This thesis provides an ethnographic account of post-industrial life in East Manchester, a locality which has undergone repeated waves of regeneration. The neighbourhoods of Beswick and Openshaw were once located at the heart of manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution but have since undergone deep social and economic change in the twentieth century which has resulted in widespread unemployment and perceived ‘social deprivation’. In 2000, New Labour introduced a regeneration plan to create ‘New East Manchester’ with the hope that material transformation would bring about economic growth and social change by creating a cohesive community and a productive and profitable space in the post-industrial city. This research, however, demonstrates that for long-standing residents, the relationship between redevelopment and change is more complex than this simple formula may suggest. Despite millions of pounds of investment and radical physical transformation, long-standing residents argue that East Manchester is dislocated and characterised by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty about the future. The thesis draws on twelve months of residential, ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2010. It focuses on a group of older, female, long-standing residents and explores the issues which are important to them which include neighbourhood risk, memories of the past, gift exchange, housing and political alienation. For these residents, change is understood in terms of unpredictability and inequality. Images of a stable past are drawn upon in order to articulate anger and frustration against mainstream politics and feelings of social exclusion. On the surface, it appears that social life has declined and community has fractured due to the pressures of economic and social change but, on further examination, it is clear that intense social relations and attachments to East Manchester continue to exist. In order to understand the apparent contradiction between narratives of community decline and observations of social relations which are evident in East Manchester, this thesis argues that it is necessary to re-examine concepts of community, belonging and class which are presented in the anthropology of Britain literature.

The dissertation employs insights from critical race theory and the environmental justice literature, questioning the sustainability of dominant state policies concerning development of informal settlements. The work explores spatialized and racialised forms of class and their normalisation in South Africa. Discussion of the rise and redefinition of urban segregation in South Africa notes racialised exclusions have not disappeared with the end of apartheid. Economic supremacy of ‘white’ populations reproduces ‘white’ control – with dirt, crime and disorder constitutive of the pathological spaces of the ‘other’. Second part examines the role of environmental ideas in reproducing ‘white’ spaces of privilege and ‘black’ spaces of degradation. Discussing neo-liberal development, sustainable development and ecological justice in South Africa – the dissertation shows service delivery and housing policy to possess similarities to apartheid projects – with weaknesses of the dominant model failing the requirements of environmental justice. The case study which follows examines a contemporary attempt to relocate an informal settlement sited in an affluent neighbourhood through ‘greenfields’ housing development, revealing environments as contested, with spatial subjugation dramatic and ongoing.

Miami’s marketers have a long and successful history of creating and recreating imagery that draws visitors towards the "magic city" or the "tropical playground". This thesis investigates Miami’s marketing and its roots by analyzing the role and legacy of segregation in order to examine how tourism and its image relate to issues of exclusion and inequality. An inclusive rethinking of the definitions and usage of culture is then advocated as an important theoretical shift that could benefit development and revitalization in the city’s economically poorest neighborhoods. Analysis (through case studies, semi-structured interviews and GIS analysis) then shows how historic patterns of exclusion and adverse incorporation, especially in regard to tourism, are reproduced in much of Miami’s contemporary marketing, with the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) playing an important role in this process. The Black community especially suffers greater levels of exclusion from Miami’s tourism and marketing and therefore has the most to gain from a shift in policy and perception. Community-based cultural tourism has functioned in various US cities as a tool to assist urban revitalization however Miami has yet to implement such a program. The results of this research suggest a number of recommendations for cultural tourism’s implementation in Miami, emphasizing the need for a community-based coalition of non-profit organizations utilizing governmental, marketing and creative/artistic partnerships.

The main theme of this thesis is the relation between education governance and social inclusion and exclusion. Overall the thesis is based on a life history approach were biographical interviews with young people are complemented with other contextual data such as survey data, longitudinal statistics, interviews with local politicians and school actors and local reports. Data were generated in three Swedish areas: a rural area in the North, an advantaged segregated area, and a disadvantaged segregated area in the South. The thesis consists of four articles that use the concepts of biography, space, and mobility. Article 1. examines the increasing usage of biographical registers in school. It suggests that biography as a form of education governance serves to construct the students as both objects for assessment and as a relay for continuous self-assessment. As such, this is a socio-political technology that is important to acknowledge in order to understand processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Article 2. addresses the following empirically generated question: How is it possible to understand the fact that disadvantaged students from a segregated area have such optimistic future orientations in relation to further education and work? Building on life history interviews with a small sample of refugee youth from a disadvantaged segregated area the paper presents a concept labelled Utopian diaspora biography (UDB). UDB describes a process whereby a high level of aspiration concerning education and labour is accumulated as a consequence of the social, temporal and spatial dynamic of the biography. Article 3. is an attempt to develop new understandings about local production of social inclusion and exclusion in a decentralised, individualised and segregated school landscape. Using a wide range of data the article suggests that local differences concerning schooling and the outcomes of schooling – both in terms of statistical patterns and the identities produced – are interrelated and are based on an amalgamation of local policy implementation, material conditions and spatially guided representations. Article 4. deploys the concept of mobility in order to explore how space and class become related to education and social inclusion and exclusion in the three chosen areas as young people are spatially situated but move, want to move, dream about moving, try to move, and fail to move through, in and out of different forms of communities. This paper shows that the possibilities of moving to desired places on the education- and labour market are unequally distributed between young people and between places. The analysis also seeks to move beyond schematic typologies such as those of ‘immobile working class’ and ‘mobile middle class’ by exploring how mobility is made meaningful and how notions about mobility are structured and enable action. In summary, the thesis contributes to the discussion on processes of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary society. These processes are understood as inter-disciplinary problematics that include the social production of spatiality, historicality, and sociality at both the societal level and on the level of identity. Crucial aspects concern aestheticisation and performativity in education which imply an increasing focus on discursive, or textual, dimensions of identity formation and the competitive strategies developed by students in order to secure social inclusion through the marketing of oneself. Under these circumstances, new identities and new forms of social inclusion and exclusion are produced.

Within the framework of urban communication, this thesis attempts to "read" the urban space of West Kabul in Afghanistan, as a social and cultural text in order to understand the social exclusion of the Hazara people, a socially and politically disenfranchised ethnic group who predominantly inhabit that area. Based on data gathered through documentary research and non-participant field observations, this thesis argues that the urban space of West Kabul is the spatial manifestation of a systematic exclusionary process, through which, the Hazara people have been deprived from access to political, economic and cultural resources, services and opportunities. It interprets the city planning, distribution of resources, urbicide, streetscape, architecture and the body as the main sites where the social exclusion of the Hazaras in West Kabul is exercised. This study also provides a discussion about the historical evolution of West Kabul as an ethnic ghetto, as well as the various forms of conflict which led to spatial and social division in Kabul city.

Within the framework of urban communication, this thesis attempts to "read" the urban space of West Kabul in Afghanistan, as a social and cultural text in order to understand the social exclusion of the Hazara people, a socially and politically disenfranchised ethnic group who predominantly inhabit that area. Based on data gathered through documentary research and non-participant field observations, this thesis argues that the urban space of West Kabul is the spatial manifestation of a systematic exclusionary process, through which, the Hazara people have been deprived from access to political, economic and cultural resources, services and opportunities. It interprets the city planning, distribution of resources, urbicide, streetscape, architecture and the body as the main sites where the social exclusion of the Hazaras in West Kabul is exercised. This study also provides a discussion about the historical evolution of West Kabul as an ethnic ghetto, as well as the various forms of conflict which led to spatial and social division in Kabul city.

Social exclusion is the restriction of participation in one’s community; it is the denial of access to rights, services, dignity and respect. Youth who are homeless experience social exclusion on numerous fronts, as they are marginal to the social, economic and civil worlds of Canadian society. This dissertation is a qualitative, participatory project on youth homelessness that prioritizes voice by employing a “methods from the margins” approach (Kirby & McKenna, 1989). During this project I worked with youth who have experienced homelessness (ages 16-25), first in focus groups (n=13) and, then, through interviews (n=30), to explore their views on topics connected to social exclusion. The youth guided the topics that I explored, which I connected to the features of social exclusion outlined by Silver and Miller (2003). Results of this study highlight that youth who are homeless do not describe their experiences in terms of social exclusion. The results of this work question the homogeneity of experiences of the youth in the age bracket of 16-25, and review findings through three specific age categories of youth being “not yet adults,” “new adults” and “adults.” My findings indicate that youth who experience homelessness perceive themselves to be more independent and mature than youth who have not experienced homelessness, questioning dominant constructions of both “youth” and “homelessness.” Youth respondents also mentioned a number of other difficulties they experienced because of homelessness, including discrimination and limited opportunities for education and conventional employment and access to housing. This highlights the multidimensionality of social exclusion. At various points in the thesis I discuss youths’ views on rights and social citizenship, pointing to the impacts of limited rights and social safeguards in a neo-liberal state. Recommendations are made for reducing the social exclusion of youth who experience homelessness through “housing-first” approaches to addressing homelessness.

My big interest in sports was what shaped my choice of subject for the essay. The purpose of this study has been to explore the social meaning of team sports for functionally impaired persons. In order to fulfil the purpose of the essay I formed following questions: How do the actives experience their participation in team sports? And how important is the social intercourse in team sports to the individual welfare? The methods I’ve used have been qualitative with an ethnographic approach. I have used participant observations and field interviews to gather my empirical material. To analyze this material I have used theoretical concepts such as: group membership, social skills, social interaction, social inclusion and social exclusion. In this essay I have found out that team sports promotes people’s social skills. Therefore team sports are, according to my studies, a beneficial form of social work.

This study is about job training for people with psycho-social problems without income. The purpose with this sort of job training is to bring these people back to the regular labor market as well as the experience of having a job. In the labor market situation in Sweden today there’s no guarantee that the individual will return to the labor market after having undergone job training. The aim of this study is to understand how supervisors at job training activities experience that the organizations of the activities and resources affect their work. We shall also explore how the supervisors assess if the structure of the activity weaken or enhance the job trainees’ social exclusion. Our research questions are:       1. How are job training activities organized? 2. How do the supervisors work with the job trainees’ social exclusion? 3. How does the structure of the activity affect the supervisors’ discretion?   We have in this study done interviews with supervisors. To understand our result we have used Hasenfelds (1983; 2010) and Lipskys (2010) theories about human service organizations and the discretion of street level bureaucrats.The result shows that the job training activities are organized in different ways. The supervisors work with the social exclusion by creating routines in the every-day life, a social network and increased self-confidence for the job trainees. The result also shows that all the supervisors experience a great discretion in their work but that this discretion is affected by external factors.

The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate how societal mechanisms can impact on asylum seekers and influence their individual identity. The information for this case study was collected through comprehensive interviews with a group of asylum seekers from Söderhamn whereby the individuals expressed their perception of their current situation. From the gathered material we could see a pattern emerge which gave us the framework and the foundation for our theoretical approach. The similarity we discovered when analyzing the material was the powerlessness the individuals experienced e.g. the individuals had no possibility to influence their current situation and worse, it was impossible for the individuals to enter society even when they had the willpower to do so. According to the asylum seekers the authority’s unwillingness to assist in language development worsens the chances for the individuals to integrate into the society. Through our case study we have discovered that social exclusion and alienation are common identity experiences the asylum seekers have been through which will be our theoretical framework.