CHAPTER 1
What Do We Mean by Social Inclusion?
A new and sweeping utopia of life ... where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth. —GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, NOBEL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
Where Does the Usage Come From? During the 1960s, the terms social exclusion and social inclusion became integral parts of the social policy lexicon in Europe. The earliest usage is attributed to René Lenoir (1974), the French Secretary of State for Social Action in the Chirac government. Lenoir’s “excluded” groups included people with disabilities, single parents, drug addicts, delinquents, and the elderly, all of whom he felt were excluded from social and economic participation and needed state help in the form of social insurance. These groups were vulnerable to uninsured risks; for them, poverty was a problem that economic growth could not resolve (Paugam 1993). Not including them would mean a “rupture in social bonds” that normally tie the individual to society (Silver 1994). The idea of social inclusion was later incorporated into other political planks. It was important to the reelection of Tony Blair and to the New Labour agenda of the early 2000s (see Levitas 1998). Taking a leaf from the book of New Labour and from the concepts that Amartya Sen articulates, Australia created an entire cross-sectoral program devoted to enhancing “social inclusion.” The focus on social inclusion as a moral imperative that enhances human dignity is evident in the policy statements and plans of many other countries as well. 49