The contemporary government of extreme social exclusion in Bilbao: integrating gadgets and processes of self-responsibilization

Abstract

The article proposes a critical approach to the phenomenon of extreme social exclusion through the discussion of a series of theoretical proposals about marginalization, poverty and social exclusion and results in a research carried out in Basic Assistance Centers (BAC) for a group of homeless people. Against the forms of government that aim to approximate situations of abnormality to a normative center, the starting point is that society determines, through assistance, the status of those people classified as excluded. After considering the rationalities guiding institutional care programs in a number of BACs in Bilbao, we analyze, through qualitative techniques —participative observation and interviews—, the dynamics of these spaces and the practices being established between professionals and the assisted. This way, we have been able to infer the centrality of instruments such as the calendar, the schedule and the agenda in the contemporary government of social exclusion that, through the logics of accompaniment, aims to empower the assisted by promoting their conversion into agents responsible of themselves.