Alternative of the Movements against Social Exclusion

Comparison of the Movements in France and Japan

Abstract

 This article is a comparative study of the social movements against social exclusion in France and Japan, using empirical data. Since the mid-1990s, social movements against social exclusion by the homeless, the unemployed and the undocumented migrant workers has occurred in France and Japan. In both countries, these movements situated themselves in the constellation of the movements against globalism and neo-liberalism. Despite this commonality, they don’t share the same objectivity. The French movements reclaim the social rights of poor people. They demand housing and employment to be integrated with middle class society. This is not the case of the Japanese movements because participants internalize the self-responsibility ideology of neo-liberalism. They take it for granted that they are undeserving, because poor, to reclaim social rights. This difference results from the social back ground of the participants. The majority of the French participants are migrants of the first generation, and they don’t internalize the same ideology. The demand of French participants is integration to the middle class society, while that of Japanese participants is the negation of the values and lifestyle of the middle class. Impossibility of integration to the middle class society makes the Japanese movements oriented to the alternative, more than the French movements.