The Post Second World War period was typified in Western most developed nations by expanded approaches to democracy and human rights. Democratic principles were reasserted and expanded in many countries, reinterpreted to include all people. These various activities were based on a set of intersecting ideas: integration, mainstreaming, inclusion, and participation, all of which posited full membership of formerly excluded population in the civic and economic life of their communities (Kymlicka).
While inclusion has been improved for some, it still remains unfinished business for the most stigmatized. Even though they may be physically located in the broad community in housing and work, they are not a part of that community. Inclusion cannot be mandated. It requires broad community’s willingness to include all those who are excluded, something they are often only willing to do on an individual basis.
Although the direct inclusion of various stigmatized and excluded populations appeals to liberal ideals, it may be that it is an ineffective approach to the final goal of full inclusion. An alternative approach is based upon successful examples of the inclusion of immigrant populations. They do not scatter themselves among the general population of their new communities. Rather, they typically move to areas and cities where their co-ethnic populations also live and they build social, civic, and economic infrastructure (Light & Gold, 2000). This also allows people from the immigrant community to build leadership skills, opportunities from which they would be excluded if they were in the broad community. Once they have a vibrant and successful community among themselves, they can then begin to think about what kind of relationship they want with the broad community. Research has shown that minority populations, such as this, then have three ways of interacting with the broad community: They can integrate; they can lead full lives within their own community; or they can move back and forth between the broad and their own communities (Berry, 2005). That is, from the support of the ethnic community, people have different ways to create successful included lives.
This paper reviews my 30 years of work in adapting this approach to the most excluded populations. The communities they form are not place-based communities, but rather are “identity communities” of people with shared statuses. They may be physically scattered in the broad community, but they share identity. My work builds the economies of these communities, including infrastructure such as banks and business incubators, and small businesses development. These economic activities then also create opportunities for leadership and other skill development that are often difficult to develop in the broad community. That is, community members then make decisions about participation in the broad community from positions of strength rather than need. This paper will combine theory development with examples of how this approach works (Mandiberg, 1999; 2012; Mandiberg & Warner, 2012). Although the broad research question that has informed this work is ‘what is the best way to help stigmatized populations achieve inclusion,’ the specific question in each of the research studies has been ‘can this model of economic infrastructure be successfully adapted for and implemented by a stigmatized and excluded population?’ The dominant approach to this research and theory building has been community-based participatory research (CBPR), although some studies also include participant observation, ethnography, and survey research.
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