ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the concept of social exclusion has two distinct connotations: its comprehensiveness and its dynamic character. Instead various notions of disadvantage have been used in theoretical and policy discourse, including ‘poverty’, ‘hardship’, ‘destitution’ and ‘deprivation’. In the latter half of the twentieth century, various experts worked on developing a more sophisticated approach to the definition of poverty. The chapter outlines the rationale for the conceptualization and measurement of social exclusion to be used in the research. It deals with a review of theoretical and political attempts to define a range of concepts linked to disadvantage, from the more simplistic notions of poverty and deprivation to more complex notions of persistent multi-dimensional disadvantage and social exclusion. The chapter attempts to operationalize social exclusion, and other forms of disadvantage, and draws on the main elements of the most influential research to outline methods that will be used to social exclusion in this research.
