Community participation - Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Understanding the links between participation in governance …
more likely to engage in various forms of civic participation than those in
disadvantaged areas, just as those in higher managerial and professional
occupations are more likely to than those in routine occupations. 21 However, this
measure includes anyone who has been engaged in some form of civic participation
in the previous 12 months. Focusing on the most active – the people who have been
engaged in some form of civic participation at least once a month in the previous
year – the Survey finds that those living in the most deprived areas are actually more
active than those living in the least deprived areas. 22
Others suggest that income itself is unimportant; the key factor is that the better-off
have greater resources and skills to support higher levels of participation, which can
be ‘mobilised’ around particular issues. 23 While we might accept that it is the latter
that is most crucial, others suggest that:
Everything that disadvantages people in the first place will prevent them
from developing social networks or participating in collective activities:
lack of money, poor transport, lack of childcare, an unsafe or depressing
environment and the daily grind of having to manage on very limited
financial resources. 24
Of course, there are some highly deprived areas with high levels of participation, and
some affluent areas with lower participation. 25 There is also evidence that the level of
civic engagement among disadvantaged communities is underestimated because
they prefer less formal forms of participation, shying away from involvement in
committee-like organisations and structure in favour of more informal activities. 26 But
this reinforces the earlier point – if surveys miss this informal layer of participation,
it’s just as likely that formal governance is disconnected from it too.
Marginalised groups
Black and minority ethnic groups and disabled people are under-represented, inter
alia, when it comes to voting in elections, among local councillors, in school
governance, in further education college boards and among the trustees of voluntary
and community organisations. 27 For many minority groups, campaigning for equal
recognition is a much higher priority than engaging in governance activity itself. But
these activities, despite the social links that emerge from them, tend to be perceived
as lying outside the political mainstream at which they are most often directed. 28
People rarely experience one of these excluding factors in isolation. Disabled
people, for instance, are more likely to be in a lower socio-economic group than their
able-bodied counterparts, and are also more likely to be unemployed. 29 The gap
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