Social Exclusion/Inclusion, ‘’two sides of the same coin’’

The purpose of social policy is to correct some wrongs in society. As part of this study is to find out how an educational policy is contributing in bridging the gap between the north and the south of Ghana, it is appropriate to theorise how the implementation of some educational policies can bring about some forms of exclusions in the process. In this light, Biraimah Karin and his colleagues have studied educational policies on meals for school children and pupils’ school transportation in Brazil and have concluded that these policies “can simultaneously be inclusionary and exclusionary by facilitating the inclusion of pupils within municipal schools, while excluding them from a quality education”.

(Biraimah et al. 2008: 85)

According to them, this paradoxical two-way effect of educational policies occurred when some municipalities in Brazil decided to find another way of feeding the school children because the schools had poor infrastructure as well as untrained cooks and, in the end, “this new school function served to divert them from their focus on teaching and learning” (Biraimah et al. 2008: 85). On the part of how the policy of transportation for rural school children to school fared, they reported:

Moreover, making school transportation accessible to pupils in rural areas created a new demand on the budgets of the municipal system, often characterized by a large number of small municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants. The municipal education system bought buses or vans, hired drivers, and had to pay fuel and maintenance expenses. In some municipalities the services were outsourced to companies paid by the municipalities.

But no matter what the solution chosen, all were too costly for municipalities’ tight budgets. Thus, the implementation of these policies in association with the work conditions, salary and educational level of elementary school teachers led to the inclusion of pupils in the educational system, but to their exclusion from quality education (Biraimah et al. 2008: 85-65)

Many scholars see exclusion and inclusion as antonyms while others regard that notion as simplistic and argue that the two terms are not necessarily opposite in meaning.

Some of the social scientists who have waded into the debate of the relationship between inclusion and exclusion are Alison Woodward & Martin Kohli. They argued that the two terms are not ‘’necessarily opposites’’ and that they are ‘’intricately linked leading to contradictions and paradoxes’’ (Woodward & Kohli 2007: 1). On his part, Sayed Yusuf as well as he and his friends argue that the two concepts are juxtaposed in a way that the inclusion of some people brings about the exclusion of others and that they are not opposing concepts because by considering them that way, we stand the risk of losing out the process by which people are

excluded or included (Sayed 2002; Sayed et al. 2007). Kabeer accentuated this assertion by aptly arguing that:

The intersecting nature of different forms of exclusion and inclusion results in the segmentation of society, and in clusters of advantages and disadvantages, rather than in a simple dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. There are various ways in which these segments can be characterised. For instance, we can think in terms of privileged inclusion, secondary inclusion, adverse incorporation or problematic inclusion, self-exclusion and ‘hard-core’ self-exclusion (Kabeer 2000): 87).

He went on to explicate that ‘’privileged insiders’’ take a central position of the mainline institution whose ideas shape the ‘’rules and norms’’ while the

‘’secondary insiders’’ are at the periphery of the group (Kabeer 2000: 87). Going by this, I argue that in some instances, we can find some kind of exclusion in an in-group which is supposed to be bounded by symbolic boundaries thereby making exclusion and inclusion two sides of the same coin. Again, going by Kabeer’s explanation, as we will see later in this study the colonisers and their cronies in the Gold Coast were ‘’Privilege insiders’’ whiles the north was the ‘’secondary insider’’.

This relational arrangement favoured southern Ghana where they had access to valuable resources of the nation state in comparative terms. Ironically, they were all ‘’insiders’’ except that they were ‘’insiders’’ of different positions and standing.

Some were at a central position and controlling affairs whilst others were at a peripheral position. In consonance with this, Jackson argues that a binary and polarised construction of exclusion and Inclusion is paradoxical because that presupposes a ''unitary'' notion of power where the included wield power and the excluded have none or less of it. Power is however ‘’dispersed, contingent and unstable’’ and ‘’excludedness’’ is not fixed but in a continuum (Jackson 1999: 132).

Nasir Carrim articulated his understanding of Inclusion/exclusion as ''conjoined'' concepts in theory and in empirical terms where the process of inclusion brings about exclusion and vice versa (Carrim 2003: 20).

In the light of this sociological ambivalent principle which informs us that there is the possibility for a social group to be included and excluded in the same process and in which I share in, I do relate it to the place of northern Ghana. When we talk of finding support for the poor, deprived and the generally excluded by way of social protection, it is not necessarily a panacea to the social problem at hand.

This is because the act of inclusion can bring about exclusion unknowingly or unintendedly (Zerubavel 1993). More so, inclusion as it may seek to clear barriers and make opportunities available to all could have latent or unintended consequences that may not completely make the plight of the excluded better.

Thus, the excluded stand the chance of being in a vicious cycle of exclusion which one could term ‘’being part without feeling part’’. This is a double-barrelled manifestation in education ably argued by Somel (2019: 1) as: “On the one hand, school is considered a stage for assembling and harmonizing different social groups; on the other hand, it is a stage for legitimate segregation.”

Having read the debates on these concepts, I would like to position myself with scholars who argue that inclusion and exclusion could be two intertwined concepts.

Like the double edged sword, as one side of it does inclusion the other side performs exclusion. Also, Charlse Tilly seems to agree with this assertion as he writes:

Since every inclusion entails some exclusion, these processes [inclusion & exclusion] incorporate categorical inequality into public affairs. Where polity members succeed in directing state-controlled resources to their own exclusive activities and in using government power to commit other people’s effort to the extraction of return from those resources, state-backed exploitation and opportunity hoarding occur (Tilly 1999: 199).

In a similar way, we shall later in this thesis see that the north has been a part without finding sufficient part of the resources. They were said to be incorporated into the Gold Coast by the colonialists but were treated as peripheral to it. Despite the fact that they look closer when the need arises, their remoteness is much

conspicuous than their closeness to the larger group. They are therefore paradoxically inside and outside the group at the same time.