Inclusion and exclusion

E-ISSN： 1474-0583|37|2|343-371

ISSN： 0003-9756

Source： Archives européennes de sociologie/European Journal of Sociology, Vol.37, Iss.2, 1996-11, pp. : 343-371

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Abstract

Many familiar political projects—among them, demands for participation, for citizenship and for free movement and open borders—have been recently subsumed within a larger crusade against ‘social exclusion’. But each of these political projects seems better understood, and better pursued, in its own original terms. Furthermore, inclusionist appeals logically backfire: explicitly they are expansionist, urging the stretching of boundaries of membership so as to include those who were previously excluded; but every inclusion implies an exclusion (there can be no ‘inside’ without an ‘outside’); so indusionist appeals are implicitly consenting to a closed community, albeit one with a rather broader catchment. We ought to be striving instead for different kinds of communities, ones less internally inclusive and less externally exclusive. This amounts to a call for multiple overlapping jurisdictions, with many places where one can seek social support and many places where one might lodge a demand or file an appeal.