CPRC Research Themes
Adverse Incorporation and Social Exclusion (AI/SE)
About AI/SE
Exclusion from social, political and economic institutions is part of a vicious cycle: exclusion leads to lower capabilities, which in turn reduces the prospects for escaping poverty and people’s ability to assert their rights. Exclusion may be the product of active discrimination directed against certain identifiable groups (as a result of ethnicity, race, religion, caste, culture, migration), often reinforced by discrimination on the basis of personal characteristics (age, gender, impairment). At other times, exclusion is relatively passive, based on the ignorance or preferences of more powerful and better off groups, simply not knowing about or leaving out certain individuals or groups of the chronically poor.
If exclusion is the problem, then it could be assumed that inclusion is the answer. This is not necessarily so. Many of the poorest people are included in economic activity, but on extremely unfavourable terms. They are 'adversely incorporated', forced to take work at low rates, in unhealthy or hazadous conditions, and with no job security. Simply 'working their way out of poverty' may be unlikely or practically impossible. Their high vulnerability to risk may force them to depend on more powerful 'patrons' for some degree of 'protection', often at the cost of the freedom to challenge the structures which keep them poor.
Research on AI/SE
Research on adverse incorporation and social exclusion (AISE) thus draws attention to the causal processes that lead poverty to persist, and to the politics and political economy of these processes and associated relationships over time. The concept of social exclusion can usefully highlight the multi-dimensional nature of poverty, and the role of discrimination or 'social distance' in facilitating the persistence of poverty and inequality. An adverse incorporation 'lens' helps ensure that the importance of economic structures, and the processes of the creation and re-ordering of markets are not overlooked, and focuses analysis firmly on the political economy of 'development'.
Much of the promise of AISE research lies in its capacity to cross analytical boundaries, and capture the multi-dimensional and interlocking character of long-term deprivation.This analysis suggests a number of fruitful areas for research - such as the relationship between risk and vulnerability, patronage politics, and chronic poverty; or the way in which inequalities within global economic value chains maintain poverty - most of which are currently under-explored in poverty research
Looking at research methodology, there are benefits to adopting integrated qualitative-quantitativeapproaches when investigating AISE. However, we would argue that the relational nature of AISE, and the limitations of quantitative data, may dictate that qualitative work should take priority here; and that more historical and theoretically-oriented forms of research are particularly appropriate in studying AISE.
To think about challenging AISE involves shifting the frame from policy to politics, and from specific anti-poverty interventions to longer-term development strategies. We are particularly interested in:
- processes of industrialisation and labour market restructuring;
- moves towards developmental states; and
- pporting shifts from clientelism to citizenship.
However, a range of more immediate development policy interventions may also be able to make headway in challenging the forms of AISE that perpetuate poverty.
Downloads
Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in India, Chronic Poverty in India, an Introduction.