive influence and direct intervention of imperialist and Zionist agendas and forces. What does it mean to speak truth to power in the current Arab and global context where the destruction of Arab nations, such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen has become the all too familiar, convenient, and accepted status quo, which is marked by destructive and exclusionary discourses? It has become incumbent upon the Arab intellectual/writer/poet to lead the self-examination process in order to provide an understanding of the current Arab situation within its greater global context and construct a revolutionary and insurrectionary oppositional discourse that would expose and dismantle the current defeatist and divisionary discourses. Antonio Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and consent, Louis Althusser's ideological state apparatuses, and Edward Said's important ideas on the intellectual's critical consciousness, secular criticism, and beginnings are the theoretical lenses used to help decipher the catastrophic happenings in the Arab world. This study also examines excerpts of literary works by important Arab poets/intellectuals, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Bader Shaker Al-Sayyab, Saadi Youssef, and Yusuf Al-Ani.

The Forgotten Pogroms, 1918

The outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in the former Habsburg lands in the fall of 1918 are often overlooked, in part because of the subsequent violence in Hungary (1919–1921), in part because of the myth of Czechoslovak exceptionalism that emerged during the interwar period. It is tempting to view the post-war power vacuum as the main context – and catalyst – for this wave of violence that erupted after the collapse of the monarchy. A closer look at the anti-Jewish violence, however, suggests that it was part of the state-building process, or at least part of an effort to demarcate the exclusive terms of membership in the newly-established states. In explaining or justifying the anti-Jewish violence, perpetrators (and their supporters) often invoked the canard of Jewish “provocation” or the myth of Jewish “power” as part of a larger discourse of exclusion that placed Jews outside the Hungarian, Polish, or Czechoslovak body politic.

Placing Students at the Centre of the Decolonizing Education Imperative: Engaging the (Mis)Recognition Struggles of Students at the Postapartheid University

Misrecognition of South African university students is at the heart of this article. Misrecognition refers in this article to the exclusionary institutional discourses and practices of this country’s universities, which continue to prevent the majority of their (Black) students’ from achieving a successful education. It is a conceptual account of the ways in which these misrecognized students develop a complex educational life in their quest for a university education. The article argues that at the heart of students’ university experiences is an essential misrecognition of who they are, and how they access and encounter their university studies. I suggest that gaining greater purchase on their (mis)recognition struggles may place the university in a position to establish an engaging recognition platform to facilitate their educational success. Divided into four sections, the article starts with a rationale for bringing the institutional misrecognition of students into view. This is followed by a theoretical consideration of the notion of recognition, which opens space for what I call the recognitive agency of the education subject, who remains largely unknown to the university. The third section provides an account of the nature and extent of Black students’ survivalist educational navigations and practices in their family, community, school, and university contexts. The final and concluding section of the article presents a normative argument for developing an education platform for facilitating a productive encounter aimed at animating students’ educational becoming. This, I argue, should proceed on the basis of a decolonizing knowledge approach, involving curriculum recognition, which would accord students the conceptual tools for developing the epistemic virtues necessary for complex decolonized living.

MULTI-CRITERIA APPROACH IN EVALUATING CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO THE EMPLOYMENT OF SOCIALLY-EXCLUDED GROUPS

The paper explores the potential impact of social enterprises on social exclusion. In particular, the role of social enterprises in labour market integration of socially excluded individuals is analysed within the existing theoretical and policy discourses of exclusion. Taking into account the difficulties in measuring the social impact of social enterprises, our study contributes to the quantitative literature on the performance of social enterprises, taking the number of integrated people as a measure of the impact on social exclusion. The research is based on data on the employment of marginalized groups, derived from a unique dataset collected by a recently conducted survey of social enterprises in Serbia. The original methodological framework combines statistical methods and multi-criteria decision making model, in order to evaluate the contribution of different types of enterprises to the employment of excluded individuals. Weights determination for the MCDM model is performed using entropy while TOPSIS method is applied for the ranking of the types of social enterprises according to the employment of socially excluded categories. The results indicate that enterprises for employment of persons with disabilities, citizens’ associations and cooperatives in Serbia contribute the most in integrating the socially excluded.

‘You kind of don’t want them in the room’: tensions in the discourse of inclusion and exclusion for students displaying challenging behaviour in an English secondary school

ABSTRACT Internationally and within England, there has been increasing focus upon perceived behaviour problems within schools. This study, which took place within a mainstream English secondary school, considered the interplay of the competing notions of exclusion and inclusion for children displaying challenging behaviour. The study used a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative data gathered on school referrals (temporary exclusions from lessons) and interviews with staff and students. This approach allowed both a consideration of trends within referrals and an analysis of how students displaying challenging behaviour are constructed within the discourse of the school. Findings showed that some groups were disproportionately affected by referrals. Within interviews, students and staff oscillated between individualising and contextualising the cause of challenging behaviour both blaming the student and seeing them as a victim of circumstance at the same time. Teachers indicated a greater willingness to change their practice and use a contextual approach to understanding pupils’ behaviour when they felt they had been given a reason from the student’s home life or background to do so. Recommendations are made for future research in the previously under-researched area of referrals and implications for practice are discussed to make schools more inclusive of students with challenging behaviour.

Women and negotiated forms of belonging in post-apartheid South Africa

Although post-apartheid South Africa has seemingly opened its doors, its immigration and migration policies are ‘increasingly characterized by powerful xenophobic and exclusionary discourses centred on migration from the rest of Africa’ (Peberdy 2001, 16). The increase in xenophobic violent attacks and the extensive media coverage of these violent spurts has shifted the public discourse from exploring the different manifestations of xenophobia to an emphasis on a specific segment of the population which is primarily male and living in the townships. In both research and public discourse, the dominant discourse of xenophobia as male violence negates psychological and other mental forms of violence and xenophobia against women. Focusing on the experiences of women from other African countries and local women partnered with African non-nationals this article aims to provide counterpoints to this picture. It does so by understanding the negligence of women’s experiences within a framework of body politics and nationalism in which female bodies tend to be constructed as the authentic, inner country whose purity, sexuality, and traditional roles must be secured (Baines 2003, “Body politics and the Rwandan crisis.” Third World Quarterly 24 (3): 479–493, 482). It argues that the nation-building project as imagined by South African society constructs insiders and outsiders at the detriment of the vulnerable and minority groups in society (non-nationals and citizens alike) in a highly gendered manner. By looking at different ways in which women are positioned in the post-apartheid national building project, the article asks what forms of subjectivities and belonging are negotiated and enacted in response to these positionings. It shows how the experience of being a non-national is not fixed but becomes differently articulated during specific moments. Similarly, forms of belonging also depend on the context in which women find themselves in, thereby generating contingent political subjectivities.

The Making of a Colonial Archive: The Royal Commission on the Status of Women

The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (RCSW), embedded in liberal hegemonic feminist ideology, is largely the landscape that influenced and continues to influence the simultaneous politicising and depoliticisation of the mainstream women’s movement in Canada since the 1970s. The testimonies and recommendations of the RCSW predominately represented the needs and voices of white, heterosexual, Anglophone and Francophone, able-bodied, middle-class women. Using an intersectional critical race feminist framework, this article analyses the “making” of RCSW “against the grain” in relation to discourses of nation-building and racialisation. Drawing on extensive historical archival data and relevant in-depth expert interviews, I argue that the RCSW as a colonial archive furthered nation-building projects while crystallising Indigenous women and women of colour as the Other. The article illustrates how the feminist organisation, Vancouver Status of Women, is embedded in the colonial archive of the RCSW, one that reproduced nation-building discourses of essentialism, racialisation, and exclusion.

Vernacular Politics, Sectarianism, and National Identity among Syrian Refugees in Jordan

In Jordan—home to some one million Syrian refugees—the vital roles played by vernacular politics, discourses of inclusion and exclusion, and sectarian social histories for Syrians are often considered unimportant when examining possibilities for integration or coexistence. Based on ethnographic research and participation in women’s religion classes in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan in 2014, I argue that while sectarian identities may not in and of themselves appear to divide the majority of Syrian refugees in Jordan from the majority of Jordanian residents (as Sunni Muslims), through utilizing a vernacular politics theoretical perspective I reveal that the sectarian orientations and localized histories of Syrian refugees have an understudied potential to create new forms of divisiveness in Jordanian society. To dismiss any concerns raised, Jordanians reinforce the idea that sectarian discourses, in an objectified sense, are not welcome in Jordan, and that they are even—as a few asserted—“against Islam”. These differing national experiences with vernacular politics expressed in sectarian terms prompt Jordanians to reinforce the narrative that Jordan is free of such divisions, and will continue to remain so. This paper concludes by discussing the implications for national–transnational tensions.

Restorying as political action: authoring resistance through youth media arts

ABSTRACTThis article explores the lived realities for young people growing up and learning in a climate of racial discrimination, religious intolerance, misogyny, and xenophobia, and how school-sponsored and school-supported uses of digital media can afford young people opportunities to navigate their experiences of social injustice and resist exclusionary discourses and practices. In a collaborative inquiry into the practices of two youth media producers, we explore how these counternarrative efforts are forms of restorying, in which young people write themselves into existence in ways that can reconfigure school spaces. Framed in Black feminist and critical cosmopolitan perspectives, this article considers how young people use new media tools in school to engage the narrative imagination and build the worlds they want to live in, simultaneously representing the political histories and realities of their everyday worlds and imagining alternative futures. We explore the ways schools can create opportunities for youth to engage in these new media practices that re-author themselves and the institutional spaces they encounter – and how these opportunities are situated within broader intersectional forms of systemic inequity and oppression.

Analyzing the temporal location of employment centers relative to residential areas in Cape Town: A spatial metrics approach

The marginalization of low-income earners, in regard to access to economic activities, is a topical issue in South Africa. The location of residential areas relative to locations of employment plays a large role in determining how accessible employment opportunities are to individuals. This has led to several studies that look at the polarization of growth in places of economic activities in more affluent suburbs within the discourse of social exclusion and transformation. Since South African independence, several policies were drafted to address issues of segregation and social exclusion, among other issues. However, the question remains whether there has been progress in addressing these issues. This research applies landscape metrics to understand the growth trends in the spatial location of residential areas, relative to centers of economic activities, from 1995 (start of democracy) to 2013. The analyses reveal that high- and middle-income residential areas are typically located near commercial land uses. This explains the mixed land-use patterns that are found in middle-income residential areas. On the other hand, low-income residential areas were observed to be, dominantly, in large homogeneous and continuous patches.

The danger of the dual-language enrichment narrative: Educator discourses constructing exclusionary participation structures in bilingual education

ABSTRACTResearchers have identified inequities in dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) student participation, and with large-scale DLBE expansion, equitable student access is an increasingly important issue. In this study, I used a multimethod, multisite, comparative analysis to critically examine educator discourses addressing student participation in DLBE from two highly distinct bilingual education contexts (one in which the programs are generally designed for initially English-dominant speakers [Utah] and one in which the programs are predominantly designed for initially Spanish-dominant speakers [Texas]). This article explored how educators’ discourses and embedded language ideologies reinforced or reinvented the set of cultural rules and power relations regarding student access to DLBE. Teachers’ inclusionary and exclusionary discourses created distinct DLBE participation structures. Context and ideologies worked in tandem to discursively construct a more open or closed-off program to particular students with different academic, linguistic, and sociocultural backgrounds. Students that were perceived by educators to struggle academically and/or linguistically were discursively discouraged or closed off from program participation. This article demonstrates how the DLBE enrichment narrative and embedded discourses of ability and elitism can be problematic and may ultimately exclude students who have much to gain and lose from program participation.

Patterns of racialised discourses in Norwegian teacher education policy: Whiteness as a pedagogy of amnesia in the national curriculum

This article adds to new ways of understanding the institutionalisation of Whiteness as subtle workings of race and racism within education policy. It presents a critical discourse analysis of how Whiteness works through the use and meaning making of the term ‘cultural diversity’ in six Norwegian teacher education policy and curriculum documents. These documents are positioned as promoters of social justice. This article, however, aims to contest this position. Framed under the theoretical perspectives of critical Whiteness studies, discourse analysis and Goldberg’s theorisation of racialised discourse, the findings indicate that Whiteness is embedded in the usage of the term ‘cultural diversity’, manifested in discursive patterns of (1) three hierarchically arranged pupil group categories, (2) descriptions that place the pupil group categories as either superior Norwegian or as inferior non-Norwegian, and (3) the role of student teachers as ‘political actors of assimilation’. I argue that despite these educational documents being explicitly positioned as promoters of social justice, they are nonetheless both a product and producers of racialised discourses of Othering and exclusion – a result of the Norwegian ‘imagined sameness’ ideal and a socially accepted ‘pedagogy of amnesia’ that blinds itself to the current workings of the imperial and colonial legacy of race and racism.

Caste–Gender Intersectionality and Atrocities in Haryana: Emerging Patterns and State Responses

In the Indian society, the issue of gender and caste inequality has drawn considerable attention in the discourse of social exclusion. The complex relationship between these two culturally powerful identities in the context of violence and atrocities remains stubbornly in place. This article analyses the patterns and consequences of intersectional atrocities and the responses of state machinery in a specific sociocultural context, that is, in the state of Haryana. Despite showing faster economic development than other states, Haryana has been in the limelight for its traditions and customs conflicting with the freedom of lower castes (dalits) and women. The article draws evidence from the official data on crimes and information based on mainstream media reportage and documents of civil society organisations, to argue that a society, which culturally accepts caste and gender hierarchy and allows this culture to permeate in public institutions, accentuates the vulnerability of women from lower caste to structural, systematic and symbolic atrocities.

Drawing the Line. Visual Representations of the Labouring and Lower Classes in the Mid-Victorian Illustrated Press

Engagés dans une démarche de fidélité à l’actualité, l’une des principales ambitions de la presse illustrée victorienne, The Graphic (1869-1932) et The Illustrated London News (1842-2003) ont consacré une part significative de leurs publications à la représentation de la pauvreté urbaine. À l’heure où les débats autour de l’extension du suffrage font affleurer les tensions entre pouvoir bourgeois et montée de la classe ouvrière, c’est en termes d’identités sociales et culturelles que se définit la citoyenneté britannique, objet d’un discours clivé dans l’ensemble de la classe politique. À travers une sélection d’illustrations publiées entre le milieu des années 1860 et la fin de la décennie suivante, le présent article s’attache à analyser la façon dont ces partis pris ont trouvé voix dans les pages de l’ Illustrated London News et du Graphic , soulignant une forme de contradiction entre l’objectif affiché par ces journaux, celui d’un réalisme presque photographique, et les images produites. Élaborées au prisme de filtres artistiques et satiriques et reproduites en fonction de contraintes techniques lourdes, ces représentations ont contribué à établir une distinction entre pauvreté « respectable » et déchéance sociale. En traçant une ligne de partage littérale entre dignité et indignité, ces périodiques se sont fait le relais d’un discours visuel rassurant et largement partagé quant à l’avenir de la nation britannique.