Exclusionary Outcomes Research Articles

Just go to the office! An intersectional exploration of the role of race and gender in discipline referral reasons

ABSTRACT Educators’ differential selection of Black and Latine students for office discipline referrals is a significant driver of inequity in exclusionary outcomes. Using demographic data and discipline records for all students in one large urban school district, we use descriptive statistics and multilevel regression models to consider whether referral reasons are racialized and if these patterns intersect with gender. Our analyses indicate that educators are consistently more likely to refer Black students than White students to the office for several subjective reasons, including habitual disruption, that are purportedly race-neutral but privilege Whiteness. They are less likely to make referrals for Black students in the objective category of drug and alcohol use or possession. Latine students are more likely than White youth to be referred for habitual disruption and substance use or possession. We draw on Critical Race Theory to interpret these findings and their implications.

Nigerian migrants, daily life domains and bordering processes in the city of Guangzhou

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how interrelated processes of bordering – i.e. delimitation, interface and affirmation – work out in domains of Nigerian migrants’ daily life in Guangzhou. The results reveal that migrants make use of marketplaces as interface platforms for economic exchange and cooperation with Chinese entrepreneurs, yet within a highly delimited playing field and with affirmation of cultural differences. They find residence in the city, with opportunities delimited by state and city laws. In neighborhoods, they find their stigmatization affirmed and lack inter-ethnic interface. Migrants also create underground churches, yet delimited into remaining invisible in the urban landscape. In churches, migrants affirm their identity and community but have limited inter-ethnic interface. The paper pinpoints fierce segregative and exclusionary outcomes for Nigerian migrants but they also persevere and gain agency in becoming a successful entrepreneur through instrumental inter-ethnic contact. Moreover, through non-instrumental intra-ethnic contact, they negotiate a sense of belonging in the city.

Housing accessibility in densifying cities: Entangled housing and land use policy limitations and insights from Oslo

Several cities have introduced densification policies to counteract urban sprawl, protect natural land and resources, and create socially diverse and inclusive urban areas. The common assumption, present especially in policy recommendations for sustainable urban development, that densification is the most favourable way to achieve urban sustainability in a broad sense, including economic and social dimensions, powerfully depoliticizes densification. However, within the housing sector, the implementation of densification policies might be linked to the intensification of existing - and the creation of new - social and spatial challenges. In Oslo, the case study of this investigation, urban densification has been implemented since the 1980 s, and has produced strongly exclusionary housing markets with negative socio-spatial implications. In this article, I explore the mechanisms behind such outcomes. Specifically, employing a qualitative analysis of policy documents and interviews with key-informants, I explore how the systematic prioritization of environmental sustainability and green growth goals in planning for densification, together with the lack of legal tools and economic resources to provide affordable housing, have shaped the production of exclusionary outcomes, limiting the possibilities to combine urban densification and housing accessibility at the local level.

Supporting Pregnant Women Experiencing Homelessness

ABSTRACT Despite the significant needs of pregnant homeless women, the paucity of literature on this topic has contributed to a gap in practice and policy knowledge about this vulnerable group. Drawing on two research projects undertaken in Victoria, Australia, the authors analysed interviews with women experiencing homelessness and interviews and focus groups with policy practitioners and service providers. Service system barriers faced by pregnant homeless women and the support needed to stabilise housing were explored. Results showed how the resource-depleted housing context, combined with organisational restrictions that constrained care coordination and continuity, generated exclusionary outcomes for pregnant homeless women. These findings, informed by a feminist critical social work framework, draw attention to: the harms of gender-blind policy and practice; the approaches to providing care that work; and a need within social work to address challenges unique to pregnant women experiencing homelessness. IMPLICATIONS Policy and practice that do not recognise gender generate exclusionary outcomes for pregnant homeless women. There is a pressing need for affordable, suitable and long-term housing options for pregnant homeless women Rapid rehousing into permanent accommodation that recognises pregnancy as a criterion is needed to meet requirements of pregnant homeless women. A feminist critical social work approach highlights the need for continuous and coordinated care provision for pregnant homeless women

Urbanization in (post-) New Order Indonesia: connecting unevenness in the city with that in the countryside

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the uneven outcomes of development in Indonesian cities with exclusionary outcomes of capitalist development in rural areas. Combining concepts of planetary urbanization with critical agrarian studies, we show how sociospatial and socionatural differentiations in (post-) New Order Java result in the emergence of the Kaum Miskin Kota, a ‘stagnant relative surplus population’ residing in precarious flood-prone urban spaces. These forms of differentiation are dialectically related to rural enclosures caused by the creation of political forest and political water. Tracing such relations forms a good basis to connect rural- and urban-based social movements.

Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality and Enforcing Discipline

Algorithmic accountability law—focused on the regulation of data-driven systems like artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision-making (ADM) tools—is the subject of lively policy debates, heated advocacy, and mainstream media attention. Concerns have moved beyond data protection and individual due process to encompass a broader range of group-level harms such as discrimination and modes of democratic participation. While a welcome and long overdue shift, the current discourse ignores systems like databases, which are viewed as technically “rudimentary” and often siloed from regulatory scrutiny and public attention. Additionally, burgeoning regulatory proposals like algorithmic impact assessments are not structured to surface important –yet often overlooked –social, organizational, and political economy contexts that are critical to evaluating the practical functions and outcomes of technological systems. This Article presents a new categorical lens and analytical framework that aims to address and overcome these limitations. “Suspect Development Systems” (SDS) refers to: (1) information technologies used by government and private actors, (2) to manage vague or often immeasurable social risk based on presumed or real social conditions (e.g. violence, corruption, substance abuse), (3) that subject targeted individuals or groups to greater suspicion, differential treatment, and more punitive and exclusionary outcomes. This framework includes some of the most recent and egregious examples of data-driven tools (such as predictive policing or risk assessments), but critically, it is also inclusive of a broader range of database systems that are currently at the margins of technology policy discourse. By examining the use of various criminal intelligence databases in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we developed a framework of five categories of features (technical, legal, political economy, organizational, and social) that together and separately influence how these technologies function in practice, the ways they are used, and the outcomes they produce. We then apply this analytical framework to welfare system databases, universal or ID number databases, and citizenship databases to demonstrate the value of this framework in both identifying and evaluating emergent or under-examined technologies in other sensitive social domains. Suspect Development Systems is an intervention in legal scholarship and practice, as it provides a much-needed definitional and analytical framework for understanding an ever-evolving ecosystem of technologies embedded and employed in modern governance. Our analysis also helps redirect attention toward important yet often under-examined contexts, conditions, and consequences that are pertinent to the development of meaningful legislative or regulatory interventions in the field of algorithmic accountability. The cross-jurisdictional evidence put forth across this Article illuminates the value of examining commonalities between the Global North and South to inform our understanding of how seemingly disparate technologies and contexts are in fact coaxial, which is the basis for building more global solidarity.

Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality and Enforcing Discipline

Algorithmic accountability law — focused on the regulation of data-driven systems like artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision-making (ADM) tools — is the subject of lively policy debates, heated advocacy, and mainstream media attention. Concerns have moved beyond data protection and individual due process to encompass a broader range of group-level harms such as, discrimination and modes of democratic participation. While this is a welcome and long overdue shift, this discourse has ignored systems like databases, that are viewed as technically ‘rudimentary’ and often siloed from regulatory scrutiny and public attention. Additionally, burgeoning regulatory proposals like algorithmic impact assessments are not structured to surface important yet often overlooked social, organizational and political economy contexts that are critical to evaluating the practical functions and outcomes of technological systems. This article presents a new categorical lens and analytical framework that aims to address and overcome these limitations. “Suspect Development Systems” (SDS) refers to: (1) information technologies used by government and private actors, (2) to manage vague or often immeasurable social risk based on presumed or real social conditions (e.g. violence, corruption, substance abuse), (3) that subjects targeted individuals or groups to greater suspicion, differential treatment, and more punitive and exclusionary outcomes. This frame includes some of the most recent and egregious examples of data-driven tools (such as predictive policing or risk assessments) but critically, it is also inclusive of a broader range of database systems that are currently at the margins of technology policy discourse. By examining the use of various criminal intelligence databases in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we developed a framework of five categories of features (technical, legal, political economy, organizational, and social) that together and separately influence how these technologies function in practice, the ways they are used, and the outcomes they produce. We then apply this analytical framework to welfare system databases, universal or ID number databases, and citizenship databases to demonstrate the value of this framework in both identifying and evaluating emergent or under-examined technologies in other sensitive social domains. Suspect Development Systems is an intervention in legal scholarship and practice as it provides a much-needed definitional and analytical framework for understanding an ever-evolving ecosystem of technologies embedded and employed in modern governance. Our analysis also helps redirect attention toward important yet often under-examined contexts, conditions, and consequences that are pertinent to the development of meaningful legislative or regulatory interventions in the field of algorithmic accountability. The cross-jurisdictional evidence put forth across this Article illuminates the value of examining commonalities between the Global North and South to inform our understanding of how seemingly disparate technologies and contexts are in fact coaxial, which is the basis for building more global solidarity.

The Relationship Between Housing, Life-Course Transitions, and Old Age Social Exclusion: A Cross-Country Analysis

The international literature presents growing evidence of the impact of life transitions in older age on experiences of social exclusion, and place in general and as well as housing in particular potentially play a mediating role in this interrelation. However, the specific mechanisms through which the older adult place relationship mediates exclusionary outcomes of life-course transitions remains poorly understood in the study of ageing. This contribution investigates how older adults’ relationship to their home is interlinked with life-course transitions and old-age social exclusion. To do so, we present case studies from three different countries (Germany, Ireland and Poland), focusing on the individual experiences of retirement and bereavement, and analyze them by drawing on the concepts of the person-environment exchange processes of agency and belonging. Finally, we draw conclusions about how spatial agency and belonging can protect and empower older people at critical junctures in their lives.

The ins and outs of market shaping: Exclusion as a darkside?

The research over the past decade that has contributed to the understanding of market shaping has not sufficiently taken into consideration the negative consequences – voluntary or otherwise – of such actions on non-focal actors especially in terms of exclusion. This paper attempts first of all to address this state of affairs by building on certain key components of the notion of exclusion as theorized by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. ‘Cold case’ data is subsequently analyzed to investigate how, why, by whom and with what exclusionary outcomes markets are shaped. This leads to a proposal of a typology of actor responses in exclusionary market situations. This typology highlights the relative inexistence of total exclusion thus tempering nonetheless the claim of dark side in market shaping, in favour of that of downside.

Mothers' negotiation of welfare support: the emergence of privatized entitlement

PurposePrevious accounts of exclusion, primarily those proposed in the context of access to welfare, marginalize the role of negotiation and its potential for highlighting distinct barriers and possibilities within specific institutional configurations. Furthermore, when negotiation is examined in the context of access to social services, it is rarely considered as reflecting changes in exclusion or the need to distinguish among exclusionary outcomes in mothers' lives. The author proposes a conceptualization of the distinction between civic exclusion and isolated exclusion, introducing the latter as a specific condition in which mothers are forced to respond to their children's needs by resorting to privatized entitlement.Design/methodology/approachStructured interviews were conducted between 2016 and 2017 with 90 mothers “providing in poverty” from seven marginalized categories in Israel. The interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory perspective.FindingsThree negotiation positions are revealed: positive citizenship, privatized entitlement and inconsistent gains. These positions reflect specific conditions of civic exclusion, which manifests in the form of multiple disadvantage in the lives of mothers, regardless of available forms of welfare support; and isolated exclusion, which manifests as the inability to protect one's children from harsh material scarcity, regardless of attempts to establish eligibility.Research limitations/implicationsLongitudinal data could better reflect the ramifications of isolated exclusion, particularly when translated into privatized entitlement.Practical implicationsThe consequences of isolated exclusion should be studied, in order to prevent negotiation failure leading to this phenomenon.Originality/valueUp until recently, the notion of exclusion was used without relevant distinctions obscuring the meaning of failing to negotiate access to welfare, in mothers' lives. Conceptualizing negative outcomes of negotiation as leading to isolated exclusion and privatized entitlement clarifies the meaning of poverty as dependency. Further, without relevant distinctions, scholars' and activists' effort to introduce higher commitment to mothers' negotiation among street-level bureaucrats cannot be accounted for.

Through the lens of single parenthood: a comparative snapshot of the impact of neoliberal welfare, housing and employment policies on single mothers in the UK and Sweden

The paper considers why feminists working on gender mainstreaming in the UK looked to Sweden for models to effect structural change and why in recent years the models in Sweden are deficient, embodying an ever-increasing blind spot to the socio/economic constraints experienced by single parents, migrant mothers the most marginalised. Referencing academic feminist research in Sweden and the UK, as well as participatory research over many years involving single mothers, the paper examines why poverty is more entrenched in the UK: how in both countries neo-liberal trajectories of welfare, employment and housing policies are increasingly similar with exclusionary outcomes; how the position of single mothers acts is a touchstone for persistent intersectional inequalities in both countries. We conclude that by examining welfare, housing and employment policies through the lens of single parenthood, feminists can better re-frame strategies informed by the reproductive economy furthering the socio/economic independence of female headed households.

Keeping it Country while Dancing with the Elite

This article examines programme and audience development at the Norwegian Country Meeting after this festival achieved status as a Norwegian hub festival for country music in 2012. Building on ethnographic data, this article focuses on the effects cultural policies and authoritative criteria for aesthetic quality have had on a popular musical event. The results show how cultural policy may be operationalized based on the dominating preferences of the cultural elite. In this context ‘musical gentrification’ (Dyndahl et al. 2014), a structural phenomenon in which low culture is absorbed into the legitimate culture with inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes, becomes a central theoretical concept. The significance of the study is reflected in its descriptions of how cultural practices and policies relate to wider systems of power and socio-aesthetic inequality.

Public conceptions and constructions of ‘British values’: A qualitative analysis

This article draws on original focus group research to explore constructions of ‘British values’, in ‘everyday’ discourse. Two prominent, yet competing conceptions of this term are identified: political/institutional and social/cultural. Although each of these conceptions risks essentialising ‘British values’, this risk is mitigated by publics in at least three ways: (1) explicit recognition of the term’s ambiguities; (2) discussion of its political motivations and exclusionary outcomes; and, (3) identification of qualitative change in the meaning of ‘British values’ over time. As the first exploration of public understandings of this term, their differences, and these complications, the paper offers three contributions: (1) adding breadth to existing studies of everyday nationalism through focus on ‘British values’ specifically; (2) shedding light on this trope’s work in broader conversations around social and political life in the United Kingdom; and (3) facilitating reflection on the reception of, resistance to, and re-making of elite political discourse.

The politics of customary land rights transformation in peri-urban Ghana: Powers of exclusion in the era of land commodification

The scholarly discourse on the transformation of customary land tenure systems in SSA is advancing theoretically and empirically. This paper contributes to this evolving debate by drawing upon qualitative case studies of mundane practices of land delivery in Tamale and Techiman, Ghana to understand the powers underpinning the transformation of customary land rights. In the wake of rapid urbanisation, processes of land commodification are intensifying, resulting in the re-interpretation and re-negotiation of customary land tenure systems and exclusions in peri-urban areas in Ghana. Chiefly, state and market powers are mutually reinforcing in the politics of exclusion and the transformation of customary land rights in peri-urban Ghana. Contrary to current international land policy trends that laud the adaptability and negotiability of customary tenure, the evidence in this paper shows that in contexts of rapid urbanisation and unequal power relations, customary tenure regimes can be manipulated to produce exclusionary outcomes. Therefore, the paper concludes that rather than local custom and formal planning serving as regulatory functions to protect the public interest; they emerge as powers of exclusion acting in synergy with market forces to displace usufructuary interest holders.

The User and the Association: Neglecting Household Irrigation as Neglecting Household Well-Being in the Creation of Water Users’ Associations in the Republic of Tajikistan

Development initiatives often cite Water Users’ Associations (WUAs) as fundamental to water governance reform or the broad process of decentralizing responsibilities for management, supply and delivery. But the label of “WUA” indicates little about those who take on these duties as association members, suggesting all who use water in pursuit of life or livelihood are eligible to participate and benefit through collective action. Grounded in the belief that participatory projects can equitably empower and distribute resources, the enthusiastic introduction of WUAs continues despite critique that anticipated outcomes are overstated. Since borders opened to neoliberal development institutions in the 1990s, WUAs have been created throughout post-Soviet Central Asia. Yet, there has been limited reflection on how associations’ design and operation interact with physical or social structures to effect resource access across diverse groups. Drawing on fieldwork in Tajikistan, I demonstrate how WUAs reproduce exclusionary outcomes by requiring members to possess farmland in turn threatening rural food security. Held by a minority, farmland dedicated to commercial production stands in contrast to ubiquitous kitchen gardens, where crops sown for self-consumption form a buffer against hunger in the wake of labor migration and income inconsistency. Households’ inability to become members undermines their claim to water and voice in decision-making, ultimately constraining access to irrigation and a robust harvest.

‘Would it not be better to get someone out workin?’: ‘Safe prejudice’ against Polish workers

AbstractOne recurring criticism of immigrant groups is their alleged failure to be employed and contribute to the host society. Here we examine how speakers mobilise a criticism that has attracted less research attention: that through their economic activity immigrant groups usurp others’ employment entitlements. Discourse analysis of data from seven focus group discussions about pre‐Brexit Polish immigration into the UK, involving 31 UK nationals, shows that participants accomplish exclusionary outcomes in two divergent ways. The first attributes qualities to Polish workers but also makes explicit the consequences of these attributions for UK nationals, rendering speakers’ investment in such claims visible. The second relies on the production of category pairs, within which claims can be made for the category that excludes Polish workers. This use of categories comprises ‘safe prejudice’, a form of prejudice not previously identified but which is less open to challenge than other forms of prejudiced talk.

A political settlements lens onto Egypt’s critical junctures and cyclic violence (2011–2014)

While there is a copious body of literature explaining Egypt’s political trajectory post-Mubarak through the lens of democratisation and transition theory, this paper argues that by using a political settlements lens, a less linear reading of the events can be offered, which highlights several attempts through both peaceful and violent means of arriving at negotiated agreements. The paper analyses the forging of three political settlements, one informal (2011) and two formal (2012, 2013) following the demise of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the influence of intrinsic, instrumental and resultant violence on power configurations. It argues that the formal political settlement forged in Egypt in 2013 following the ousting of President Morsi cannot be read independently of the exclusionary outcomes of the informal political settlement forged in 2011 and the demise of the Fairmont Agreement of 2012. The paper relies on empirical data, including survey and focus groups undertaken in 2013–2014, complemented with secondary literature in Arabic and English.

Planning and Natural Resources in Bolivia

This article focuses on participation in the main planning documents produced in Bolivia in the first decade of the 2000s: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the National Development Plan (PND). We analyze how these planning instruments have been able to capture popular participation through diverse mechanisms and how these practices fit in the current mainstream participation discourse. Special attention is paid to natural resources because of the predominant role they have in the Bolivian economy and because of their substantial contribution to the state budget. The Bolivian experience reflects an apparent paradox: While the process leading to the PRSP followed participatory guidelines and the PND did not, the resulting PRSP failed to include the most pressing demands of social movements, while the PND succeeded in including them. This case shows how the articulation of political processes escapes simplistic characterizations and how the application of “out of the textbook” participation may result in highly exclusionary outcomes. It also shows that the voice of social movements can take unexpected paths and have a profound influence on political events that go well beyond the possibility of standardized participatory processes.

Fortress Australia? (In)security and private governance in a gated residential estate

Part of a broader trend towards all-inclusive master planned developments, gated residential estates are an intensely private form of residential development with a degree of securitisation. Gated residential estates have been the topic of intense debate in urban planning and policy circles and the target of fierce criticism for potential exclusionary outcomes as fearful residents lock themselves away from the ills of wider urban society. Crime, a fear of crime and the need for security dominate discussions and understandings of gated residential developments in Australia without much empirical validation. This paper poses two key research questions: does fear of crime and need for increased security drive residents towards gated estates; and what are the lived experiences of security, gates and crime once residing within a gated estate? Based on in-depth research in Macquarie Links (one of Sydney's largest gated estates) this paper offers insights into the lived dimensions of gated estates. The paper explores the attractions and realities of security services and infrastructure, private control over the residential environment and the importance placed by the residents on the ability to protect the nature of their neighbourhood and to protect themselves from any ‘unwanted’ activities or groups. The discussion in this paper demonstrates that for the residents in the study, residing in a secure residential neighbourhood is less about the role and place of physical security and security services, and more to do with protection afforded by the private governance structure of the neighbourhood.

Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (review)

Reviewed by: Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City Davarian Baldwin Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. By Mary Patillo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2007. With analytic precision and amiable prose, Mary Patillo renders a poignant portrait of our modern urban times with her latest work Black on the Block. The project claims to examine the general politics of blackness amidst turn-of-the-twentieth-century struggles over the city. But I think it would be fair to argue that this is an extension of her first major work Black Picket Fences, now examining the issues at stake when black middle men and women mediate the development of "black community" amidst the dominant neo-liberal logic of our urban times. At the center of analysis stands Chicago's south side community of North Kenwood Oakland (NKO). Patillo takes us through its historical arc from an urban space of Whites-only fortification to one of Black blight and violence. While now the space is "re-discovered" as a "new frontier" of increasingly rich market value in economically austere times. While Black middle and upper-income "newcomers" to NKO do settle in the neighborhood because of the relatively inexpensive real estate, Patillo warns that this is not a story of economic determinism. They not only stay but redirect resources and model a set of respectable behaviors to underprivileged residents because of a particular sense of race pride and duty. Moreover, Patillo adds that rather than being two nations, one bourgie and one stuck at the bottom, it is precisely divergent class interests and disagreements about the meaning of shared public space, streets, housing, education, and commerce etc, that "constitute[s] the black community" (3). Patillo offers an amazing blend of historical context, light ethnography, and urban policy analysis combined with some of the latest spatial and racial theory available. Here the social experience of class organizes black community. But Patillo pulls on pioneering sociological works like Black Metropolis to expand the meaning of class to "lifestyle," where aspirations and consumption habits cut across the variables of income and inherited wealth. Chapters in the body of Black on the Block deploy the fulcrum of lifestyle to examine blackness situated within the neighborhood struggles and interests over key social institutions in NKO. The power of analysis lies in Patillo's dynamic interweaving of intraracial struggles and larger municipal and economic forces to render a contemporary portrait of Black community. These middle men and women serve as the blackface of capitalist interests and the black race arbiters of resource redistribution downward to benefit the "truly disadvantaged." For instance the reform initiative of school "choice," with their competition-based marketing of selective enrollment and small class size to student-clients, has principally brought better education to the central city. But at the same time, the market model of "shopping" for schools has enacted exclusionary outcomes by expecting parents to be industrious consumers with the time and networks available to connect them with information about the best educational commodities. She also considers how public housing removal confirms fears about gentrification's single family/high property value model squeezing out the less fortunate. But it also expresses a race conscious resistance against the historic Jim Crowing of citywide public housing onto the south side. Finally, as land value becomes a central issue for community value, the very meaning of crime and danger shift from drug dealing, homicides, and robberies to loud music, parkway barbeques, and other acts of public sociability. In the end, Black on the Block powerfully captures some of the "difference, distinction, and sometimes even dislike" in present-day formations of urban blackness, while demonstrating how such dynamics remain organized around some version, no matter how [End Page 245] fractured, of racial responsibility. As a self-described participant observer, resident, and political actor in the NKO, this sympathetic portrait of "middleness" is in many ways a portrait of Patillo. I for one appreciate her candor in this endeavor that never veers too far into self-aggrandizement while providing further nuance and balance to E. Franklin Frazier's still dominant caricature of the...