CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF MIGRATION 1
3. Migration to Europe and hope for social inclusion
The key elements of social inclusion comprise access to social goods and services with appropriate resource allocation across the social contract; empowerment of communities who are skilled and have genuine participation in decision-making structures of society; institutional trust and building democratic governance bodies; and building understanding and bridges between people.8 Communities and individuals build a sense of belonging and inclusion. Social inclusion is characterized by society’s widely shared social experience and active participation, by a broad equality of opportunities and life chances for individuals and by the achievement of a basic level of well-being for all citizens9. Social inclusion is based on removing all barriers to individuals’
opportunities in the labor market, housing and access to social services. Within an inclusive society, free from forms of exclusion, newcomers can actualize their human and cultural capital to their full potential. In addition, social inclusion facilitates bridging social capital and horizontal ties in a context where diversity is valued and all groups’ values are seen as equally important to the society as a whole.
The above description of social inclusion is a kind of characteristics that are well known in the receiving countries of Europe. This situation encourages the people of the south, who are
7 Ibid.
8 Lund B. 2002, Understanding State Welfare: Social Justice or Social Exclusion?, Lon- don: Sage.
9 Sen, A 2001, Development as freedom, London: Oxford University Press.
forced to leave their home, to reach Europe as it is considered a continent where they can find all the facilities and ways to reach a social inclusion.
Migrants hope to reach a social status in the hosting countries, if we take as an example our country (Algeria), we can easily notice the integration of youth African who managed to get employment in the building sector. They are asked to complete different kind of tasks, the demand of their labor is in increase, as long as the native people they do not want to do certain hard works.
This encourage those migrants to move to the north as they are well informed through social nets and contacts that they can easily get rid from poverty and exclusion when they reach the other part of the Mediterranean sea. At the same time European countries tries to coordinate with humanitarian organizations and other NGO in order to reduce the harm of those refugees and migrants who left their homes and try to settle in Europe.
The main conclusion one may defend is that these refugees and migrants are well informed about possibilities of inclusion and the weight of social policies undertaken by European authorities in favor of those newcomers. They are very informed due their abilities of using new technologies of connections and they can easily benefit from all the reforms launched by European government in order to unsure human rights of all migrants.
This situation encourage people to evade social exclusion in their home countries and benefit from global initiatives when it appears, as it is the case in Europe as a democratic neighbor continent. This encourages those migrants for crossing the Mediterranean Sea hoping to settle and tries to get integrated in an area where social cohesion and social inclusion are possible and defended by different political institutions and associations.
Conclusion:
The treatment of the social exclusion and social inclusion, concerning those youth people of the south, may help us to deepen our sociological analysis. This leads us to retrace the history of this subject in the world, to conclude that sociology as a subject initiated during the 19th century with the appearance of the
industrial revolution in England, and the development of different surveys that were launched by reformists and scholars, hoping to measure the social cost and dilemma of this revolution. In addition, this was very clear in the writings of Karl Marx when he analyses sociological phenomena concerning the working class in Europe.
Due to different variables USA appeared a very fruitful place to renew the subject of sociology when Europe had been affected by the first world war and the USA became an Industrial countries that attracted many immigrants from Europe this immigration lasted as a main subject to be treated sociological and with new methodology based on empirical studies. The polish peasant represent the famous example that treat the problem of acculturation and migration in the USA. This had led the development of different field studies and the foundation of the Chicago school in the USA.
The south and mainly the MENA region and Africa represent another area that we have to think about it and encourage further analysis and studies in order to illustrate that sociology of youth has been reappeared in this region of the Globe. We cannot think about the youth without treating the Arab youth and their role in the upheaval in the Arab world known as the Arab spring. Moreover, poverty, unemployment, wars, discrimination, ethnic conflict, drove to social exclusion and the enlargement of the number of youth who passed to the fringe society in the African countries. These two main problems have accelerated the phenomenon of migration.
The density of this latter during the last decade represent the main subject that can be studied by sociologists and try to understand different sociological concepts such as the social exclusion, the social inclusion, the social cohesion etc.
References
Francis, P. 1997. “Social capital, civil society and social exclusion,”
in Kothari, Uma and Martin Minouge (eds), Development theory and practice : Critical perspectives, Hampshire: Plagrave.
Lund, B. 2002. Understanding State Welfare: Social Justice or
Social Exclusion? London: Sage. Moulai Hadj Morad,
“Intercontinental disparities and migration,”
Philippe Fargues, Christine Fandrich, “Migration and the Arab Spring,” MPC Research report 2012/9, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies.
Rawal, Nabil. “Social inclusion and exclusion: A review,” in Dhaulagiri journal of sociology and anthropology, vol. 2.
Sen, A. 2001. Development as freedom, London: Oxford University Press.