The ins and outs of market shaping: Exclusion as a darkside?

•Market shaping can have negative outcomes for many core and non-core market actors of various kinds.•Negative outcomes can be organized across two dimensions: Actor irrelevance and tightness of boundaries.•Negative outcomes generate 4 types of actor responses: exile; false identity, cross-bordering; migration.•The dark side to market shaping is particularly present in cases of “exile”. The other types of situation can be rather labelled as downsides. The research over the past decade that has contributed to the understanding of market shaping has not sufficiently taken into consideration the negative consequences – voluntary or otherwise – of such actions on non-focal actors especially in terms of exclusion. This paper attempts first of all to address this state of affairs by building on certain key components of the notion of exclusion as theorized by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. ‘Cold case’ data is subsequently analyzed to investigate how, why, by whom and with what exclusionary outcomes markets are shaped. This leads to a proposal of a typology of actor responses in exclusionary market situations. This typology highlights the relative inexistence of total exclusion thus tempering nonetheless the claim of dark side in market shaping, in favour of that of downside.