1.Introducción
5) Expresión de la feminidad
The overall descriptive statistics of the variables are listed in Table 5.1 below. Each of the included variables is also presented in a separate contingency table, where the variable is summarized based on the category of residence. This additionally helps us discern patterns of social exclusion through the urban-rural category, although the analysis of social exclusion based on the urban-rural category is not the main purpose of this survey. As it was expected, we can see that 83% of the respondents think that there is social exclusion in Armenia. This is a significantly high number.
Table 5.1: Descriptive Statistics (in percents, unless noted otherwise) Perception of (existence) of Social Exclusion in Armenia
Think there is social exclusion in Armenia 83
Perception of Economic Exclusion
Household poverty level is about the same or considerably below relative poverty
level 17
Respondents are employed 10
Respondents’ parents are employed 31
Perception of Social and Political Exclusion
Think their (their households’) socio-economic status improved in the last 10 years 18 Participated in a demonstration / cannot answer if participated in a demonstration 26 /35 Perception of overall Self-Exclusion
Think they are excluded of having or doing something they deserve to have or to do 71 Socio-demographic characteristics
Source: Student surveys conducted by the author, 2009.
109 Table 5.2 also shows that there is not much difference of public attitudes concerning social exclusion between urban and rural residence.68 In all three cities, around 80% of students accept that there is social exclusion.
Table 5.2: Perception of Armenian students on social exclusion existence in Armenia Perception of
Exclusion Existence Gyumri
Residence
Vanadzor Yerevan Total Percent
Yes 86 79 83 248 82.67
No 12 15 25 52 17.33
Total 98 94 108 300 100.00
Source: Student surveys conducted by the author, 2009.
There was no explanation or definition of social exclusion provided in the survey for the respondents, which makes us wonder whether the respondents have understood correctly what social exclusion is. Although there was no definition of social exclusion provided, the survey very explicitly focused on all elements of social exclusion in the provided multiple choice answers for the second question. Hence, 72% of the students understand social exclusion as the combination of economic, social and political exclusion, which means that the majority of the students have a correct perception of what social exclusion is as defined in this study (Table 5.3). But it is important not only to assure that the respondents understand what we mean by ‘social exclusion’ in this project and to find out what portion of
respondents in fact have evaluated social exclusion exactly the same way as we have defined in the study, but at the same time to discover which aspect of social exclusion perception is more appealing among the respondents.
68Yerevan is considered the only urban residence in Armenia. Although Gyumri and Vanadzo r are the second and third biggest cities, they are considered to be rural. Employment opportunities, as well as cultural, political and intellectual events and opportunities are centered in the capital city Yerevan.
110 Table 5.3: What is social exclusion according to Armenian students?
Understanding of
Exclusion from social relationships and networks All of the above
Source: Student surveys conducted by the author, 2009.
As we can see from Table 5.3, those respondents that do not think social exclusion is the combination of economic, social and political exclusion can be classified into three groups: a) those who acknowledge social exclusion to be mainly economic exclusion or deprivation from job market, b) those who believe social exclusion to be a result of only service exclusion and exclusion from social relationships and networking, and c) those who understand social exclusion as exclusion only from political activity, as well as decision and policy making. About 12% believe that the labor market is the most significant force for creating social exclusion; more than 6% think that political exclusion creates social exclusion; and 5% think that social exclusion results from lack of services or unequal opportunities for services. Surprisingly, only 2%, respectively 7 people among 300
respondents, gave some importance to the phenomenon of social networks. My speculation for this low number is that Armenians, as it is typical of many collectivist cultures, tend to view themselves as members of groups, such as family, a religious group, or a work unit/collective, and usually consider the needs of the group to be more important than the needs of individuals. This trend is slowly changing with the country’s transition to capitalism and to a more individualist culture; yet, Armenian culture is still highly collectivist and highlights public and collective interests, thus there is less fear of being excluded from social networks.
111 Table 5.4: Opinion or attitudes of Armenian students on self-exclusion
Opinion on poverty alone. The second implication is that respondents have not presented their household poverty level correctly. Further, if they did present the latter correctly, then it means that economic exclusion, measured as overall poverty level, is not the most important aspect of social exclusion for the surveyed students. Third, we can assume that students have evaluated the country’s situation in regard to social exclusion (at least economic exclusion) fairly and without a bias based on merely their own household’s poverty level. While for many other variables the experiences of the students’ families or their own experiences of deprivation drives students’ perception of the existence and nature of social exclusion, it seems like their own households’ poverty/prosperity level has not mattered much.
Table 5.5: Overall poverty level of their households based on Armenian students’ estimates Overall Poverty
112 state-funded and receives stipends.70 Therefore, we find the 10% student employment to be quite a high number. In contrast, only 31% of the parents are employed and 69% are unemployed. This is a very high unemployment percent and coincides with the soaring unemployment situation recorded in Chapter Two.
Table 5.6: Employment status of respondent students Employment
While the economic aspect of exclusion, specifically labor market exclusion, in our respondent answers was most frequently noted to be equal to social exclusion, the analysis ofperception of social and political exclusion based on their estimation of own
socio-economic status improvement and demonstration participation shows that there is also strong public aggravation due to lack of political opportunities and social advancement (Table 5.7 and Table 5.8).
Table 5.7: Students’ (households’)status change (in terms of improvement) in 10 years Status and about 82% of the Gyumri sample, state that their families members’ socio-political
70 Exact data for current percentage of state-funded university students are unavailable, but during 1990s, 20-25% of the top students (with best university admission exam grades) in each group were state-funded.
113 situation has not improved in the last 10 years. In Vanadzor, the socio-political situation is even worse, since more than 90% of respondents complained about improvement
opportunities in this realm. Only 8 people out of 94 respondents have noted that their households’ status in terms of socio-economic well-being has improved in the last 10 years (Table 5.7).
This strong sense of exclusion in terms of social and particularly economic and political comfort and security acknowledged by the student sample may rationally propel a common logic of grievance. If exclusion is soaring, the frustration of the excluded becomes unbearable, and the urge for action vital. This, as expected, is the case among the surveyed students in Armenia. The percent of people who have participated in demonstrations during recent years seems to be high, around 26% (Table 5.8).71
Table 5.8: Demonstration participation by Armenian students Demonstration
Participation Gyumri
Residence
Vanadzor Yerevan Total Percent
Yes 17 26 36 79 26.33
No 76 59 60 195 65.00
Don't want to answer 5 9 12 26 8.67
Total 98 94 108 300 100.00
Source: Student surveys conducted by the author, 2009.
Since demonstration participation is a sensitive topic, I have included a “don’t want to answer” choice together with “yes” and “no” answers. If we exclude the “don’t want to answer” option from our analysis, only 26% of the students have participated in any
demonstration. 65% mentioned that they have never participated in any demonstration. These numbers reveal that although more people are angry about their situation, they still do not go out to the streets for demands of greater inclusion; this may be due to fear of being ignored and/or fear of being repressed. Nevertheless, assuming that the students who have replied
“don’t want to answer” have participated in one or more demonstrations, but are scared to be identified as anti-government or oppositional constituents, we can say that 35% (26% + 9%
in Table 4.8) of the respondents have been demonstration participants. In this case, we get one third of the sample, which is a big percentage. Therefore, while initially the observation
71 The expectation was to get even higher percentages of demonstration participation, based on the extremely large percentage of self-perception of exclusion, around 72%.
114 of the Table 5.8 data does not seem to imply very high demonstration participation, a closer examination of the numbers reveals the opposite.72
Reactions have been mixed among the surveyed population concerning what/who they would change in order to make Armenia economically, politically and socially a more egalitarian country to live in. Among the options for a potential change in the country mentioned in Table 5.9, ‘the President’ and ‘the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia’ hold the first positions, with an equal, about 22%, participant reply rate. 15% of the respondents think that many factors are essential in building a more inclusive and egalitarian homeland ; among those ‘own lifestyle’, the ‘president of the country’, the ‘NA of Armenia’, ‘domestic security system’, ‘political parties’, ‘mass media’, ‘human rights organizations’, ‘local nongovernmental organizations’ and the ‘international approach to Armenia’. Finally, the next highest percentage of answers, 13%, indicates that another factor to blame for the exclusionary nature of the Armenia state is the ‘domestic security system’. The rest of the factors counts for 1% -7% of the sample response.
Table 5.9: Change needed in order to make Armenia economically, politically and socially more egalitarian/inclusive society
The International Approach to Armenia All of the above
Source: Student surveys conducted by the author, 2009.
72This is a typical trend in surveys, called Social Desirability Bias – a tendencyfor respondents to reply in a manner that they feel will be viewed favorably by others. See also, John Zaller’s “The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion”, where Zaller argues that public opinion on issues is unreliable, primarily because elite sources of information provide competing or multiple considerations causing public opinion polls to measure whateve r recent elite message an individual has stored in their short term memory.
115 The relatively high rates of students identifying the President, the Parliament and the domestic security system as main causes of self-perceived exclusion by the surveyed
Armenians imply that we should particularly concentrate on these three branches of the Armenian state apparatus in the explanation of the durable social exclusion in Armenia.
Based on the theoretical framework of this study presented earlier, the privatization and the state militarization increased social exclusion in Armenia through inequitable power and opportunity distribution practiced by the Armenian state elites. Following the same
framework, the President, the National Assembly, and the security system of the Armenian state are the central forces in these unfair power distribution processes, and their role in generating social exclusion is critical.Therefore, the above-mentionedfinding of the survey is not unexpected.
Based on not only the descriptive, but also the regression results, one can make an assumption that the factors affecting student perceptions of social exclusion are obviously related to the labor markets, altered after the privatization process, as well as the nature of state elites and institutions.
Before presenting the findings of the statistical models, it is important to mention that the independent variables are notably inter-correlated. As a result, statistical tests were conducted to determine if multi-collinearity is a problem for the data. After reviewing the collinearity diagnostics, none of the variance inflation factors (VIF) was over ten.
Consequently, it was concluded that collinearity amongst the independent variables should not be a problem amongst this data.
Only the second model, which takes into consideration also the control independent variables of age and residence, will be discussed because there is no difference in statistical and very little difference in substantive significance between the independent and dependent variables for both models. Specifically statistical significance does not change. There is statistical significance between only four of the independent primary variables and the dependent variable. Those variables are ‘household’s overall poverty level’, ‘parents’
employment status’, ‘status change in recent years politically, socially or economically’and
‘whether the student feels he/she is excluded of having or doing something that he/she
116 deserves to have or to do’. Obviously, these variables relate to all three aspects of social exclusion: economic, political and social.
Statistically, there is no association between the variables of ‘student employment’,
‘demonstration participation’ and the perception of social exclusion. While it is expected to find no statistical significance for the variable of ‘student employment’ due to the fact that as a general rule Armenian students do not work during their student years, it is astonishing to find absence of association between ‘demonstration participation’and‘perception of social exclusion’. Assumingly, the lack of statistical significance in this case is due to the fact that the answers regarding demonstration participation by the students do not represent the reality.73 Another possible explanation to the absence of relationship between these two variables, noted by one of the reviewers of this dissertation, may be the fact that those who feel social exclusion is a serious problem also believe that they are powerless to change anything, so they do not participate in demonstrations.
Unpredictably, both of the control variables, which are age and residence, have no influence on the perception of social exclusion. Since the surveyed population consists of only students, the age range varies mainly from 17-22 years. Obviously, the surveyed population does not consist of different generations, and unfortunately, we cannot observe any differences of mentality and attitudes towards economic, political and social
developments and phenomena.74 The absence of statistical significance for the ‘age’ variable, thus, is natural.
Social exclusion is often characterized by the dimension of urban-rural residence. It is popular to assume that inequality appears to arise largely from the absence of opportunitie s for large segments of the population residing in rural areas. The statistical evidence in the
73 This issue has been discussed more in detail in the descriptive part of the survey analysis.
74 As compared to many western countries, particularly the United States, where university student age varies widely, in most post-Soviet countries the typical student age is 17-22. Some exceptional cases are when a person serves in the army and continues education after the army or when a person pursues a second or third education. Even in those cases the student age will not exceed 30 years.
It is a very recent, nonetheless infrequent, phenomenon to find 40-50 year old students in Armenian universities. Those are generally public officials, such as for example, a parliamentary deputy, who after gaining high ranks and/or government positions, aim to attach a certain ed ucation to their resume/profile. In any case, their studentship is not a formal one; most often they hardly ever attend classes.
117 case of post-Soviet Armenia, based on this student survey, does not validate this popular assumption. Through this point one can detect the demarcation between poverty and social exclusion. Although poverty level is much higher in rural areas of Armenia, there is not much difference in the perceptions of social exclusion between rural and urban populations.
It is not as much poverty that matters to people, as the absence of power, voice and independence, and vulnerability to exploitation and humiliation. The absence of statistical significance between variables ‘residence’ and ‘perceptions of social exclusion’ highlights the importance of social inclusion for poor people, the importance of securing respect and dignity for themselves, irrespective of residence.
The regression results are not much different in the two models; the control variables do not change either the statistical or the substantive strength of the relationships tested. To better understand the estimated substantive impact of the variables of interest, I have
interpreted the results of the second model with socio-demographic characteristics (Table 5.10):
1. The odds that a person, whose household poverty level is a little below the overall poverty level, will think there exists social exclusion as a serious problems in Armenia decreases by 41 percent on average as compared to that of a person, whose household poverty level is considerably below the overall poverty level, holding all other variables constant.
2. The odds that a person thinks there exists social exclusion as a serious problem in
Armenia decreases by 95 percent on average, if a person’s parents are employed, holding all other variables constant.
3. The odds that a person thinks there exists social exclusion as a serious problem in Armenia increases by 237 percent on average, if the person’s household’s status has not improved (economically, socially and/or politically) within the last 10 years, holding all other variables constant.
4. The odds that a person thinks there exists social exclusion as a serious problem in Armenia increases by 1761 percent on average, if a person feels that he is excluded of having and/or doing something that he deserves to have or to do.
While in earlier chapters of this dissertation, social exclusion in Armenia had
discussed in terms high Gini coefficient rates throughout different years, persistent problems in health care, and education, growing rates of homelessness, crime rates and migration rates, the above statements clearly come to add further evidence that social exclusion exists in
118 Armenia as a multifaceted problem consisting of social, political and economic elimination.
Indeed, students’ perceptions of social exclusion are highly affected by their families’
poverty level, their parents’ employment level, their household levels’ stagnant situation over a long period of time, such as 10 years, and finally their own exclusion of having and/or doing something that they deserve to have or to do. This coincidence of public grievances regarding exclusion and factual substantiation mentioned earlier in this paragraph increases confidence in claiming that social exclusion subsists and is an acute problem in post-Soviet Armenia.
Table 5.10: Odds ratios of logistic regression of considering the existence of social exclusion as a serious problem in Armenia on indicators of perception of economic, social and political exclusion, perception of self-exclusion, and socio-demographic indicators
Model 1 Model 2 Perception of economic exclusion
Household’s overall poverty level 39.8* 40.7*
Student’s employment status 303.2 194.1
Parents’ employment status 95.1* 95.0*
Perception of social and political exclusion
Status change in recent years politically, socially or economically 241.1* 236.6*
Demonstration participation 24.5 27.9
Perception of self-exclusion
Student’s perception of self-exclusion 1667.2* 1761.3*
Socio-demographic characteristics
Age of the respondent 36.2
Residence of the respondent 20.5
N of cases 300 300
R square 895.0** 814.8**
Significance level: ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; † p<0.1.
5.4 Conclusion
This chapter developed a quantitative analysis of a survey conducted with students of Armenian universities about social exclusion, factors affecting social exclusion and social movements. The public perceptions primarily coincide with other accounts of poverty and inequality, increasingly deteriorating socio-economic conditions for the middle and poor
This chapter developed a quantitative analysis of a survey conducted with students of Armenian universities about social exclusion, factors affecting social exclusion and social movements. The public perceptions primarily coincide with other accounts of poverty and inequality, increasingly deteriorating socio-economic conditions for the middle and poor