Introduction

As Chapter Two has already explained, it is central to our understanding of the concepts of exclusion, inclusion and marginalisation that differentiation comes before exclusion. We begin with differentiating five major systems:

• • work;

• • income/consumption;

• • the social network;

• • the cultural system;

• • the political system.

Within this framework different understandings and conceptualisations of differentiation into subsystems will also be applied. For example, the system of social networks can be further differentiated into subsystems. These include not only the nuclear and the extended family, but also various networks of friends – at work, in associations and at other places, neighbours, and so on – and between the various types of support a person may receive from the networks (economic, emotional, educational, and so on).

Our most central empirical focus is on the general questions about the relations between the different (sub)systems (Chapter Two): how far can one predict a person's position within other (sub)systems from her/his position within one specific (sub)system?

Within this more general formulation several specific issues about the relations between systems are dealt with in both theoretical and empirical terms. Theories are tested by our empirical data, upon which we attempt to formulate new hypotheses. The empirical analyses will first of all be based on the INPART data; other observations, however, when they can shed new light on the INPART observations or give them a broader perspective are also referred to.

More specifically, this chapter focuses on two main issues. The first is about patterns of inclusion and exclusion. In an overview of the different (sub)systems, what are then the most general and important patterns of inclusion and exclusion? Our attempt to discern these involves three patterns and four themes.

Patterns

• 1 A comparison of patterns of inclusion/exclusion between a group of employed persons on one side, and a group of unemployed/activated persons on the other.

• 2 Patterns of inclusion/exclusion among the groups of unemployed and activated.

• 3 Patterns of relations between any single individual's inclusion/exclusion into or from the various systems.

Themes

• 1 To what extent do our data support the dominant European labourmarket theme about ‘the royal road to inclusion’? That is, that inclusion into the system of employment in the sense of paid work is, if not the only, then the most important way to inclusion also into other systems.