Social exclusion and marginality in urban areas: Decolonizing theoretical and conceptual frameworks

Sociology boasts a longstanding tradition of scholars exploring the forms and logics of inequalities and social exclusion, investigating their characteristics, dimensions, and factors (e.g., Marx, 1867; Weber, 1922; Bourdieu, 1986; Bauman, 2011; Beck, 2007, 2011; Castel, 2003). Nonetheless, the emergence of critical postcolonial studies has underscored how these perspectives were Eurocentric and still anchored to binary division of the world (Quijano, 2000; Connell, 2007; Go, 2016; Santos, 2017; Mignolo, 2011; Susen, 2022). Despite drawing inspiration also from European and Western critical perspectives and thinkers, these approaches challenge the Eurocentric nature embedded in sociological frameworks. They advocate for a decolonized definition of key sociological concepts in light of the critique of evolutionary ethnocentrism. In this context, evolutionary ethnocentrism is an ideology of modern society that links the concept of modernization to the characterization of Western societies as advanced, dynamic, and progressive, as opposed to other (colonized) societies described as stagnant, backward, and underdeveloped. Therefore, within a postcolonial theoretical framework, this contribution aims to explore the potential of the concept of coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) and of abyssal exclusion (Santos, 2014) and identify the possible fields of its application for analysing contemporary forms of socio-spatial segregation. In this sense, it appears fruitful to relate the concept of abyssal exclusion with that of advanced marginality (Wacquant, 2008) to redefine urban vulnerabilities and propose a global social science vision to address inequalities, which is one of the most pressing challenges of contemporary times (e.g., Agenda 2030).