Understanding marginalization as a social determinant of health
Abstract
Population-based studies have drawn attention to the associations between social and material disadvantage and poor mental and physical health over the life course, thereby contributing to inequalities in health. More recently, research in Britain has demonstrated that the effects of such disadvantage are cumulative through childhood and has shown that ‘ethnic minorities’ are at particular risk.
This study gathered data from persons at risk, specifically first-generation migrant teenaged girls and their mothers, in Britain and Canada, and identified marginalization as a central feature of their relationships with others. Bourdieu's theoretical perspective is drawn on to examine the processes that contribute to marginalization and the conditions of broader society that sustain and reproduce them. It was the participants’ experience that their potential goes unrecognized, their opportunities to develop new relationships curtailed and possibilities to acquire new competences were eclipsed by others’ assumptions about them.
The authors illustrate the social processes that contribute to the creation of tensions between seeking to belong and being assigned to the margins and consider their attendant influences on health. Taking direction from Bourdieu they illustrate ways in which discourses of marginalization and marginalizing practices associated with them can be interrupted, and in so doing work towards redressing processes that create a context for health inequalities.