Conceptualizing Psychosocial Disability in Social Exclusion: A Preliminary Discourse

Abstract

This article conceptualizes identity-mediated psychosocial disability of socially excluded individuals and groups from a socio-behavioural perspective. It postulates collective representations, inequitable social interactions and personal characteristics that lead to perception and internalization of negative identity in members of stigmatized groups. Non-dominant identity induces self-imposed and society-ascribed psychosocial disability through stigmatization and discrimination. Psychosocial disability is a state where individual or collective sense of incapacity restricts optimal use of individual and collective human agency to influence out-groups favourably to achieve self-expansion and communal expansion. The aspects of psychosocial disability include poor self-concept, low ethnic self-esteem, negatively internalized identity, poor social integration and conflicts in social relations. It results in psychosocial disability that further increases social exclusion, reduces quality of life and well-being. This article concludes that socially excluded individuals and groups experience psychosocial disability in everyday life.