Theorising Exclusion and Difference: Specificity, Structure and Minority Ethnic Housing Issues

This paper explores the balance between experiential diversity on the one hand, and structural factors on the other. Drawing examples primarily from 'race' and housing, the paper indicates that 'difference' is inevitably conceptualised and constructed at more than one level. There is diversification of cultures, preferences and experiences at household level, yet institutions remain crucial at other levels for any discussion of processes of exclusion. The concept of social exclusion developed here includes differential incorporation through a patterned set of processes, in which power and institutional practices are central. This, however, need not invalidate a simultaneous focus on grass-roots agency, and on experiential or cultural differentiation. Thinking in terms of 'difference within difference' offers a starting-point for analysis, both of circumstances and of relationships between exclusion and policy options.