‘Tell me in your own words’: disabling barriers and social exclusion in young persons

Abstract

This article summarizes two research studies carried out in the University of Cantabria and the University of Sevilla with young persons at risk of social exclusion (underprivileged socio‐economic groups, ethnic/cultural minorities and disabled people). We uphold the need to study exclusion as a socially constructed process, which allows us to discuss barriers to social participation (following the social model of disability) while ruling out the essentialist and psychological explanations of inequality and social oppression. We aim to know the barriers young persons have encountered in social and school participation through their own words. We have used several biographical/narrative techniques which have an emancipating interest. Such techniques allow us to learn from the discourses of the young women or men that participated in the research and to discover the fundamental milestones that have shaped their excluded identities.

Notes

1. Narrative techniques have been used for a long time in several social sciences (anthropology, linguistics, ethnography) and particularly from the post‐modern and feminist perspective. In particular, this methodology links with the post‐modern principles of rejection of meta‐narratives and universals, as well as with the extolment of what is different from, peculiar to and typical of every human being.

2. For further information on any autobiographical techniques consult Domingo & Fernández (1999), Bolívar et al. (2001); Atkinson & Walmsley (1999).

3. Other aspects of the research have been developed in Susinos & Parrilla (2004), Susinos & Calvo (2006), Calvo & Susinos (2006), Gallego & Hornillo (2004), Lázaro & Palomera (2004), Hernández (2004) and Susinos et al. (2004).