Building a more inclusive society requires a conversation about inequality: Corak

Good thoughtful discussion on building an inclusive society by Miles Corak. One of my favourite parts:

“Social inclusion” is a slippery term, and it certainly does not have a distinct meaning in the social sciences in a way that at least I, as an economist,  would feel comfortable drawing implications for public policy.

It helps me to reflect on another term that is sometimes also used to frame public policy: “assimilation”.

For example, assimilation is used in some countries to refer to policies addressed to immigrants. It frames policy discourse in a way that leads to a focus on the shortcomings of migrants. There is a sense of a clear and distinct “mainstream” to society, or to the economy, and migrants are lacking in the skills, language, or even in the attitudes, religion, and culture necessary to fit into this mainstream. They need to change.

This is overtly clear in the way that some extreme groups argue against the very presence of migrants, or accommodations toward them. If this perspective rubs many of us the wrong way it is because at some level we recoil from the underlying assumption of “assimilation”: that the mainstream is clear, fixed, socially preferred; that the task for groups defined as the “other”—be they migrants, those with low-income or without work, those with physical or mental disabilities, or those of colour—is to adjust, to adapt, to assimilate, and indeed to ultimately identify with that mainstream.

It surely does not take much second thought to recognize that barriers to assimilation may be structural, reflecting overt discrimination in access to fundamental resources that are the basis for full participation in society: access to education, health care, income security, and even to jobs for which migrants may well be perfectly qualified but never hired because of skin colour, accent, or simply the spelling of their last names.

In other words, if perspectives like this rub many of us the wrong way it is because we believe there is a reciprocal obligation, something to be negotiated, something reflecting a partnership in the building of society in which all parties are treated with equal respect, and are in turn changed by the relationship.

This has to be at the core of what we mean by “inclusion” if it is to be a helpful framework. Inclusion embodies the idea that identity is something to be continually re-negotiated as successive waves of minority groups enter into conversation with the majority.

So in this way conversation is not just an excellent metaphor for the meaning of inclusion, it is also a vital mechanism to achieve it. It is through conversation that we can respectfully negotiate the terms of a partnership, but at the same time we appreciate conversation for its own sake, are not threatened or dissatisfied by the fact that it is open-ended, indeed this is what reassures and enriches.

But if building an inclusive society through conversation is to be sincere and productive, it has to be done between partners who demonstrate mutual respect, and be capable of freely engaging; partners with a clear sense of others, but also of themselves. It seems to me that this sort of capacity or capability is also at the core of what we mean by “inclusion”.

Building a more inclusive society requires a conversation about inequality | Economics for public policy.