**6. Socio-political exclusion**

272 Social Sciences and Cultural Studies – Issues of Language, Public Opinion, Education and Welfare

are not too dominated by people with an immigrant background. For young people in general, the cities' educational and job opportunities are important pull factors for urban residency. The city is more multicultural and urban dwellers are more used to cultural complexity compared to people in smaller places. However, some small towns or rural communities have a particular welcoming attitude, e.g. related to a lack of workforce. Thus, in some cases, there is less exclusion in small communities than in large cities, and easier for

All in all, spatial exclusion is a complex matter. Suburbs that serve as sites of identification and belonging for some, are at the same time exactly the places where other young people feel the outside world's stigma of the place as a burden they do not want to be associate with. Thus for the latter, the only way to escape exclusion is also to escape the collective

Ethnic segregation in housing areas and differentiated access to higher education and wellpaid, high-status jobs in the labour market are exclusionary mechanisms at the macro level. But there are also many forms of exclusion in face-to-face social interaction, including more indirect forms of exclusion, such as subtle ways of watching, talking or in other ways relating or not relating to others. According to Taylor (1994: 25), our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, and so a person can suffer if others mirror a confining or demeaning picture. The lack of recognition or being associated with categories that one does not one identify with can inflict harm and be experienced as a form of oppression, as it

Some young people adopt such depreciatory images of themselves, so that even if some of the obstacles to their advancement fall away, they may be incapable of taking advantage of their own opportunities (Taylor, 1994). Such processes are sometimes seen among young immigrants, that they adopt the stigma to which their ethnicity is viewed by the majority

Also more defined social rituals can be perceived as excluding, as when the drinking pattern of young non-immigrants tend to exclude young Muslims who follow the prescription of their religion to avoid alcohol. Some young immigrants are vulnerable to the signals from non-immigrant persons, and misinterpretations occur. As for those persons who tend to ignore the young immigrants this does not need to be an action (or non-action) meant to hurt. Maybe the person not acknowledging the other is shy; or maybe he is just occupied by his own inner thoughts. There might also be norms of ceremonial distance, as Goffman (1967: 63) calls it, that the young immigrant is not aware of. Ceremonial distance is related to class background in the sense that 'the higher the class, the more extensive and elaborated are the taboos against contact'. Goffman describes several examples of non-person treatment, where people of higher status act as if the other was not there at all (*ibid*.: 67). Goffman analyzes the presence of avoidance rituals and presentational rituals in relation to differences of status and class background, but only indirectly touches the issues of ethnicity and racism related to such phenomena. Not to recognize the other through presentational

imprisons the individual in a false, distorted and reduced form of being.

immigrants to integrate.

barriers of the neighbourhood.

**5. Relational exclusion** 

(Eidheim, 1987; Lewin, 1948).

Structural or political factors such as restrictive immigration policies, the organization of the welfare system, the integration policies, and so on, are relevant in the search for factors that might lead to exclusion. In a previous article (Fangen, 2006b), I discussed how encounters between Somali immigrants and different public offices in Norway are often experienced as humiliating by the Somali immigrants. They feel that they are met with lack of empathy and of respect in these institutions, and interpret the advice received as 'you must adopt our way of doing things, which again is better than your way of doing things'. This also holds on a more macro level, in immigration policy. For young immigrants, the emphasis on the need for a restrictive immigration policy can be perceived as linked to the message 'you do not belong here'. Of course, the real arguments behind the policy are defined otherwise.

The nation state in itself is built on the distinction between *us* who are inside and *them* who are outside. The distinction between the included and the excluded is an issue of political controversy and debate (Heidar and Semb, 2007: 322). Citizenship is not only a juridical phenomenon, with enormous consequences for immigrants searching for a new start in life, but also a sociological and political phenomenon expressing an ever more complex relation between the individual and the state.

The acquisition (or denial) of citizenship is also a factor that feeds feelings of inclusion or exclusion. Undocumented immigrants and non-returnable refugees are in a special situation, as they are exempted from a number of rights, including social benefits (they only have the right to medical care and so-called emergency benefits). Some young immigrants remain in this situation for years, such as the non-returnable refugees who have received a negative answer to their request for asylum, but do not return because of ongoing conflicts and non-existent opportunities in their homeland. They feel that they have few other opportunities than criminality, since they cannot legally work (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009).

Social Exclusion and Inclusion of Young

lives.

**8. References** 

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Immigrants in Different Arenas – Outline of an Analytical Framework 275

As an individual lives his or her life in many different arenas, analysis must reach beyond the borders of the local community, and the different arenas in which processes of social exclusion occur must be seen together. By not restricting the focus to only education or the labour market, but rather seeing inclusion and exclusion in these arenas together with young people's belonging or non-belonging and participation or non-participation in local communities, in gangs and peer groups, in families, in leisure activities as well as in civic and political organization, we can better understand social exclusion in young people's

Aalandslid, Vebjørn (2009) *Innvandreres demografi og levekår i Groruddalen og Søndre* 

Back, Les (2008) '"Endz and Sides": Youth Gangs, Post Code Patriotism and Mapping

Bauböck, Rainer, Kraler, Albert, Martiniello, Marco and Perchinig, Bernhard (2006)

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Body-Gendrot, Sophie (2002) 'Living Apart or Together with our Differences? French Cities

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Brekke, Idunn and Fekjær, Silje (forthcoming) 'Ethnic Differences in Dropout and Outcomes.

Douglas, Mary (2003) *Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.* 

Eidheim, Harald (ed.) (1987) *Aspects of the Lappish Minority Situation,* Occasional papers in

Evensen, Øystein (2008) *Det norske meritokratiet? En kvantitativ studie av høyt utdannede ikke-*

(Equal Opportunities? The Meaning of Ethnic Background for Employment and Income), PhD-thesis, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University

An Analysis of Students in Upper Secondary Schools in Norway'*. Research in Social* 

*vestlige etterkommeres første møte med arbeidsmarkedet* (The Norwegian Meritocracy? A Quantitative Study of High-Educated Non-Western Descendants' First Meeting with the Labour Market). Masters–thesis, Department of Sociology and Human

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Landscapes of Multiculture and Racism', Key Note Lecture, *The 10th Nordic Youth* 

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In some sending countries, like Somalia, help to the sick, poor, unemployed, and so on, goes through the family or clan network, which means close and intimate contacts. By contrast, in the social democratic welfare state, public institutions have an important role in giving aid to the needy. These institutions can be characterized by inaccessibility and complexity, and it is not simple to feel recognition within the framework of these formal institutions (Fangen, 2006a).

It is important to not only focus on immigrants' integration (or lack of it) in the host society, but also on their access or lack of access to political status, rights and opportunities for political participation (Bauböck et al., 2006: 92). In a previous article, I have analyzed how young Somalis with different class backgrounds take different participatory roles, and some activate themselves in clan-based networks, others in Norwegian politics and yet others in transnational political activity (Fangen, 2007a; Fangen, 2008). Immigrants' exclusion and inclusion do not only occur within the borders of the nationstate, and the immigration policy is one out of several macro features that are not a result of national policies alone.
