The Progress Of Social Marginalization

With the increasing speed of social transformations,individual social status and life situations have been changing.During adapting themselves to the new status and roles,people tend to be caught in social marginalization.This is both a process and result of social adaptation,a serious problem influencing social development and social stability.Thus exploring the approach of social marginalization is critically important for integrating marginal groups and promoting social integration.Social marginality involves profound meanings:on the structural level,it includes the formal marginal status and substantial marginal situation;on the mental level,it indicates the marginal personality.During the process of social marginalization,there are complicated relationships between these two levels.Take the parents who lost their only child in the YS County as an example,this research adopts unconstructed interview and participant observation to explore the progress of social marginalization.The special experiences of the loss-of-single-child parents provide the real sample for the study of social marginalization.Because of multiple reasons,the loss-of-single-child parents have given up the traditional practice of reproduction of "the more children,the more blessings",and become the only-child family with high risks.When the only child died of various causes,their life fields would take fundamental changes.On the social status,the loss-of-single-child parents are forced to be on the marginal status,manifesting itself in the degradation of physiological functions,the weakening of family functions,and the instability of family structures.This transforms individual's life structures,making them frequently in the marginal situations.Such facts will increase the risks of marginal personality and make mental structure show the marginalization,which is reflected in the deviation of role definition and the distortion of social identity.Marginal social status,mental states,and social relationships are mutually constructed.Marginal personality,as a part of the agency,will exert an influence on social action,showing itself in the increase of homogenous interactions and the decrease of heterogeneous contacts.The essence of social marginalization of the loss-of-single-child parents is the fragmentation of routinized activities and the reconstruction of daily life.Online interaction plays an important role in the reconstruction of social life,which builds the online groups based on common identity,promotes the formation of resistance identity and project identity,and further impels them to launch the rights-protecting actions.The rights-protecting actions are not only the consequence of social marginalization,but also the medium to sustain the reproduction of social marginalization.The empirical research shows that a comprehensive approach is required to strengthen the social integration of the marginal groups.On the one hand,marginal individuals should exert their subjective initiative to actively participate in social activities.On the other hand,society should build the bridge between marginal groups and other groups.And also the government should establish social security system for the marginal groups so as to weaken the structural disadvantages and improve the social integration.