Social Minorities Research Articles

개인의 지역소속감이 사회 소수자 포용성에 미치는 영향 - 사회참여의 조절효과를 중심으로

This study aims to examine the relation between an individual’s local identity and the inclusion toward social minorities, exploring on the moderating effect of social participation. Applying Social Identity theory, this study provides empirical evidence on whether local identity expresses as a common in-group identity. Using data set from the ‘Social integration survey’ on 2023, this study shows the following results; (1) local identity(sense of belonging) and social inclusion toward social minorities shows a negative relation; (2) local participation out of bonding participation has positive moderating effect on social inclusiveness, while alumni association has non-significant effect; (3) bridging participation has positive moderating effect on social minority. These results suggest that it is necessary to consider the attributes of social participation as well as individual’s sense of belonging toward local community, in order to enhance social inclusion for social minority groups.

Inclusion policies for social minorities in higher education: dialogue between the Brazilian and Nordic contexts

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of socially constructed meanings regarding social minorities on the development of inclusion policies for these groups in higher education. This analysis is based on a comparative case study between Global South and Global North, specifically focusing on a dialogue between Brazil and Nordic contexts. Social minorities, such as women, the impoverished, black people, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants and people with disabilities, are more likely to be socially underserved, making them more susceptible to adverse experiences. From this perspective, we analyse the definitions and characteristics currently applied to social minorities and reflect on how these traits function in the field of higher education in order to support student inclusion. Using a theoretical approach from Semiotic Cultural Psychology, we examine the current political landscape and how socially constructed meanings related to these groups influence the development of inclusion policies. These debates reflect an overriding need to reimagine higher education as an arena for inclusion and critical thinking, not only fostering access for social minorities, but also ensuring such debates continue within academia, and, therefore, within society.

Sorrow under prosperity: how downtown residence influences the welfare of disabled people in China

ABSTRACT While the welfare divergence between rural and urban disabled residents in China has attracted great scholarly attention, little to no research has examined the relevant disparities within the city. Due to the administrative-led resource allocation model in China, disabled individuals residing in the urban centre are expected to have a greater advantage in their daily lives compared to their counterparts in the suburbs. We use Tianjin, a Chinese municipality, as an example to explore the impact of disabled individuals’ downtown residence on their employment, education, marriage, and access to public services. Our spatial regression discontinuity estimates reveal that compared to suburban disabled residents, downtown residents have easier access to education but face difficulties in employment and marriage. A follow-up survey indicates that disabled residents in downtown areas face employment and marriage disadvantages due to implicit exclusion of low-skilled groups and high marriage burdens in urban centres. This paper sheds light on the welfare of disabled groups in cities and the latent impact of urban development on social minorities.

Discrimination against suspected Islamic terrorists: Nationality, right-wing authoritarianism, and perceived threat as predictors of support for torture.

This research investigates discrimination against suspected Islamic terrorists based on tolerance for the use of torture. This research is justified by the need to identify how intergroup and ideological factors combine to express discrimination. Two experimental studies were conducted with a between-subjects design. Study 1 (N = 282) analysed the terrorist threat against the ingroup and the nationality of torturers with respect to support for torture against suspected Islamic terrorists. Study 2 (N = 165) analysed the interaction among terrorist threat against the ingroup and perceived threat (realistic and symbolic) as moderators in the relationship between RWA and discrimination. Study 1 indicated that support for torture was greater when the victims of terrorist acts and the torturers belonged to the ingroup. Study 2 indicated that the perceived threat encourages support for the use of torture, regardless of the levels of RWA. Taken together, these results elucidate the psychosocial processes that are present in the hostility towards social minorities from predominantly Muslim countries and in the strengthening of xenophobic political positions.

Cultivating empathy through narratives in virtual reality: a review

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the potential of virtual reality (VR) as a powerful tool for storytelling and as a means of promoting empathy. This systematic review examines 20 research papers that were deemed relevant based on inclusion and exclusion criteria from a database of a total of 661 papers to investigate the use of VR for empathy-building through immersive storytelling. Thematic analysis of the interventions revealed that most of the narratives focused on the experiences of victims of abuse, social minorities, and individuals affected by medical conditions or political ramifications. These fall under three types of digital narratives identified as (a) personal, (b) historical, and (c) educational. Changes in empathy are identified either through comparisons with non-VR narratives or pre- and post-interventions. Interaction techniques, VR affordances, and methods to measure empathy are further identified. The review concludes that while VR shows promise as a tool for promoting empathy, more research is needed to fully understand its potential and limitations.

Whitewashed stories: Tourist narratives of ethnic and social minorities in Buenos Aires

Whitewashed stories: Tourist narratives of ethnic and social minorities in Buenos Aires

Diversity and Access to Palliative Care and Medical Assistance in Dying in an Urban Setting.

This article focuses on the end-of-life experiences of migrants and non-migrants from young to old, who died in a Canadian cosmopolitan city in the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on interviews with over one hundred relatives of as many deceased, the authors discuss end of life issues, namely access to palliative care and medical assistance in dying. The data indicate unequal access to care at the intersection of several factors, including type of disease, patient's age, uncertainty of their prognosis, and migrant/non-migrant status. While being young and having cancer were undeniably associated with the provision of care (curative and palliative), those who did not benefit from palliative care tended to be social minorities in the local society and suffered from diseases with ambiguous prognosis. The right to "Die with dignity" is fundamental, with or without palliative care and regardless of where the end of life takes place.

Introduction: minorities and the making of European welfare

ABSTRACT The development of welfare states across Europe in the twentieth century had different outcomes for different segments of society. In this special issue the dual character of welfare – that is, the aim of alleviating distress and creating social cohesion while creating divisions when determining who is deserving of what – is studied through the lens of ethnic and social minorities. Minorities, grouped together through joint experiences, heritage and/or social classifications, have been subjected to both inclusionary and exclusionary welfare policies. Thus, welfare in the form of social services, social security, education and health care is a key component in addressing, maintaining and creating majority-minority divisions. This article introduces the contributions to the special issue and outlines their historiographical and conceptual foundations. Special attention is given to how the authors in the special issue define welfare and minorities, as well as how the articles contribute to the study of these fields. In the introduction, we argue for a need to study the implications of welfare for minorities case by case, while at the same time outlining principal ways that minorities and welfare have been interlinked.

중등학교 사회과 교사의 사회적 소수자 관련 수업 실태

This study aims to understand the current experiences of secondary school social studies teachers in teaching lessons related to social minorities, and to explore ways to improve the way social minorities are addressed in the curriculum, textbooks, and lessons. To achieve these goals, I conducted a survey and interviews. 66 secondary school social studies teachers nationwide participated in the survey and 5 in the interviews. Based on the results of the survey and interviews, the current secondary school social studies teachers are teaching “dry” classes that rely on textbooks and avoid controversy as much as possible due to their caution towards students who belong to social minorities and students who have negative attitudes towards social minorities. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the social studies curriculum and textbooks as follows. First, in terms of the social studies curriculum, it is suggested that more detailed guidelines for teaching about social minorities should be provided. Secondly, I suggest that the way in which social studies textbooks address ‘values issues’ needs to be reviewed and revised.

‘We swear to fight for the inviolability of the borders of our motherland’: disabled veterans and social welfare in interwar Lviv

ABSTRACT The newborn Second Polish Republic inherited a complex imperial legacy and a large minority population. The series of borderland conflicts and the Soviet–Polish War that followed the Great War added additional layers to the heterogeneity of the veteran population. Throughout the interwar era, the eastern borderlands became a source of interethnic, religious and political tension, and turned into a battleground of contested Polish and Ukrainian memory discourses. The article focuses on welfare policy as an instrument of state-building in the eastern Polish borderlands. The process of defining war disability took place alongside the process of nation-building. The question of the legal definition of ‘Polish disabled veteran’ turned into a discussion about who was a part of the national body. The article examines how the interconnections between the categories of war disability and ethnic and new social minorities forged new identities in interwar eastern Poland.

Exaggerating differences back and forth: Two levels of intergroup accentuation.

Social perceivers tend to exaggerate existing differences between groups, a phenomenon known as intergroup accentuation. In two preregistered experiments, we tested the hypothesis that accentuation originates in the initial learning of information about a novel group. In both experiments, perceivers exaggerated differences between two fictitious social groups that differed probabilistically in two dimensional traits. As hypothesized, accentuation was stronger for the group encountered second, confirming that accentuation originates partly in processes operating during the acquisition of group information. However, accentuation was also robust for the group encountered first, suggesting that it also occurs 'backward' even when group learning was unbiased. We discuss implications for stereotype formation generally and the perception of social minorities and out-groups specifically. As these groups are often encountered second in social reality, stereotypes of them might be particularly polarized.

청소년 인권 활동가들의 생애사를 통해 본 실존적 탐색과 역사적 자아의 재구성

This study explores the actions and the process of identification of youth human rights activists through two activists’ lives. It then draws educational implications uncovered in the journey of their actions from the perspective of Hannah Arendt. As a long-term follow-up study, two fieldworks were conducted between 2007 and 2022, shedding light on the life histories of the two participants, who have played active roles for 15 years from their adolescence to adulthood in youth movements. By escaping from the school system, they resisted standardized orders of being “student-like” and the academic elitism in Korean society, showing their existential struggles to participate in the world as “subjects of action.” The participants, who chose to be social minorities, had to spend their adulthood enduring social, economic, and psychological instabilities. Nevertheless, they tried to interpret their actions as meaningful narratives of youth activism, which have been linked to their own lives, the lives of others, and their communities. Through the journey of these actions, they have identified their existences as subjects to realize their unique “natality” and subjects of praxis to create history and culture. In the course of shedding new light on their life histories from an educational point of view, the authors suggest that the space for educational action needs to be reconstructed as an open space for communication, respecting diverse voices and differences of youth as subjects of action, participating in a world with unique natality.

The sophistry of the neutral tool. Weaponizing artificial intelligence and big data into threats toward social exclusion

In late modernity societies, the double meaning of ‘monitoring’ is not a coincidence insofar, it can be a subject or an object attribution, thus suggesting a phenomenological intersection between surveillance studies and technological deployments in mass media. Emerging applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools corroborate an intensified and optimized collection of personal data, either objective ones granted by individuals themselves or subject ones silently taken by algorithmic learning. From an eventual possibility to an invisible probability, Big Data may be used from devising purchase preference profiles to political bias in election periods and to reinforce bigotry against social minorities, especially transphobia. This paper’s objective is to address the use of AI and Big Data as social surveillance systems tools for the establishment of more sophisticated strategies of social control. Before late modernity, disciplinary discursive power was an addressed tool to perform social control in Western societies by institutions such the Roman Catholic Church. Currently, AI technologies are tooled to perform a security-based society regulation, potentially deploying gathered data as threats against social categories that deviate from moral-based norms. Incapable of broadly embracing all cultural and social developments throughout history, such norms refer to social regulation and standardization that turn out to be exclusionary for the existence of distinctive individuals whose identities don’t conform to such moral standards. The issue of ethical AI regulation is therefore grounded in questioning to what extent Western culture values and practices are still consistent in the standardized and global deployment of social and ethical policies addressed to cultures that may hold distinctive cultural perceptions and values. Theoretical reflections on post-modern panoptic frameworks, such as synoptic and banoptic devices, were carried out to assess the impact of emerging surveillance technologies as social control strategies for the reinforced marginalization of categories of exclusion. Instances of recent technology-based violence discriminations, such as misogyny, religious intolerance, racism, xenophobia, and transphobia, are provided and seen through the lens of current AI development and transphobia. The efforts of global, universal, and unilateral influence of Western culture’s values on AI ethical regulation is counteracted with a reflection on decentralized bottom-up approaches to culture by means of applied ethnographic research to bring the potential of local culture into AI policy making. It is expected to corroborate future research on local-based ethical AI approaches designed within a specific culture’s values to mitigate and avoid social vulnerability and violence.

Conflict and coexistence among minorities within minority religions: a case study of Tablighi Jama’at in Japan

ABSTRACT Research on religion and minorities in Japan has tended to focus on the relationship between majority and minority religions or between religion and social minorities. This contribution turns to consider the relationship between minorities within ‘minority religions’ and their efforts to coexist. It takes the case of the global Islamic movement Tablighi Jama’at, which started to become powerfully active in Japan with the arrival of large numbers of Muslim migrant workers from various countries in the late 1980s. Since then, Tablighi Jama’at has undergone significant expansion and diversification in Japan. Drawing on both participant observation and interviews, this contribution discusses these developments and related processes of religious and social localisation, which have created tensions between core members, first-generation migrants who make up the majority of participants, and the growing number of second-generation members and Japanese converts who were until recently in a relatively inferior position. This contribution reveals that there can be multiple subgroups within minority groups. The intersection of these various elements can also define power relations and the majority/minority status of people within minority groups. However, the case of Tablighi Jama’at in Japan also shows that power relations between subgroups are potentially fluid.

On the legal and psychological lessons of an approaching pandemic: eyewitness notes

The article discusses the restrictions on the rights and freedoms of citizens during the coronavirus pandemic, assesses their essence, proportionality and consequences, both legal and psychological. Reflections are offered on the relationship between the right to dispose of one’s life and health and the obligation to preserve health. The emergence of a new group of social minorities is stated - the elderly and citizens with health restrictions (disability), who were most of all subjected to restrictions in their livelihoods. Criteria are proposed that legal restrictions must meet in a pandemic. Assumptions and conclusions are illustrated by examples. The psychological characteristics of the perception of pandemic restrictions and the corresponding behavior of certain categories of citizens are given.

Social Exclusion on Vagrants in Modern Korean History: Disgust Behind Institutional Isolation

This study analyses the affectivity of social disgust behind the oppressive exclusion of social minorities, such as the forced institutionalisation of vagrants in modern Korean society. This social exclusion of vagrants is divided into two forms: the forced institutionalisation of ‘infected vagrants’ during the Japanese occupation and the forced institutionalisation of ‘vagrants themselves’ during the developmental state. In both cases, the visible power apparatus of exclusion of minorities was socially legitimised by the effective use of disgust politics of purification and isolation. Through this analysis, this study joins the discourse on affective communities as a critical alternative to deinstitutionalisation by revealing the dynamics of the social disgust that threatens the community’s existence.

An Examination of The Impact of COVID-19 on the Mental Health and Substance Use of Social Minorities in Canada

COVID-19 outbreak in Canada has resulted the implementation of public health mitigation laws regarding self-isolation, country-wide lockdowns, and closure of public services to decrease the spread of COVID-19. The application of these public health policies facilitated unintended consequences and side effects that would eventually intensify the already existing mental health issues and substance abuse prevalent amongst these vulnerable populations. People who use drugs (PWUD), wellness service providers, households with young children, and LGBTQ2+ people have reported their concerns for either food security, financial obstacles including the lack of job guarantee, limited access to public resources, and the ongoing opioid crisis in Canada that collided with the pandemic. These concerns have contributed greatly to the positive feedback cycle between the increasing use of substance including alcohol, cannabis, and opioids, and deteriorating mental health issues such as anxiety, post-traumatic syndrome, and depression. This study aims to discuss and compile the responses of social minorities in Canada regarding the use of substances and mental health conditions.

Gestão de desastres no Brasil: inovação por meio da perspectiva de gênero

Abstract Climate change and uneven urbanization processes have intensified the occurrence and magnitude of disasters. The purpose of this article is to discuss the integration between the National Policy for Protection and Civil Defense and the empowerment of women and communities in Brazil, revealing the innovative potential of gender-sensitive disaster management policy. For that, we base ourselves on a theoretical-conceptual survey to explain the special vulnerability of social minorities to disasters. We present the disaster management policies practiced in Brazil, which are essentially technicist, and propose the adoption of epistemologies of the South as a counterpoint. We end the article with propositions that have the potential for creating effective responses to the challenges posed by the climate emergency.

Discrimination, stigma and mental health: what’s next?

Stigma and discrimination are a major ongoing problem in the field of mental health as these impact on patient outcomes, access to and acceptability of therapeutic interventions, their quality of life, general wellbeing, social inclusion and opportunities. Social stereotypes, culture and prejudices all contribute to continuing discrimination in mental health. Different settings where people function may also be sources of discrimination such as work and educational environments. The lack of knowledge and understanding of mental health/illness by individuals, their families, carers and policymakers as well as the social media reporting also impact on social attitudes to discrimination. It has been also described a relevant impact of stigma among specific social minorities reporting poor mental health such as elderly people, youths, sexual variants, persons with disability. Educational programs, raising awareness trainings and proper public policies may be developed in order to reduce stigma at social level with favourable outcomes for people with mental illness.

문화다양성 정책 관점에서의 한국연극 동향 분석

This study aimed to figure out the trends of Korean theatre from the perspective of cultural diversity policies. The cultural diversity policies have mainly focused on the social minorities' culture and art activities and participation in Korea, which means that there is a relative shortage of discussion about the diversity of art. The study analyzed the achievements and limitations of cultural diversity policies in South Korea, and distinguished the diversity of art according to intrinsic and extrinsic criteria. Also analyzed in the study were reviews published in Critiques of Theatre for the last six years(2015~2020) based on the criteria of artistic diversity. The analysis results show that the diversity of art in the field not only accepted extrinsic diversity including the nationality, gender, and regional diversity of those who participated and enjoyed, but also realized the values of diversity including the content and formal diversity of artistic works.