Social inclusion in the system of the foundations of the Integration of Russian Society: a comparative analysis of values and practices in institutional and informal contexts

One of the ways to understand what social inclusion is is to study this phenomenon as a multi level phenomenon of modern social life. Social inclusion in everyday reality occurs as values (cultural level), social norms (institutional level) and as a set of practices (level of organizations and informal interactions of local communities). In modern literature, it is customary to consider social inclusion and integration of communities as phenomena of grassroots initiative, socio-cultural experience, creating interactions aimed at supporting stable points of support for social cohesion (Gauntlett, 2011, Manzini, Coad, 2015). As part of our research, an attempt was made to show how social inclusion is embodied in the context of Russian society. We also tried to develop practical recommendations for the dissemination of inclusive practices and facilitation of constructive grassroots civic engagement for both local communities and businesses in cities. 

INCLUSION AND EDUCATIONAL SPACE – PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS 

One of the key areas for the formation and dissemination of inclusive attitudes is the educational space. The relevance of studying the designated context is exacerbated by macro–social factors - negative, and sometimes deliberately aggressive representation of migrants and refugees in the public sphere. Is there a pluralistic construction of otherness? What is the situation with educational materials intended for the integration of migrants themselves?  To answer these and other related questions, one of the parts of our project was devoted to the analysis of modern textbooks for children from families with migration experience (grades 1-4). The results of the study (Kozlova, 2020) showed that the boundaries of intercultural differences, although they continue to be clearly reproduced in illustrations and examples of textbooks, but in fact relate mainly to the diversity of folklore and everyday culture. The very image of "different" is not based on value or normative differences of cultures, it emerges positive, inviting to active interaction and dialogue. However, the picture of a kind receiving society, infinitely open to new social experience, is shaded by the passive nature of the roles of migrants. They are almost always shown in service roles, never have managerial functionality or any other position of authority, and the success of integration is often associated in examples with assimilation discourse. Conscious or unconscious attempts to build a system of fixed social hierarchy through the objectification of cultural differences are fraught with the reproduction of the logic of the so-called "differentialist racism" (see in detail: Schnirelman, 2011), which emphasizes the irreducibility and insurmountability of the differences that exist between One's Own and Others. Conclusions on this part of the project invite both authors involved in the development of integration textbooks, as well as teachers, social workers, in one way or another engaged in the field of integration education, to rethink the value-normative foundations of the representation of cultures towards a more complete representation of multicultural ideologies. This is necessary both to reduce xenophobia in the host society, and for the successful, full-fledged inclusion of representatives of ethnic and cultural minorities.

Continuing the analysis of the educational space, within the framework of the project, various aspects of the experience of working with heterogeneous space were revealed through microsociological analysis on the example of the study of diverse cultural and social composition in reading groups. The reading group, which historically emerged as a homogeneous social practice of reading activist texts, is being transformed today into a phenomenon with a cross-cultural component, including different people, with different cultural, professional and biographical backgrounds. Implementing an autoethnographic analysis of the teacher's experience, the challenges and advantages of working with a multicultural environment were shown (Andreev, 2020), which is revealed not only as a challenge, but is also evidently considered an advantage through which all participants in this social interaction benefit. 

EMOTIONAL CULTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: QUALITATIVE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL INCLUSION 

Gradually turning to the consideration of the level of organizational culture (not only in educational environments), the project described fundamental social transformations associated with the development and change of modern emotional culture (Simonova, 2020), which is directly related to the emotional indicators of the success of inclusive and integration processes in general. The analysis of the internal connections of emotional imperatives (clear rules that people direct to themselves and others in certain situations that require a particular emotional reaction) leads us to the problem of the conflict of rational and emotional in a person's daily life. Against the background of this conflict, more and more people in modern societies are forced to turn to grassroots solidarity in order to maintain and reproduce their internal, psychological resource. Thus, the importance of empathy as a special form of emotional work that binds and supports grassroots interactions of people increases. However, empathy and the empathy associated with it are undergoing transformation today - rationalization and commodification, thereby being internally devalued or reduced to reasoning about which of the groups deserves more moral, and therefore material support. "Compassion Fatigue" (Figley, 2002; Wilkinson, 2019) leaves its indelible imprint on the quality of integration and, in general, the willingness of our society to accept various minorities.

The basic contextual factor, in terms of its role in the inclusive, and more broadly in the integration process, which we studied within the framework of our project, is organizational culture. It is obvious that organizational culture can act as a medium for the development of inclusion and as its direct conductor, but also as its direct obstacle, culture "is not inclusive by default" (Goryainova, Iarskaia-Smirnova, 2020). Based on the analysis of the role of corporate social responsibility  programs implemented by large businesses (Russian companies and companies with international participation) in bringing the "spirit of inclusion" to the level of local communities, the team was able to identify two approaches that reveal how businesses form an inclusive agenda and become authors of ideas and drivers of inclusive practices at the local level communities.
The first approach assumes that the company only outlines areas within which social grassroots initiatives of residents themselves, representatives of local communities arise, who receive financial and other resource support from the company on a competitive basis.
Another approach is that it is the company itself that creates a whole set of social inclusive projects that correspond to its social responsibility strategy, in which a variety of inclusive practices are implemented, the target groups for which are also selected by the company. In this case, the local community acts as an active participant and beneficiary, but does not implement the functions of the initiator. 

PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BUSINESS AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES 

In this regard, it was also possible to formulate several practical recommendations for the dissemination of inclusive practices:

1. First of all, attention should be paid to the state of cohesion of the local community with which it is planned to work, it is necessary to establish the fact of the existence of common interests, as well as awareness of the community about the leader, an activist who will be able to competently negotiate
2. In the absence of such a leader or activist (or their group), we recommended activating a pro-bono consultation session with the most competent of the existing members of the local community, which can already be considered the beginning of inclusive practice on the ground.
3. Both local communities and local NGOs should take a proactive position in identifying inclusive projects already implemented by the company. The "inclusion request" should come from the community itself, since no one except himself knows the really pressing issues that need to be resolved within the framework of the proposed inclusive project or practice.
4. A special role in the formation of an inclusive agenda is played by the representation of the local community and non-profit organizations in social networks at the level of public sites or websites, this will allow communities to declare their features and interests on the world Wide web, as well as raise awareness of the community itself about how it develops and what issues it intends to solve. Business, by funding training for community representatives to create and develop Internet resources, is already making its contribution as an agent to promote inclusive projects. 

The main result of our research is an empirical fixation of the fact that the domestic context at this stage of its development is characterized by a trend of formation of social cohesion "from above", where the key agents, initiators of cohesion are power, political structures, or big business. On the one hand, this has a positive effect on the situation of promoting inclusive values, albeit in insufficient quantities for the fundamental value transformation of Russian society. On the other hand, agents actualizing the resource potential in their hands to promote the ideas of inclusion and social integration often ignore the interests and needs of a large number of social groups in urgent need of such measures (for example, a high level of invisibility of people with migration experience, including experience of labor migration, etc.). 

ATTITUDES OF STUDENTS OF PEDAGOGICAL SPECIALTIES IN RELATION TO INCLUSIVE EDUCATION 

The overwhelming number of modern studies of the importance of the role of a teacher in promoting the principles of both taking into account and maintaining diversity and overcoming inequality in general are based on the use of mass survey methods. In this situation, the subjective meanings that future teachers put into understanding the essence of inclusive education and their own professional mission are not always quite obvious. The study was conducted in order to contribute to understanding the prospects for the dissemination and development of inclusive culture and practices, as well as ways to improve the effectiveness of responding to the principles and requirements of inclusive education. According to the results of the study, it was possible to get an idea of the socio-cultural situation in which modern graduates of pedagogical universities find themselves in terms of their attitude to inclusion and inclusive education. Often, not only the lack of an objective opportunity to implement inclusive principles in educational everyday life, but also the basic unavailability of teachers themselves can be considered as a factor of inclusive policy. The presented research complements the pool of works by domestic authors who note as an important characteristic of the current stage of development of the general education system the insufficient readiness of teachers and support specialists.  

ANALYSIS OF THE REPRESENTATION OF SOCIALLY VULNERABLE CATEGORIES OF THE POPULATION AND INCLUSIVE PROCESSES IN THE TEXTBOOK 

This part of the project continues to develop the general framework for the analysis of normative educational discourse, paying attention to the analysis of school textbooks. The focus of the study was on textbooks of "Social Studies" for grades 5-11 (Education Publishing house, 2019-2020).

It is worth highlighting important trends related to the inclusion agenda and reflecting the content of the analyzed textbooks:

1. The discourse that has been established in recent years regarding people with disabilities can be called inclusive: people with disabilities are represented as having an unconditional value for society, and society is oriented towards "supportive inclusion". In the private space, the attitude towards people with disabilities is represented in the context of individual moral duty, in the public – as a clearly defined social norm, which is supported (implemented and promoted) by the efforts of actors of different types and levels (individual efforts of people with disabilities themselves and their immediate environment (family, friends), public initiatives (non-profit organizations, charitable funds) and state and international programs);
2. Property inequality is presented in textbooks in the categories of wealth and poverty. This type of inequality claims in the manuals to be an explanatory model of social inequality as a topic in general.  It is normalized and is explained solely by the nature and intensity of individual efforts of actors in the market. 

EDUCATIONAL INCLUSION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 

Attention in this part of the project was focused on the problems of overcoming inequality in access to higher education of indigenous peoples. Empirical data were collected by semi-structured interview method as part of a case study of the Department of Komi-Permian Language and Literature and the Russian Language of Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University. The collected data allowed us to conclude about the adaptive potential of soft inclusion strategies that allow an individual to independently vary the degree of cultural closeness-openness.