Inaplicación del principio de proporcionalidad en el ámbito administrativo

The term ‘social exclusion’ is generally credited to Rene Lenoir, the French Secretary of State for Social Welfare. During the 1970s Lenoir described les exclus, or outcasts, as the one in ten who were disengaged from mainstream society due to their ill health,

disabilities, anti-social behaviour, geography, poverty or non-participation in politics (Burchardt, Le Grand & Piachaud 1999; Davies 2005; Levitas 2004; Sen 2000; Wright & Stickley 2013). Lenoir maintained that exclusion had occurred as a result of France’s rapid post-war urbanisation. His policy response was to re-engage les exclus into society via increased public spending and redistribution, and enfranchisement via civil and democratic engagement (Davies 2005). Meanwhile, across the Channel, a British view of social

exclusion had emerged through W. G. Runciman’s 1966 classic text on relative deprivation, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-century England, which acknowledged that all societies were inegalitarian, but also considered the acquiescence of the underprivileged to their experience of inequality (Ditton & Brown 1981). However Peter Townsend’s 1979 influential work, Poverty in the United Kingdom, argued that poverty was not simply material deprivation, but affected people’s ability to participate in society and to meet the responsibilities of their social roles. During the 1980s and 1990s the term ‘social exclusion’ was used by poverty activists and within critical social policy to highlight “the

multidimensional consequences of poverty and the dynamic processes involved” (Levitas 2004, p. 44) and as a result social exclusion and poverty became inextricably linked in the literature. The British Labour government in the 1990s blamed “industrial retrenchment in the 1980s, the catastrophic indifference of (the Conservative) government and the

consequent failure of the welfare state” (Wright & Stickley 2013, p. 78) to adequately address the social and economic problems relating to the dismantling of Britain’s major industries (Davies 2005).

The debate on social exclusion and its pernicious effects on society gathered momentum and entered policy discourse in the 1990s and beyond. As a consequence, in 1995 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) held a conference on social exclusion and in 1997 the London School of Economics established the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. The European Union approved a policy to eradicate “poverty and social exclusion by 2010” (Fraser 2011, p. 454) and the Inter- American Development Bank developed an action plan to combat social exclusion. The then British Labour government established a Social Exclusion Unit (Fraser 2011) to assist its three million excluded, its role to offer ‘joined up’ solutions. In effect, it moved away from income redistribution and saw employment as the solution, thus linking welfare benefits to active job hunting (Davies 2005). However, according to Britain’s Trade Union Congress “for the first time the majority of people in poverty are in working families, a development strongly associated with low pay, too few working hours and an unprecedented fall in living standards. Those in insecure work are particularly affected.” (TUC 2014, p. 6). The

casualisation of the work force, along with low paid jobs, undermines the ‘employment solution’ as an alleviator of poverty and arguably exacerbates inequality and social exclusion.

4.1.2 Definition

There is no single definition of social exclusion that is widely accepted and there have been limited attempts to define or assess its extent (Burchardt, Le Grand & Piachaud 1999). Nevile (2007) implies that social exclusion is a relatively recent phenomenon in development studies; Sen (2000) quite rightly disagrees, citing Aristotle’s and Adam Smith’s assertions about the freedom to choose participation that is free from shame or deprivation are in fact early references to social exclusion. The literature describes multiple aspects of social exclusion, which include poverty, inequality, denial of recognition,

disrespect, social disintegration, rupturing of social bonds, unemployment, and the inability to participate in everyday life or to exercise rights of participation (Fraser 2011; Wright &

Stickley 2013). Sen (2000) places exclusion within capability deprivation, which prevents the individual from living a decent life. Wright and Stickley (2013) see social exclusion as referring to geographic areas, communities or individuals which are unable to exercise their right to participate, or not, in everyday life and, like Fraser (2011) and Barry (1998), view it as a form of social injustice. Barry (1998) deconstructs social exclusion by first defining social isolation as a form of non-participation whereby people choose to voluntarily withdraw. For example, the affluent may choose to exclude themselves from institutions and build barriers to keep undesirables out (Levitas 2004). Barry (1998) goes on to define social exclusion as a subset of non-participation, namely an involuntary non- participation that is beyond the individual’s control. Thus, even where individuals or groups may appear to voluntarily withdraw their participation in response to prejudice or

intolerance, it is in fact not voluntary. Barry (1998) cautions that social exclusion should be viewed within its contextual setting, to discern whether it is genuinely voluntary or not. Fraser (2011) argues that there are major deficits in the literature, which do not explain what social exclusion means, and observes that it denies the opportunity to participate as a peer, that is, to experience ‘participatory parity’.

Dismissed by Levitas (2004) as vague and not identifying the true nature, nor the causes, of social exclusion, the British Labour government’s definition describes social exclusion as more than poverty; it is “a shorthand label for what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown” (Levitas 2004, p. 45). However, Burchardt, Le Grand and Piachaud (1999) assert that any definition should be based on participation in activities linked to dimensions of

consumption, saving, production, political and social participation. Their definition asserts that “an individual is socially excluded if (a) he or she is geographically resident in a society and (b) he or she does not participate in the normal activities of citizens in that society” (Burchardt, Le Grand & Piachaud 1999, p. 230)

It is interesting to note that the voices of the excluded are not represented in these definitions, which are articulated by the non-excluded. Davies (2005) notes that people at risk of exclusion hesitate to describe themselves that way and Richardson and Le Grand (2002) recognise the role of academics who deny the excluded their own voice through misunderstanding or misrepresenting their experience of exclusion.

In this study the researcher defines social exclusion as a socially unjust, active or passive process which causes disempowerment of individuals or communities, excludes them from living a life that is free from shame, material and social deprivation, and denies them the right to participate as peers in social, consumptive, political and economic activities.