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Social Exclusion and it's relation with Poverty and Inequality
Social exclusion is the denial of equal opportunities imposed by certain groups of society upon others which leads to inability of an individual to participate in the basic political, economic and social functioning of the society.

Social exclusion corresponds to wide variety of explanations depending on how different societies understand it as a social concept affecting the capability deprivation in their community. While French, who had been stressing solidarity since the time of Romanticism, identified social exclusion as a rupture in their social order, the liberal thinkers perceived social exclusion as separate from issue of poverty. As opposed to this, there is discrimination based on the hierarchies in the groups which are responsible for exclusion. But social exclusion focuses on societal relations in a community rather than in closed groups.

Link with poverty and inequality

Debates and discussions over poverty and inequality have come to include the concept of ‘social exclusion’, which has its roots in understanding capability deprivation, especially in contemporary times. Social exclusion as a multidimensional notion has an indirect as well as direct effect on the poor living in the society. Though essentially, understanding relational factors of exclusion and poverty requires an insight into the correlative characteristics such as education, labour market status, gender, location, etc. that are associated implicitly with the status of an individual in a community.

Poverty and inequality are embedded in social exclusion, in the sense that the kind of life one lives is more often than not decided by the economic resources one possesses. Poverty as an idea of capability deprivation has a two way relation to the theoretical applicability of social exclusion. At times, being excluded from participating in community activities can directly deprive an individual of economic resources. This is the case of ‘constitutive relevance of social exclusion’. For example, if an individual is not being given an opportunity to take up a job or a better job is reserved for majority groups (such as men), it could lead to poverty and eventually homelessness, among the minority groups. On the other hand, exclusion from economic, political or social activities that might not be directly depriving but could lead to impoverishment is known to have ‘instrumental significance’ (Sen 2000: 22). In other words, relational deprivations such as refusal of the ownership of land by a peasant may have indirect causal effect on the family that can be deprived economically as well as socially in the society it lives in. “Social exclusion can, thus, be constitutively a part of capability deprivation as well as instrumentally a cause of diverse capability failures.” (Sen 2000: 5)