Social Exclusion and Inclusion of Young Immigrants in Different Arenas – Outline of an Analytical Framework

The more explicit focus on social exclusion in the social sciences began in the early 1990s in order to extend the focus beyond poverty by analyzing the relation between the individual and the society. One of the main initiators of this focus in social sciences at that time was Room (1995) known for his concept of multi-dimensional disadvantage, which included aspects such as material and physical surroundings. Much of the research on social exclusion since then has been policy oriented as it grew out of collaboration between the European Union and a research group that developed a set of primary and secondary indicators to measure the phenomenon. Despite these efforts, there are still controversies related to the definition of the concept. Some researchers also criticize the implicit moral metanarrative since it is built on the assumption that social inclusion or integration, as the opposite of social exclusion, is inherently good and desirable. As a result, efforts to tackle exclusion can often be led by normative assumptions about how social life should be organized, which ignores the ways in which the terms of inclusion can be problematic, disempowering or inequitable (Hickey and de Toit, 2007).


Introduction
The more explicit focus on social exclusion in the social sciences began in the early 1990s in order to extend the focus beyond poverty by analyzing the relation between the individual and the society.One of the main initiators of this focus in social sciences at that time was Room (1995) known for his concept of multi-dimensional disadvantage, which included aspects such as material and physical surroundings.Much of the research on social exclusion since then has been policy oriented as it grew out of collaboration between the European Union and a research group that developed a set of primary and secondary indicators to measure the phenomenon.Despite these efforts, there are still controversies related to the definition of the concept.Some researchers also criticize the implicit moral metanarrative since it is built on the assumption that social inclusion or integration, as the opposite of social exclusion, is inherently good and desirable.As a result, efforts to tackle exclusion can often be led by normative assumptions about how social life should be organized, which ignores the ways in which the terms of inclusion can be problematic, disempowering or inequitable (Hickey and de Toit, 2007).
Of late, it has been common to speak of a new social exclusion perspective, which is better fit to analyze the more heterogeneous, multicultural and complex society (Body-Gendrot, 2002).As far as I can see, there have been few totally new focuses in the research on social exclusion during the last couple of decades, except for a much stronger focus on ethnicity and/or migration status compared to the mid 1990s.One example of this is the interactionalist perspective with its stress that instead of focusing on separate variables like education and income, it is more useful to focus on the intersection of variables such as ethnicity, gender and class background (for example, Modood, 2007).The relational and dynamical focus that Room proposed has been further developed within qualitative research.For example, Weil et al. (2005) underline the need to focus on relationships and interactions among and between excluded and included groups and communities, and state that it is important to include changes over time instead of static structural explanations.Another important contribution has been the transnational perspective of Wimmer and Schiller (2003), who criticize the national container focus of the social sciences (and social exclusion research definitely most often fall into this trap as well).
In this chapter, I will discuss relevant aspects for the understanding of social exclusion and inclusion of young immigrants in different arenas, thus underlining the multi-dimensional aspect of social exclusion (Room, 1995).I will distinguish between educational exclusion, labour market exclusion, spatial exclusion, relational exclusion and finally, socio-political exclusion. 1  Social exclusion is a complex phenomenon and consequently, it is difficult to reach a joint agreement of how it should be defined.Nevertheless, the common trend is that social exclusion is defined in relation to education and work.For example, Raaum et al. (2009) define a young person as socially excluded at some moment in time if he or she is currently outside the structured arenas of school and work but also has a high probability of remaining outside in the near future.Atkinson (1998: 14, cited in Raaum et al., 2009) points out that 'people are excluded not just because they are currently without a job or income, but because they have little prospects for the future'.Social exclusion is a twosided process in the sense that it denotes both the instances, when a person is expelled from a community or a place and denial of access to 'outsiders'.
In addition, the concept can be used to denote symbolic forms of exclusion, such as being marked as different (Vestel, 2004: 428).These cases of 'othering' can vary from overt racism, to institutionalized ways of treating someone as 'different', such as special classes or projects targeted to specific groups of people (even though such strategies are meant as a help).We can distinguish between the feeling of exclusion and the more observable exclusion when actually not being allowed access (this can be on a legitimate basis when the person does not fulfil requirements of access or illegitimate as in discrimination) (Fangen 2006a).
In order to grasp the complexity of social exclusion, it is important to look for experiences of social inclusion among young people who appear to be marginalized.It is also important to look for experiences of social exclusion among young people who according to conventional standards are integrated (who have a job, who take higher education and who are included in social networks with people from the majority population).For example, some young Muslim women (even when in well-paid, high-status jobs) feel excluded if they are not allowed to pray during the work day or if they are not allowed to wear a hijab.
Traditional assimilationist theories of social exclusion seem to be based on the assumption that young people prefer inclusion to exclusion.But many young persons temporarily choose to stay outside the more institutionalized settings of society (Raaum et al. 2009).This might be related to an opposition to or a feeling of not mastering the behaviour demanded in a regularized school or work setting.For others, it is related to alternative priorizations, such as the wish to explore the world by travelling to other countries or the fact that they become parents at a young age and therefore feel forced to temporarily stay outside the arenas of school and work.
Exclusion and inclusion are often presented as dichotomous variables, with marginalization as the unstable position in between (Raaum et al. 2009).According to this view, the marginalized person stands in the doorway: either he or she moves out towards exclusion or in towards inclusion.However, a more dynamic perspective that includes different arenas might open up the possibility that exclusion from one arena at the same time is followed by inclusion in another arena.In general, however, marginalization is more severe if a person loses his or her foothold in several different arenas at the same time (Room 1995).Some indicators of social exclusion tend to occur at the same time, such as persistently low income levels (directly linked to having a job or not) and the access to jobs, health, housing and other factors associated with power and status.According to Room (1995: 235), it is important, both for policy and for explanatory purposes, to disentangle different elements of hardship and to identify the interrelationship, for example, between financial poverty and poor housing, between educational failure and lack of skills on the job market, between deprived childhoods and subsequent patterns of health and sickness.Most excluded are the ones who belong to a plurality of disadvantaged categories.
Generally, gaining access to jobs and education is a critical stage in the lives of young people.In some sectors of the labour market, young immigrants face greater barriers than young people without an immigrant background, due to employers' prejudices or their inadequacies, for instance, lack of language fluency.On the other hand, research shows that young people with immigrant backgrounds often have an extra drive, because they expect that things will be more difficult (Lauglo, 2000).Descendants with certain country backgrounds also perform better than the majority population.An integrated qualitative and quantitative perspective makes it possible to see the ways in which young people act and react on their situation, thus avoiding a 'blame the victim' explanation based on a onesided focus on their lack of skills (van Dijk, 1992).
In order to reveal the complexity of social exclusion, it is important to study the experiences of young people from a variety of backgrounds.It is also important to look for transitions between inclusion and exclusion in an individual's life and analyze what it is that contributes to such transitions.By viewing social exclusion as a process, we do not fix the explanation to an either/or situation.With a lifespan focus we can consider the efforts of young immigrants to combat social exclusion, or we can see how in some periods they accept social exclusion and also willingly contribute to it.
In addition, the relational focus makes it important to ask questions like: Who is doing the excluding?Are there some specific people who exclude others?If so, are these other young adults of the same age, as in street racism, or is the exclusion made by the individual's own family as when a Muslim girl who is breaking the codes of proper behaviour is expelled?Or is the exclusion caused by people in positions of power such as employers, teachers, politicians, police or social workers?

Educational exclusion
There are vast differences in grades, drop-out rates and length of education between immigrants with different countries of origin.Some perform better than the majority population, whereas others perform worse.The main reason for these differences seems to be the fact that immigrants of different origins have different pre-migration class backgrounds and educational profiles (Modood, 2007).In Norway, Pakistani and Turkish young people more often drop out of school, and more often do not take up higher education, than young people of Indian and Vietnamese origin (despite the same length of residence) (Fekjaer 2007).The main reason is found to be class differences among the parents from these different groups, but also significant are the different attitudes towards education.In this way, class and ethnicity (here in the sense of country of origin, which in reality does not always equal ethnicity) interact in producing distinct patterns of inclusion and exclusion.Just as attitudes to schooling, to higher education and to financing education by means of loan, are influenced by class, so are they influenced by ethnicity (Fekjaer, 2007;Modood, 2007).
Yet, the danger of presenting statistics of the performance of immigrants of different countries of origin is that it might reify a picture of each immigrant group.A qualitative study can be used to analyze the experiences of immigrants with one common country of origin but with different class backgrounds, with rural vs. urban backgrounds and with different migration trajectories.In Norway, immigrants from Somalia are more often unemployed and if employed have a low income, combined with having more children than all other immigrant groups in Norway (Henriksen, 2007).However, in my study of Somalis in Norway, I interviewed many young Somalis who pursued higher education.Common for all of these was that they had parents who also had taken higher education -either from the homeland or after coming to Norway, or their parents had held privileged positions in Somalia.This high level of education or status of their parents might have contributed to these young people having higher aspirations themselves (Fangen 2008).However, statistical data are necessary in order to say something conclusive about the meaning of parent's education for young adult immigrant's educational aspirations and achievements.
There are differences between first-generation immigrants who come as refugees and those coming through family reunion, as well as differences between those coming from war areas and those who do not have such experiences.This is partly a matter of having had any access to schooling before arriving in the host country, partly a matter of the extent to which one has experienced traumas or having or not having someone to relate to when arriving.Qualitative research can show how the migration history affects later educational performance, as well as experiences of inclusion and exclusion.There are vast differences in the experiences of those young immigrants coming from southern Somalia who had never attended school because of the war and some young immigrants from other countries (or other areas of Somalia) who had ordinary access to schooling in the home country before arriving in the country of reception.In many cases, however, child migrants learn the new language quicker than their parents, and it is the children who support the parent's learning.Some migrant parents who face barriers to insertion in the labour market also seek comfort in ethnic networks that might be counter-productive to active participation and consequently, they serve as poor role models for their children.
Among young men (both with or without immigrant background) who do not master the school setting well and feel stigmatized by the teacher or in general just bored of school, the tough guy, often inspired by the gangster or other sub-cultural images, is an alternative source of respect and status (Fangen 1998: 47;Moshuus 2007;Sernhede 2002;Vestel 2004).A young person who drops out of school and joins a criminal gang or a youth sub-culture instead is excluded from one setting, namely school, but included in another setting, namely the gang or the sub-culture.In Willis' (1977: 113) well-known study of white working-class boys in school, his main argument is that it is not the school that excludes these boys; they exclude themselves through the development of a counter-school culture which prepares them for the future on the shop floor.According to Willis, it is an element of self-domination in the acceptance of subordinate roles.However, this is experienced, paradoxically, as a form of true learning and as a kind of resistance.
But such an attitude towards school does not always appear as a collective reaction.In the Weight of the world, Bourdieu (2002: 61) writes about a young Moroccan man who has an illiterate father and a mother who is hardly able to write.Bourdieu argues that: 'Everything suggests that the organizing principle behind his rejection of school and the defiant attitudes that lead him towards, and gradually trap him in, the role of the "tough", is the desire to avoid the humiliation of having to read out loud in front of the other students'.In cases like this, the self-exclusion come about in order to avoid the humiliation of being excluded by others.The distinct multicultural community of the peer group is for some young people an alternative setting for inclusion, instead of school which is an arena where they do not feel comfortable.
All in all, lower class background seems to be the major factor to explain the higher dropout rate and lower grades of immigrants compared to nonimmigrants.This may be related both to the importance of role models, but also to the degree of parental support and motivation.Parents' high expectations are one factor that explains many young immigrants' extra drive to perform well.For some however, the expectation that they will experience discrimination contributes to their lack of motivation to strive for further achievements.

Labour market exclusion
When assessing what factors contribute to a harder access to the labour market, there is often an emphasis of what the individual lacks, as regards experience, network, qualifications, profiency in the majority language, knowledge of how the 'system' works and self-confidence.These factors create barriers for young people in general, but for young immigrants, an additional barrier in some cases is employers' reluctance to employ persons with visible minority background (Rogstad, 2000).
However, ethnic stigmatization can influence men and women differently.In some segments of the labour market, it seems that women with immigrant background have better access to jobs than men with the same background.It would therefore be erroneous one-sidedly to speak of a double disadvantage for women with ethnic minority background (Modood, 2007: 61).There is also an element of self-exclusion among young women with immigrant background as regards labour market.Statistical research shows that women with immigrant background have a decline in their employment over time, whereas the opposite is true for women without an immigrant background.One reason is that more women with immigrant background prioritize child rearing to active employment.Therefore, when they start to get children, they choose to work less or not to work at all (Brekke 2008: 61).
The problem for young immigrants of the first-generation is that they often do not have the network that leads to the right kind of jobs (Wiborg, 2006).Statistical research has shown that education reduces the risk of unemployment and it diminishes the income gap between people with or without immigrant background.The reluctance to employ young people with visible minority background is more prevalent in some parts of the labour market than in others.There are huge differences between immigrants of different origins when it comes to unemployment.Young migrants who have experienced war have greater difficulties with this.Living for many years in a society without any infrastructure, including a functioning school-system, gives a person high qualifications, but these are the qualifications of how to survive from day to day (Fangen 2008).These skills are not easily convertible to the skills needed in order to succeed in a regulated labour market.This is similar to what Weil et al. (2005) write on the problems of excluded youth adapting to a working identity.Many socially excluded young adults dream of a regular job, or even a job where they can be the boss.According to Weil et al. (2005), typical of many excluded young adults is that they resist authority and attempts by others to tell them what to do.Their dreams about a good job can be understood as part of a wider search for an idealized normality that includes education, work, a traditional family, spouse, children and house.For those who are marginalized, the wish to achieve this implies a dream that is exactly the opposite of the conditions in which they find themselves (Weil et al., 2005).Factors like unemployment, poor housing conditions and strained relations with family, friends and partners may be dashing these dreams against the rocks daily (ibid.).Weil et al. (2005) see the need for such dreams as a survival strategy.It enables young people to deny a present that might paralyze them altogether.
A factor typical of young adults who manage to avoid further economic and social marginalization and to benefit from the chances an individualized society provides is that they succeed in changing their strategies according to changing situations and circumstances.Young people who manage to alternate between unemployment, work and the educational system prolong the traditional adolescent phase, 'literally turning their life into an experience of lifelong learning' (Weil et al., 2005).Trying out possible options might function as a means of improving their competence to survive in ever changing situations (ibid.).Bourdieu (2002: 62) argues that young marginalized adults with and without immigrant background share every trait except ethnic origin.What some young people have in addition is an ethnic stigma inscribed in their skin or their facial features, as well as in their name, their clothes and their manners.These aspects intensify or radicalize the handicap linked to the lack of certificates and qualifications, itself linked to the lack of cultural and more specific linguistic capital (ibid.).
More than in other spheres, discrimination is a major barrier against young immigrants' active participation in the labour market.However, it is hard to document how huge this problem is, since it is difficult to control for the effect of all other variables, such as lack of qualifications, and so on.In the next section, I will focus on a sphere that is not so dependent on the individual resources, but rather on the collective ones.

Spatial exclusion
One concern of Room's (1995: 238) theory of multiple disadvantages is to widen the focus, by not only focusing on the resources of the individual, but to include also a focus on local communities.He argues that deprivation is caused not only by lack of personal resources but also by unsatisfactory community facilities, such as dilapidated schools, remote shops, poor public transport networks, and so on.Such an environment tends to reinforce and perpetuate household poverty.
Neighbourhoods can thus produce distinct forms of social exclusion.Bourdieu (2002: 124-25) points out that different social spaces are defined by their position relative to other sites.
The poor suburbs of Paris that collect the most disadvantaged groups contrast in every respect with areas of Paris where there is a concentration of the rarest goods and their owners.In France, large public housing projects were built in the French Banlieues in the 1950s to the 1970s, and the houses were filled with low-income immigrant families.A stigma became attached to these areas because of the fear of a 'cultural clash' and of downward mobility by white working-class families and added to this was the rapid decay of the buildings (Body-Gendrot, 2002: 373).Young ethnic minority men vandalized buildings and public amenities as a protest against the way projects were designed and maintained, as well as against the French state bureaucracy for putting tenants in the same identical mortar and concrete boxes without any sensitivity to ethnic and cultural preferences (ibid.).
The stigmatization of suburbs on the one hand contributes to a feeling of collective exclusion, while on the other hand, it can open up for alternative forms of inclusion based on the experienced sameness and common destiny of being foreigners in relation to the national state.The young men studied by Sernhede (2002) in one of Gothenburg's suburbs, did not see themselves as Swedish, but identified instead as 'blackheads', thus reinventing a racist term by making it their own resistant identity.Some of them also identified with the suburb as such.Sernhede sees a relation between these young men's unwillingness to participate in elections or in politics in general, and their experience of not being members of the Swedish society.Their felt powerlessness led to a fascination with violent gang culture and Afro-American hip hop, which again reinforced their hostility towards the dominant culture.Sernhede argues that the welfare state can diminish problems of inequality by different forms of social benefits, but it cannot solve these young people's experience of being outsiders in relation to the Swedish society.The hip hop sub-culture or even the suburb as a separate society within society, are alternative sources of community for some of these young people.This is similar to what Vestel (2004) found among the young men he studied in one of Oslo's North-Eastern suburbs.There was a 'community of difference', that was built around new practices of greeting rituals, language use, dress and music.
Among young migrants and descendants who live in Europe's suburbs, there are also many (especially those who have high ambitions as regards education) who do not identify themselves with the suburb because of its connotation of no future and of criminality and drug use.Young people define their own hierarchies between places, which are sometimes the same as the more dominant common sense hierarchies, but sometimes slightly different.Thus, different places and different arenas are linked to certain feelings of inclusion and exclusion, and for many young immigrants the high status areas of the city are the sites were they do not feel at home, and as the examples above show, this also appears true for some of those who take high status education.In addition to houses in these areas being too expensive for many immigrants, there is also an element of self-exclusion when young people with visible minority background choose not to spend their time in these areas, and later in life, do not aspire towards owning houses there.The ethnic segregation of the city marks a symbolic barrier against real class mobility of young immigrants.
For many adults, it is tempting to seek inclusion in their own ethnic community, whereas many of the young immigrants prefer multi-ethnic communities, and also communities that are not too dominated by people with an immigrant background.For young people in general, the cities' educational and job opportunities are important pull factors for urban residency.The city is more multicultural and urban dwellers are more used to cultural complexity compared to people in smaller places.However, some small towns or rural communities have a particular welcoming attitude, e.g.related to a lack of workforce.Thus, in some cases, there is less exclusion in small communities than in large cities, and easier for immigrants to integrate.
All in all, spatial exclusion is a complex matter.Suburbs that serve as sites of identification and belonging for some, are at the same time exactly the places where other young people feel the outside world's stigma of the place as a burden they do not want to be associate with.Thus for the latter, the only way to escape exclusion is also to escape the collective barriers of the neighbourhood.

Relational exclusion
Ethnic segregation in housing areas and differentiated access to higher education and wellpaid, high-status jobs in the labour market are exclusionary mechanisms at the macro level.But there are also many forms of exclusion in face-to-face social interaction, including more indirect forms of exclusion, such as subtle ways of watching, talking or in other ways relating or not relating to others.According to Taylor (1994: 25), our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, and so a person can suffer if others mirror a confining or demeaning picture.The lack of recognition or being associated with categories that one does not one identify with can inflict harm and be experienced as a form of oppression, as it imprisons the individual in a false, distorted and reduced form of being.Some young people adopt such depreciatory images of themselves, so that even if some of the obstacles to their advancement fall away, they may be incapable of taking advantage of their own opportunities (Taylor, 1994).Such processes are sometimes seen among young immigrants, that they adopt the stigma to which their ethnicity is viewed by the majority (Eidheim, 1987;Lewin, 1948).
Also more defined social rituals can be perceived as excluding, as when the drinking pattern of young non-immigrants tend to exclude young Muslims who follow the prescription of their religion to avoid alcohol.Some young immigrants are vulnerable to the signals from non-immigrant persons, and misinterpretations occur.As for those persons who tend to ignore the young immigrants this does not need to be an action (or non-action) meant to hurt.Maybe the person not acknowledging the other is shy; or maybe he is just occupied by his own inner thoughts.There might also be norms of ceremonial distance, as Goffman (1967: 63) calls it, that the young immigrant is not aware of.Ceremonial distance is related to class background in the sense that 'the higher the class, the more extensive and elaborated are the taboos against contact'.Goffman describes several examples of non-person treatment, where people of higher status act as if the other was not there at all (ibid.: 67).Goffman analyzes the presence of avoidance rituals and presentational rituals in relation to differences of status and class background, but only indirectly touches the issues of ethnicity and racism related to such phenomena.Not to recognize the other through presentational Social Exclusion and Inclusion of Young Immigrants in Different Arenas -Outline of an Analytical Framework 273 rituals might be an expression of racism, albeit not necessarily on a very conscious level.There might be an attitude that the other is not important, she is not an equal.This might also be linked to a certain form of embarrassment.She is a foreigner, and therefore the person does not know how to approach her.In order not to do anything wrong, he chooses not to recognize the other at all, which in effect might be more hurtful for the other than if he had chosen the wrong greeting ritual.
More outright exclusionary practices in face-to-face relations are various instances of racism.Many authors argue that when analyzing phenomena, such as exclusion, racism and humiliation, one must take into account how it is felt more than the intentions of those imposing it (Fangen, 2006b;Fangen, 2008).Some young people tend to downplay the importance of experiences of exclusion or racism or humiliation or even express understanding of them, while others tend to be oversensitive to such experiences and interpret all barriers as a result of racism or as humiliation (Prieur, 2004).This can be analyzed in relation to their situation in general, their social network, their class position, and so on (Fangen, 2008).

Socio-political exclusion
Structural or political factors such as restrictive immigration policies, the organization of the welfare system, the integration policies, and so on, are relevant in the search for factors that might lead to exclusion.In a previous article (Fangen, 2006b), I discussed how encounters between Somali immigrants and different public offices in Norway are often experienced as humiliating by the Somali immigrants.They feel that they are met with lack of empathy and of respect in these institutions, and interpret the advice received as 'you must adopt our way of doing things, which again is better than your way of doing things'.This also holds on a more macro level, in immigration policy.For young immigrants, the emphasis on the need for a restrictive immigration policy can be perceived as linked to the message 'you do not belong here'.Of course, the real arguments behind the policy are defined otherwise.
The nation state in itself is built on the distinction between us who are inside and them who are outside.The distinction between the included and the excluded is an issue of political controversy and debate (Heidar and Semb, 2007: 322).Citizenship is not only a juridical phenomenon, with enormous consequences for immigrants searching for a new start in life, but also a sociological and political phenomenon expressing an ever more complex relation between the individual and the state.
The acquisition (or denial) of citizenship is also a factor that feeds feelings of inclusion or exclusion.Undocumented immigrants and non-returnable refugees are in a special situation, as they are exempted from a number of rights, including social benefits (they only have the right to medical care and so-called emergency benefits).Some young immigrants remain in this situation for years, such as the non-returnable refugees who have received a negative answer to their request for asylum, but do not return because of ongoing conflicts and non-existent opportunities in their homeland.They feel that they have few other opportunities than criminality, since they cannot legally work (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009).
In some sending countries, like Somalia, help to the sick, poor, unemployed, and so on, goes through the family or clan network, which means close and intimate contacts.By contrast, in the social democratic welfare state, public institutions have an important role in giving aid to the needy.These institutions can be characterized by inaccessibility and complexity, and it is not simple to feel recognition within the framework of these formal institutions (Fangen, 2006a).
It is important to not only focus on immigrants' integration (or lack of it) in the host society, but also on their access or lack of access to political status, rights and opportunities for political participation (Bauböck et al., 2006: 92).In a previous article, I have analyzed how young Somalis with different class backgrounds take different participatory roles, and some activate themselves in clan-based networks, others in Norwegian politics and yet others in transnational political activity (Fangen, 2007a;Fangen, 2008).Immigrants' exclusion and inclusion do not only occur within the borders of the nationstate, and the immigration policy is one out of several macro features that are not a result of national policies alone.

Conclusion
In this article, I have discussed different aspects of social exclusion in different social settings (Fangen et al. 2010).Quantitative research has shown that there is an obvious relationship between length of education and access to the labour market, and the general trend is that education diminishes exclusion in the labour market for young people with immigrant background.Young immigrants with no education after secondary upper school are lead towards temporary low-paid jobs (but so are young people without immigrant background).But young immigrants with higher education in some professions also experience hard access to the labour market, and immigrants from Africa have a harder access to the labour market than immigrants from other regions.Part of the explanation of this difference is that different migration trajectories lead to different positions in the host society.More immigrants from Africa than from other continents come as refugees.But discrimination also plays a role and African immigrants seem to be more exposed to prejudices among the majority population.
For first-generation immigrants, lack of fluency in the dominant language and knowledge about the 'system' can contribute to drop out from school and incomplete school certificates which in turn restricts access to higher education.This in turn will direct young immigrants towards lower skilled jobs in a labour market and for some will also lead to a state of welfare dependency (Fangen et al. 2011).On the other hand, for child migrants and descendants, school performance, length of education, and so on, equals that of young people without immigrant background.
Although higher education to some extent prevents against social exclusion in face-to-face contact, many young migrants and descendants experience being marked as different, although they have high-status educations.Having a well-developed network including both non-immigrant and immigrant friends, and who take higher education or have a good job, are in the best position to not be too vulnerable to the many humiliations in daily life (Fangen, 2006b;Fangen, 2008).
As an individual lives his or her life in many different arenas, analysis must reach beyond the borders of the local community, and the different arenas in which processes of social exclusion occur must be seen together.By not restricting the focus to only education or the labour market, but rather seeing inclusion and exclusion in these arenas together with young people's belonging or non-belonging and participation or non-participation in local communities, in gangs and peer groups, in families, in leisure activities as well as in civic and political organization, we can better understand social exclusion in young people's lives.