Social exclusion is a multi-dimensional concept conceived to capture different aspects of social disadvantage-economic, social, political and cultural-that exist in multiple variations across nations. Stripped to its essence, the term focuses on the groups excluded in economic, social and cultural terms as well as on the mechanisms that work to relegate them to the status of social outsiders. Originating mainly in the writings of French sociologists, the concept is receiving growing scholarly attention in Western Europe. The emergence of the term, in fact, reflects an attempt to reconceptualise the changing nature of social disadvantage in post-industrial societies in the face of major technological change and economic restructuring. The West, for example, has been experiencing an intensifying process of social integration that is occurring because of long-term unemployment, increasing migration and the rolling back of the welfare state. Consequently, new vulnerable social groups have been emerging and are labelled in different ways: 'the new industrial poor', 'immigrants', 'ethnic groups', 'single parents', among others. Interest in social exclusion has grown in relation to the growth of new social problems in the west. Two important issues are worth considering here. First, does the concept add anything new which cannot be provided by analysis within a more conventional framework of, say, poverty, inequality, deprivation and so on. Second and more important, can this concept be extended beyond a European perspective to development setting? Can it be exported from the North to the South, from a situation where the majority are well-off to a situation where the majority are poor? Clearly, a great deal of attention has been paid, in development analysis, to related issues such as poverty, inequality, deprivation, entitlements and capabilities.
The new reflection on social exclusion has emerged from
