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Inequality and Opportunity: the Role of Exclusion, Social Capital, and Generic Social Processes in Upward Mobility

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Inequality and Opportunity: the Role of Exclusion, Social Capital, and Generic Social Processes in Upward Mobility Inequality and Opportunity: The Role of Exclusion, Social Capital, and Generic Social Processes in Upward Mobility Linda M. Burton and Whitney Welsh Duke University A William T. Grant Foundation Inequality Paper December 2015 William T. Grant Foundation • 2015 • Inequality and Opportunity I Inequality and Opportunity: The Role of Exclusion, Social Capital, and Generic Social Processes in Upward Mobility Linda M. Burton and Whitney Welsh Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation (Grants SES-1061591 and SES-0703968) for its support of the research reported in this article. We also thank the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grants HD36093, HD25936, and PO1-HD-39667) and the Administration on Children and Families (Grant 90OJ2020I), as well as many private foundations, for core support for the Three-City Study and Family Life Project ethnographies which inspired the conceptual discussion presented in this working paper. We give special thanks to our dear friend and colleague, Raymond Garrett-Peters (who recently passed away), for his guidance and thoughtful insights on this article. We will keep the ideas alive for you. Linda M. Burton Deans Oice, Trinity College of Arts and Science, Duke University Whitney Welsh Social Science Research Institute, Duke University William T. Grant Foundation • 2015 • Inequality and Opportunity Introduction In this paper we discuss the association between social boundary maintenance, and emotion management (see exclusion, social capital, and socioeconomic mobility Schwalbe et al., 2000). These processes are frequently among America’s poor, and how economically and represented in race and class discrimination behaviors racially privileged individuals and groups participate and practices and implicitly involve members of society in marginalizing this population. We render three as a whole, regardless of whether actors share the same arguments. First, we contend that social capital is a geographic or physical space (Burton et al., 2010). Third, key process in mitigating the efects of social exclusion we assert that context matters relative to how the poor as cause and consequence of poverty, and is thus a can assuage the micro processes that perpetuate social critical resource for disadvantaged families seeking exclusion and their capacity to garner and leverage socioeconomic mobility (Brady, 2009; Lin, 2000; social capital to attain upward socioeconomic mobility. Silver, 1994; Wilson, 1987). Second, we argue, as has We conclude this discussion by ofering public policy Prus (1987) and Schwalbe et al. (2000), that beyond the recommendations that focus on these micro social common macro level sources of social exclusion (e.g., processes as agents of social exclusion and impediments to institutional racism) that contribute to poverty in the social capital and socioeconomic mobility for the poor. We U.S., there are micro level social processes that govern suggest that policy interventions must be designed in ways social interactions both within and between groups of that seriously consider these marginalizing processes, lest the “haves and the have-nots” that also shape poverty we, as a global society, will continue to foster inequality, outcomes. These exclusion-laden processes preclude the social exclusion, and disadvantage as a way of life for some poor’s accumulation of social capital and comprise four and not for others. generic social processes: othering, subordinate adaptation, William T. Grant Foundation • 2015 • Inequality and Opportunity 1 Spatial Inequality and Poverty in the U.S. Our discussion of social exclusion, social capital, and High rates of poverty and growing class-based spatial socioeconomic mobility begins with a portrait of the U.S. segregation did not bypass America’s rural landscapes poverty and inequality landscape detailed recently in the (Weber et al., 2005). The poverty rate among rural work of Burton, Lichter, Baker, and Eason (2013). In the Americans (i.e., those living outside metropolitan U.S., the irst two decades of the new millennium ushered areas)—16.5 percent—exceeded the nation’s overall in growing spatial inequality and concentrated poverty, poverty rate in 2010. Today, the rural poor (7.9 million) which was characterized by the uneven geographic constitute about 17 percent of America’s poor population, spread of historically disadvantaged populations into yet they remain largely invisible to some social scientists segregated and isolated communities in inner cities, aging and policymakers despite their presence in almost every suburban communities, and rural small towns (Curtis, geographic corridor in the U.S. The rural poor are found Voss, & Long, 2012; Lichter, Parisi, & Taquino, 2012; in geographically isolated and economically-depressed Lobao, Hooks, & Tickamyer, 2007). This new geography parts of Appalachia, the Delta, the Southern Black Belt, of haves and have-nots was reinforced in the aftermath the Midwest and Great Plains, the Paciic Northwest, New of the 2007–2009 “Great Recession” (Grusky, Western, England, the Alaskan panhandle, and on American Indian & Wimer, 2011). The economic downturn and rising reservations in the Upper Midwest and desert Southwest inequality left a trail of personal misfortune and family (Ulrich & Stanley, 2011). upheaval as it made its way across the U.S. landscape, driven by its chief engineer, rising poverty rates (Jensen, Race and ethnicity also igure prominently in the McLaughlin, & Slack, 2003). Poverty rates increased geographic segregation and isolation of the poor. Some nationally, spiking to 15.1 percent in 2010, and the number of the most impoverished racial and ethnic minority of poor Americans—46.2 million—was at an all-time high populations live in geographically isolated rural areas (DeNaves-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2011). and have done so for generations (Lichter, 2012; Summers, 1991). In this context, America may be entering a new Much of the scholarly and public discourse on U.S. poverty period of growing spatial economic fragmentation, which is and inequality has focused on big-city populations, which inextricably linked to changing race relations and economic have been hit especially hard by slow job growth, high and political incorporation. African Americans in the unemployment, and the housing crisis. Indeed, the poverty Mississippi Delta and the Southern Black Belt crescent rate reached nearly 20 percent in 2010 among the nation’s face exceptionally high rates of poverty (Lee & Singelmann, metropolitan principal (or central) cities (DeNaves-Walt, 2006), as do Mexican-origin Hispanics in the colonias of Proctor, & Smith, 2011). Surprisingly, more of America’s the lower Rio Grande Valley (Saenz & Torres, 2003), and poor were living in economically disadvantaged American Indians on reservations in the Great Plains neighborhoods despite unprecedented declines in states and the American Southwest (Snipp, 1989). The concentrated poverty during the 1990s (Reardon regional concentration of rural minorities, especially the & Bischof, 2011). Since 2000, segments of the U.S. poor, underemployed, and uneducated, is a historical legacy population residing in high-poverty urban neighborhoods of racial subjugation and oppression, slavery, conquest, (of over 40 percent) rose by one-third (Kneebone, genocide, and legally sanctioned land grabs (e.g., in the Nadeau, & Berube, 2011). At the same time, America’s historical case of Mexicans who controlled vast land upper-income groups increasingly cordoned themselves holding and property in the Southwest) (Tomaskovic-Devey of in gated communities, aluent neighborhoods (e.g., & Roscigno, 1997). Plandome, Hewlett Neck on Long Island, or exurban developments in Northern Virginia), downtown luxury The statistics are often staggering. Today, more than one condos, and exclusive resort communities (e.g., Aspen) half of all rural blacks (57.9 percent) and 66.8 percent of (Park & Pellow, 2011). This strategy of opportunity poor rural blacks, mostly in the South, live in high-poverty hoarding and segregation are leading indicators of counties (Lichter, Parisi, Taquino, & Beaulieu, 2012). growing socioeconomic inequality in America (Hartman, For rural Hispanics, the corresponding poverty igures 2014; Massey, 2007; Tilley, 1998). are 31.9 percent and 38.7 percent, respectively. Rural minorities are highly segregated from their white counterparts, regardless of income (Lichter, Parisi & Taquino, 2012). Rural racial and ethnic segregation often matches or exceeds big-city neighborhood patterns. William T. Grant Foundation • 2015 • Inequality and Opportunity 2 Social Exclusion The demography of inequality and the spatial distribution Social exclusion “is not just a situation, but a process that of poverty in the U.S. bring a recurring story of American excludes” (Rodgers, 1995, p. 43). It is characterized by: life to the fore. Indeed, whether they are documented citizens or not, Americans are either exposed to, turn 1) incomplete or unequal integration of the poor into a blind eye toward, or are deeply embedded in lived society (Daly & Silver, 2008); experiences that involve micro social processes that exclude the poor. 2) disadvantaged access to status, beneits, and the human capital building experiences (e.g., education) that should The concept of social exclusion is a term used most be rightfully aforded to human beings (Brady, 2009); commonly in the European and Latin American scholarly discourse on poverty (Dewall, 2013; Daly
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