The economic precariousness of people in the current circumstances reaches a dimension and extent that leads those affected not only to poverty, but even to social exclusion. Having reached the stage of exclusion, there is still one more step: marginalization. The phenomenon cannot be reduced to the socio-economic dimension: social exclusion is a multifactorial situation that we proceed to analyze from the psychological and social intervention perspective. We will focus the analysis on those who become users of public services (specifically Libraries) in a step prior to desocialization. These users make up a loyal group but not exempt from peculiarities that can clash with the rest of the users and with the institution itself, both due to the difficulties with compliance with the rules of use, as well as the planning and adaptation needs that they require of the offer of library services.
In this Psychology-Online article, we will see in depth What is social exclusion, its types and examples and proposals to help combat it.
What is poverty
It is considered that the poverty relates to a situation of economic inequality characterized by a level of income less than half or less than average of income that households or people receive in a specific context (Subirats et als., 2004). And one step further, we would find social exclusion. Initially, social exclusion was associated with the state of unemployment and instability of the social ties that every person has (within them, marginality).
What is social exclusion
The social exclusion is multifactorialLet us think that if this were not the case, even in its most extreme facet, indigence, it would be approachable with relative ease, since the person affected would not miss any opportunity that did not lead him towards a more normal social functioning; above all, because he is the one most interested in breaking this situation.
In many cases, social and public services constitute the final resources for a supposed social reintegration, liminal, prior to or close to desocialization and destitution. Among these public services are libraries. A certain number of users, who may have known previous normalized psychological, relational, economic and social functioning; once deprived of such conditions that made their insertion possible, they collapse and lead to indigence, the library being one of the last milestones referring to normality, or contact with said normality. Or at least, that’s what we want to think, even if it is illusory.
Furthermore, we will try to briefly analyze the process that takes place in the library as a public space, which as such welcomes all types of users and, sometimes, coexistence is problematic and generates friction between people.
When you enter poverty
To talk about poverty is to relate economic criteria about people and their homes. In Spain there is a non-contributory pension system that is inconsistent and varied depending on the autonomous community in which the person in question resides. However, there is a consensus that establishes that the definitive step to marginality is constituted the loss of home.
Types of social exclusion and poverty
In terms of FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organizations working with the Homeless) (2018), according to the THEOS typology there are different types of people subject to the situation of homelessness and residential exclusion:
to. No roof (fooflees)
- 1. Living in a public space (without address)
- 2. Spending the night in a shelter and/or forced to spend the rest of the day in a public space
b. Without housing
- 3. Stay in service centers or shelters (hostels for the homeless that allow different models of stay)
- 4. Living in women’s shelters
- 5. Living in temporary accommodation reserved for immigrants and asylum seekers
- 6. Living in institutions: prisons, health care centers, hospitals with nowhere to go, etc.)
- 7. Live in supportive accommodation (no lease)
c. Insecure housing
- 8. Living in a home without legal title (living temporarily with family or friends involuntarily, living in a home without a lease contract – squatters are excluded, etc.)
- 9. Legal notification of abandonment of the home
- 10. Living under the threat of violence from the family or partner
d. Inadequate housing
- 11. Living in a temporary structure or shanty
- 12. Living in housing that is not appropriate under state law
- 13. Living in overcrowded housing
How to combat social exclusion
The loss of home implies “a profound rupture in the person’s life, their personal expectations and social structures” (Márquez et als., 2012). There are groups among which more emphasis is placed on carrying out preventionsuch as:
- Penitentiary centers
- Health centers (long-term hospitals, psychiatric treatment centers and drug addiction care centers)
- Child protection centers
- Armed forces (once demobilized or upon return from combat or particularly dangerous missions)
- Immigrants (Documentation and Studies Center -SIIS, 2005)
Although healthcare resources exist, there are great differences in social and health support between the different areas in which the services are carried out. interventions with homeless people and they are comparatively lower than those of our surrounding countries (Márquez, op., cit.). Generally, they consist of emergency solutions that contemplate accommodation and meeting the most urgent needs (a place to sleep, eat, shower and stay certain hours). Violations of the user’s needs are also frequent in terms of hygiene, privacy (bathrooms, showers, toilets, communal bedrooms (with their attendant noise, movement of new users and coupling in free spaces)), problems related to personal safety. . In exchange, an attitude of reintegration, of minimal collaboration, is required of them. Obviously, the most variable, unquantifiable and difficult to approach processes are those related to the personal destructuring that people who are on the street live. Hence, existing institutional practices, in certain cases, have a high degree of failure and, one of the places from which they cannot be evicted are the existing spaces in the libraries, during public opening hours.
Causes and consequences of social exclusion and discrimination
Johnstone et als. (2015) analyzed the relationship between discrimination and well-being (in this case, absence thereof), in this case in the Australian population. They identified three elements that affect the relationship between well-being and perceived discrimination and that have a propensity to amplify the negative effects of the latter on the former. In some way, they would explain why the perceptions of people who feel and see themselves helpless can be underlying reasons for discrimination and affect the well-being they experience. This is how they indicate:
That stigma is a “controllable” factor
First, there is evidence that when a stigmatized identity is considered to be somewhat controllable (such as unemployment, drug addiction, or obesity), group-based discrimination has a most detrimental effect on well-being than discrimination directed against those with an uncontrollable stigma (such as race or gender). In fact, both individuals and perpetrators are more likely to perceive group-based negative treatment as legitimate if it is directed at people with controllable stigmas compared to uncontrollable stigmas (Weiner et al., 1988; Rodin et al., 1989).
Because housing status is perceived as something within an individual’s control, it is often Homeless people are considered to be responsible for their homelessness (Parsell and Parsell, 2012), and homeless people may (more certainly) face highly legitimized forms of discrimination, amplifying negative consequences for their well-being.
Prejudices towards homeless people
Second, despite the fact that homeless people are perceived as struggling and in need of care and compassion (Kidd, 2004; Benbow et al., 2011; Shier et al., 2011), there is also evidence of that homeless people are not perceived as fully human (Harris and Fiske, 2006). Research has shown that homeless people, as a group They are not considered competent or warm and therefore form “the lowest of the lowest” (Fiske et al., 2002). This causes the worst kind of prejudice (disgust and contempt) and can make people functionally equivalent to objects (Harris and Fiske, 2006). This further increases the perceived legitimacy of negative treatment of homeless people and, in turn, compromises an individual’s ability to stand up to discrimination.
Other stigmatized conditions
Third, homeless people are often not only discriminated against because of their housing status, but they also experience discrimination for other reasons. Notably, these individuals also often experience mental illness and/or drug addiction, conditions that are subject to high levels of stigma in society (Barry et al., 2014).
In summary, because homeless people face discrimination that is perceived to legitimize targeting them for many different reasons, we predict that the well-being of these people will be negatively affected. Consistent with this, both qualitative and quantitative work describe the negative impact of discrimination of homeless people on their well-being (Phelan et al., 1997; Lynch and Stagoll, 2002; Kidd, 2007) and homeless people describe the experience of discrimination as making the transition from homelessness to employment and stable housing significantly more complex and challenging (Milburn et al., 2006; Piat et al., 2014). If not, impossible.
Stigmatization in discrimination
We can experience it daily in our daily lives and how, unconsciously and unwantedly, we make use of these mechanisms of discrimination, the “normalized” group, those of us who have been fortunate enough to overcome adversity. Professor Declerck exposes it as much greater elegance in his book The shipwreckedwhen he points out the difficulty of achieving identification between the therapist and the patient and, the latter (already defeated and all hope abandoned) begins his fall and sinking (how he escapes from the professional, seeking to lose his identity, to disappear):
“This dimension of the gaze refers to a classic theme of society’s discourse in relation to the street population: it is that of clean and dirty. The undomiciled, residues of the social body, are its dishonor and defile its space. Faced with this hybrid plague that conveys a compound of anguish due to…