The Relationship between Social Exclusion and Spatial Segregation in urbanised modern Societies
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•Prof. Dr. Dr. Detlef Baum
•University of Applied Science Koblenz
•Urban Research and Community Studies
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Questions
•Aspects and reasons for the connection between spatial segregation and social exclusion
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•Approaches of Social Work which are able to ensure identity and to integrate people in a community

Spatial Segregation leads to two interdepending processes
•Spatial Segregation  in disadvantaged quarters is the main reason for social exclusion and in
connection which poverty, low education and low-paid jobs spatial segregation leads to an exclusion
from an average life-style.
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•The life-style in such quarters is a factor of stabilising  the life conditions, because people
are sure that they can fulfil the expectations and norms there.
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Four central premisses of the Chicago School
•In a social space the population is spread over the space according to certain conditions or
patterns of distribution.
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•The spatial distribution of a population reflects the social stratification of a society in a
certain space.
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•Spaces must be taken in possession by the people acting there, before they become a social context
in which people live and their life is influenced by the space.
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•The space itself produces privileges and deprivations or problems by his structure regarding the
arrangement and the quality of the buildings, the streets, the places etc., by its varied
character, his borders and crossings to other quarters.
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Social Exlusion
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•Social exclusion means a process by which individuals or groups are losing objective opportunities
to participate on processes of communication and social processes,
– which have a very high meaning for gaining behaviour goals,
– which secure their social integration by interaction, social security and material reproduction
of life,
–which ensure their identity and their psycho-social balance regulation.
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•People are disintegrated, if they cannot fulfil the expectations of the society on the level of
their psycho-social competences and their structural conditions of life and the feel that.
•They are excluded, when they feel, that they have no meaning for others in interactions, that they
are not needed on the level of their behaviour. They have no possibility to present their identity
and to ensure it.
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Key of the process of social exclusion
•as a relationship between the structural frame of conditions for integration and
• the definition or evaluation of a certain status of a space by the municipal society
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•The frame for social integration is the municipal society, the local life context, which shapes
the general social conditions for the integration in a society.
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Who excluses?
•The social institutions, which refuse the access to it,
•the urban publicity, which expect a specific behaviour, to which people have no access,
•organisations and associations to which somebody has only an access, when he/she fulfils specific
conditions.
•the reputation of the address, which has the effect of discretisation, partly based on
pre-justices,
•the population of a city, which has no contact with these groups, mostly they even don’t know
something about these groups.
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Spatial Segregation
•Spatial segregation means a process of spatial distribution of the population •because of the
socio-economic principles of the access to chances and opportuinities, •because of the mechanism of
the free housing market, •or because of political decisions by the city-administration.
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The consequences of spatial segregation
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•Psycho-social exclusion from communication processes, interactions, participation through
discrimination or by losing the status or reputation.
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•Exclusion from constitutional ideas of values and norms, from principles of integration or from
ideas, how members of societies should be integrated.
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•Exclusion from social contexts of action, in which they ensure their identity or their status as a
condition of integration. They should be integrated in the working market and in the markets of
consumption and in the housing market.
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•Exclusion from social supports and social security.
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What is the challenge for social policy and social work?
•Social work is a part of social policy.
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•The principles of social policy are solidarity, justice and subsidiarity.
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•Social policy must realise a frame of social life conditions, within the individuals have the
opportunities to fulfil social expectations, demands and interests, which guarantee a good life.
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•The responsibility of the community is to influence the conditions of residence and generally life
conditions directly in residential areas.
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•The negative consequences of spatial segregation for the concerned people, above all for children
and kids must be abolished.
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•An insufficient infrastructure and an insufficient urban structure lead to deprivation of the
inhabitants of deprived residential areas.
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•In this case community have a responsibility to intervene by social policy.
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Community Work
•Community work is an approach, which works not on the base of individual helps and supports, but
on the base of strengthening the people in their identity, their competences and their
self-consciousness in the context of their life world. •The people must get the feeling, that they
are able to influence the political decisions in questions of their own life and that they are able
to change und to improve their life conditions.
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community work needs a strategy of interference.
•Social work has to fight for better life conditions of their clients - not only by providing them
with services but by supporting them in improving their objective life world on a political level.
•Social work must interfere in the shaping of an integrative city development policy, which shapes
the social context of life in the whole city.
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