Barriers to Community Participation Facing Marginalized Groups

Introduction

Community participation plays a specific role within the concept of community development. At the very least, the purpose that community participation seeks to serve is to improve “governance, democracy, social capital, education and development of individuals, policies, service implementation and delivery – all, or one or more of these, or something else altogether” (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008, p. 206). As participation is such an important part of community development, especially in participatory, representative, democracies like the British society, it is important to understand how participation actually works, what purposes are significant in context of the community development work, and what outcomes it seeks to achieve (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008).

Community participation is based on participatory work in which the members of the community are involved (Minkler, 2004). Community projects are based on “community-driven” agenda, which is sought to be achieved through the participation of the members of the community (Minkler, 2004). When those who are marginalised are not able to participate in the community projects, they can be said to be excluded from participation. Inclusion is needed to be developed in such situations so that members of the society can be included in the community development work. Marginalised communities may find themselves excluded from community participation, due to a variety of reasons, including what can be termed as social exclusion (Simplican, Leader, Kosciulek, & Leahy, 2015). Usually a difficult term to define, social exclusion may relate to the gaps between interaction between interpersonal relationships and community participation (Simplican, Leader, Kosciulek, & Leahy, 2015).

In this essay, the discussion centres around the barriers to community participation for marginalised communities in the British society. The essay argues for an adoption of an assets based policy which works on the building of resilience in the marginalised groups so that they become more active and involved participants in community development.

Community participation: Meaning and significance

Community participation is an essential part of community development and it is related to all areas of community development, including but not limited to, education, agriculture, health, conservation, sanitation, and water (Abbott, 2013, p. 4). It has been emphasised that the application of community participation in the proper sense is the key to promoting sustainable development and transforming community development initiatives and programmes (Abbott, 2013). In the proper sense, community participation would include participation by all the communities in the society, including the marginalised communities. The difficulty with ensuring community participation in the proper sense is with regard to the lack of conceptual structure in community development literature, and instead the process of community participation is based on the empirically driven experiences in the field, which lead to some conceptualisation of community participation (Abbott, 2013). While this is also useful in that it is organic and experience based, the lack of a widely accepted conceptual structure is a barrier to understanding of how to ensure community participation in community development context.

The issue of community participation in community development projects assumes significance in democracies which are based on representative values and the idea of inclusiveness. Participation has been defined as follows:

“a form of activity shared by both governmental and non-governmental actors, at least some of whom are ‘users’ in the sense of being directly involved in the processes and/or outcomes of the activity (other kinds of participation include: civil participation, where people participate in non- governmental organisations; and civic participation, where people participate in governmental decision-making bodies)” (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008, p. 203).

In the sense of participation as described above, it involves participants of three kinds, as is described in the definition of user participation above. The first kind of participants are the ‘policy makers’; these are the senior politicians, officials and professionals, who are directly involved in the process, and have the political, organisational and professional power to determine the overall philosophy or strategic direction of the policy process (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). The second kind of participants are the ‘activists’; these are the people who do not have the kind of powers as the former kind of participants have, but they are also actively involved in the policy process. For instance, they may be the ones who are involved in the commissioning or providing of the services (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). The third kind of participants are the ‘everyday makers’; these are those people who are directly affected by the process although they are not actively involved in shaping or changing the process (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008, p. 203).

Therefore, when conceptualising participation in terms of participation of the members of the community, it is the third kind of participation, that is, ‘everyday makers’, which is relevant. These are the individuals who are not actively involved in shaping the process of community development but are directly affected by it. However, it is to be noted that there are the other two kinds of participants, who are more directly involved in community development, these being the members of the government and the activists. To a great extent, these are the people who have more say in the formulation of policy and the services. It is easy to see how the marginalised groups of people in the United Kingdom may get neglected in this process because although they are the ‘everyday makers’, they have little say or influence with the first or even the second group of participants, which may mean that their involvement in the process is reduced.

Defining marginalised communities in itself is a complex task. UK Aid Direct defines marginalisation as follows:

“both a process, and a condition, that prevents individuals or groups from full participation in social, economic and political life. As a condition, it can prevent individuals from actively participating. There is a multidimensional aspect, with social, economic and political barriers all contributing to the marginalisation of an individual or group of individuals. People can be marginalised due to multiple factors; sexual orientation, gender, geography, ethnicity, religion, displacement, conflict or disability. Poverty is both a consequence and a cause of being marginalised” (p. 1).

Therefore, as per the definition above, marginalisation is a process as well as a condition. As a process, marginalisation would include exclusion of some individuals. As a condition, marginalisation relates to the status of those who are marginalised and their status of exclusion. Marginalisation can be the result of certain factors which are related to the barriers. These barriers are related to the political barriers that relate to the marginalisation of certain groups of people like the racial or ethnic minorities and migrants; social barriers, which relate to the marginalisation of people on the basis of age, gender, sexuality, language, or disability to name a few; and economic barriers that relate to the marginalisation in the access to basic services, income opportunities and access to jobs (UK Aid Direct). Based on these three barriers, individuals may face problems in accessing community participation.

The marginalised groups would include children, refugees, immigrants, working class people, ethnic minorities, and the disabled. Historically, certain members of the society have been marginalised in the British society, prominent amongst whom are ethnic minorities, youth, older people (Gaventa, 2004). The idea of inclusion of those who are marginalised in the community development process relates to the desire for encouraging greater inclusion in the policy process for such marginalised groups and individuals (Gaventa, 2004). This focus towards inclusion has come with the shifts towards user involvement and participation, thus, by terming people everyday makers on the basis of the effect of the policy on them, some inclusiveness is maintained as compared to a more consumerist approach towards social policy, which sees the beneficiaries as consumers. However, an important question is whether this shift towards user participation has actually led to inclusion of the marginalised communities in the community development projects or are there barriers in the way the marginalised communities access community participation.

Barriers to community participation for marginalized groups

One of the barriers to community participation is in the form of exclusion from participation at the very basic level, which can happen when individuals from poorer backgrounds may be excluded from the higher education system. One of the methods to counter such social exclusion is in the form of “raising the aspirations” of individuals from poorer backgrounds so as to increase their participation in higher education and eliminate social exclusion that can happen for those who are marginalised due to their lack of educational attainment (Burke, 2006, p. 720). Individuals from poor families may have lack of aspiration, which is reported in a research report on marginalised communities by the Higher Education Internationalization and Mobility as a “barrier that does not allow the young to develop themselves” (HEIM, 2015, p. 44). The young have an additional social exclusion in the form of their relationship to citizenship and the participation in the democratic process, where in one study the social exclusion of young people in the United Kingdom is described as taking the form of a ‘warm’ debate about young people and participation and citizenship has and on the other side of the spectrum, a ‘cold’ debate about ‘feral yobs’ who require regulation and control” (Williamson, 2007, p. 25). Through these processes, the young get marginalised and are unable to participate in the community development initiatives.

Another marginalised group in the United Kingdom is women belonging to the Black and Ethnic Minorities (Reynolds, 2000). Indeed, people belonging to Black and Ethnic Minorities are in general marginalised in academic debate on class due to certain assumptions that are generally made about the communities. For instance, it is assumed that people belonging to Black and Ethnic Minorities are working-class, and share a working-class location; it is assumed that Black people are not concerned with the articulation of their class identify (Reynolds, 2000, p. 82). Black women, due to the interconnection between race and gender, find themselves even more marginalised than Black men (Reynolds, 2000). Therefore, the intersection between race and gender increases the marginalisation of Black women in the United Kingdom. Even when Black women enter ‘middle-class’ occupations due to improved educational attainments, a large number of them may not articulate a middle-class identity. Social exclusion of Black women from community participation then becomes conflated with their race, gender, and class.

Some marginalised communities may face specific barriers to accessing community participation. Older people or the aged have specific barriers that come in the way of their access to community participation, which may include lack of transportation, and group culture (Papageorgiou, Marquis, & Dare, 2016). Specific barriers are also faced by those who are immigrants who have recently come into the United Kingdom. The report by the Commission on Integration & Cohesion (2007) notes that there is enough evidence to suggest that migrants face series of barriers to integration and access to community participation including: “lack of practical information about how to live in the UK; lack of knowledge of their rights and responsibilities, and the advice available; non-recognition of qualifications; lack of language or employment skills; difficulties accessing English classes that meet their needs; lack of opportunities to meet local people and socialise with them q some public hostility and ignorance; and restrictions attached to their immigration status” (pp. 66-67).

While the concept of participation has emerged as one of the central aspects of policy developments involving both Conservative and Labour governments in the recent times, there is no clarity on what participation means and how it is achieved in the plethora of social policies, initiatives and guidance that has emerged around community development programmes (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). Therefore, one of the barriers in the way of the marginalised communities in access to participation is that the way in which participation can be achieved in the ‘real’ sense has not been made clear in the many social policy initiatives undertaken by consecutive governments (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). One of the areas of concern in community participation is that there is a lack of theoretical basis for community participation (Abbott, 2013, p. 3). Some of the areas that are not always clearly defined are related to the political structure within which community participation happens – local, municipal, or national, which is directly related to the issue of participation and democracy; the mix of private and public services that are created to respond to community development is another area which may lead to difficulties in participation by all members of the community, including the marginalised communities; the difficulties of defining communities itself may be responsible for the problem of marginalisation, this may happen in a certain geographical context for example, within which communities must be defined and their boundaries delineated (especially significant to the physical infrastructure services within community development (Abbott, 2013, p. 4). These are some of the areas that are part of community development structures, which may lead to the formation of barriers for some communities within the society, that may be marginalised and may eventually find themselves to be out of the process of community development. Against this background, community development initiatives may be required to define community participation for their specific projects.

The policy framework may be used to determine the nature of community participation and the barriers to real community participation may depend, to a great extent, on the way policy framework has been defined. The Conservative governments pursued a consumerist approach to community participation, in which the participation was underpinned by a market-oriented ideology (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). This consumerist ideology led to the rise of market and market-type mechanisms and the development of new public management approaches to the delivery of public services, where the end beneficiary was treated as a consumer (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). This kind of approach has specific implications for the marginalised communities and their participation in the community projects. On the other hand, the approach adopted by the New Labour from 1997 onwards was oriented towards a combination of influences, including, consumerism, as well as welfare. This led to more participatory initiatives and greater degree of democratic participation as compared to the largely consumerist approach of the Conservative government (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). The approach was more inclined towards inclusion, based on the premise that there was a degree of social exclusion and inclusion, which needed to be addressed in the social policy initiatives (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008).

Therefore, the approach of the New Labour brought in the practice in social policy formation where a broader range of voices are heard (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). The argument for greater participation by all stakeholders is that with greater participation of all concerned, there can be more benefits to individuals who participate, as well as the wider society (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). An important point in this connection is that the idea of participation flows from the end users, which includes the marginalised members of the society, as well as those who are responsible for the implementation of policies (Bochel, Bochel, Somerville, & Worley, 2008). The practice of inclusiveness in social policy formation is based on the belief that such participation will produce better policies and lead to better outcomes.

The social policy of developing resilience as a counter to marginalisation

Development of social policy for improving community participation of marginalised groups should be done on the basis of community based research, which involves the participation of the marginalised communities (Atfield, Brahmbhatt, Hakimi, & O'Toole, 2012). The participation of marginalised communities in community centred research is essential for the purpose of giving voice to the members of the communities so that the policies that are developed for such communities are responsive to the actual problems, needs, and experiences of the members of the communities (Atfield, Brahmbhatt, Hakimi, & O'Toole, 2012). Members of the community are the ‘insiders’ in the context of the research area and the researchers may be the ‘outsiders’ in such research area; giving voice to those who are part of the community being researched allows the insider experiences, opinions and ideas being given consideration for the development of social policy. Because one of the key aims of the community based research is to “bring to bear the experiences of the powerless and othered groups, that is, those groups that do not exercise control over representations of themselves”, community based social policy research will be effective if it takes into consideration the need for self-representation.

The Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach to developing resilience may be used for the purpose of developing empowerment and resilience of the communities, aimed at the marginalised members of the community. The approach identifies and mobilises assets and does not focus on the deficits. Resilience can be used for the purpose of sustainable development, which can also benefit marginalised communities as noted below:

“Sustainability and equity are key to the concept of development, and thus a central objective of community development is sustainable freedom for marginalised communities characterised by a lack of access to socio-economic opportunities, and inadequate health and welfare services. While asset-based approaches are most often focused on community development, the mobilisation of resources also serves to engender community participation, community agency and group inclusivity” (Kramer, Amos, Lazarus, & Seedat, 2012, p. 537).

Group inclusivity can be developed through resilience building. The asset based approach is different from deficit based approach, which sees marginalised communities as people who need social policy measures that are focussed on responding to the deficits. The deficit based approach is based on the problems, needs and deficiencies in a community and services to fill the gaps and fix the problems, but can also lead to community feeling disempowered and dependent (Foot & Hopkins, 2010). The asset based approach that can be adopted under the ABCD approach is based on the adaptive model; this model enables people to adapt to insecure conditions by recourse to assets or resilience factors. This model also requires a collaborative approach by different agencies, both public as well as private (Gilchrist, 2013). One of the challenges that is involved in such collaborative work and which may impact the adoption of the collaborative effort or partnerships, is that such work can be complex and complicated due to the politics developing within the communities (Gilchrist, 2013). Nevertheless, if community work practice is involved in the process, it can be used to manage the conflicts within the society so that links between sections of the society can be nurtured (Gilchrist, 2013).

A research conducted into the Communities First initiative in Wales found that the major barriers related to the community participation and achievement of community empowerment include community capacity, institutional capacity, organisational cultures and regulatory frameworks (Adamson, 2010). The Communities First initiative relates to a regeneration project in one of the localities in Wales, and the findings of this research are relevant to the point that instead of deficit based approach, an asset based approach should be adopted to increase community participation. The findings suggest that the analysis of regeneration initiatives as a mechanism of social control and incorporation of community activism into a state led agenda should be avoided (Adamson, 2010).

Conclusion

Community participation is essential for the effective implementation of community development projects. In the United Kingdom, certain marginalised groups are not able to participate in community development projects because of certain barriers to their participation. This compromises the efficacy of community development to respond to the needs of all stakeholders including the marginalised groups. One of the ways in which social policy can respond to the barriers before the marginalised groups is to include the members of the marginalised communities in social policy research so that the experiences, needs and ideas of the marginalised communities can form the basis of the social policy initiatives. Another way of responding to the barriers in community participation is to adopt ABCD approach, which is focussed on assets of the marginalised communities that can be used to create more resilience within the communities. Rather than emphasising on deficits that lead to a social policy where the beneficiaries are seen as passive recipients of the services, that can lead to a disempowered and dependent community, an asset based approach can be more useful in creating a more involved and more resilient society.

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