Affiliation as Solidarity: Perspective of Vulnerable Groups

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of affiliation by developing a contextually sensitive mid-level theory comprising specific elements, layers, and factors of affiliation. Vulnerable groups are a locus of analysis because they are particularly sensitive to various forms of social exclusion or non-affiliation. A binary study of persons with physical disability and treated alcoholics in Croatia was conducted by focus group interviewing. Through thematic analysis, six different code patterns were detected—solidarity affiliation, identity affiliation, alcoholism affiliation, disability affiliation, disability exclusion, and alcoholism exclusion—that represent key respondents’ narratives on belonging. Crucial findings stress how vulnerable groups ground affiliation mostly in elements of solidarity rather than in terms of identity, how layers of affiliation (social and associational affiliation) are not so clearly differentiated but still deepen insights on affiliation, and how important factors enhancing affiliation are personal virtues which are not so prominent in theory. Therefore, the role of political institutions supporting affiliation as a meta-capability should be primarily set on solidarity affiliation, should nourish various layers of affiliation, and should be supported by citizens who care about their fellow citizens, especially those from vulnerable groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Capability for affiliation
• treated alcoholics
• people with physical disability
• mid-level theory
• social affiliation‌
• thematic analysis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The dataset (in NVivo software) generated and analysed during the project is available from the corresponding author upon request.

Notes

1 In the text, we use concepts “affiliation” and “belonging” synonymously.

2 Levels of belonging by Yuval-Davis (2006): (i) “social locations” (belonging to a particular gender, or race, or class, or nation, or particular age-group, or a certain profession); (ii) “individuals’ identifications and emotional attachments to various collectivises and groupings”, and (iii) political belonging related with the membership in the political community.

3 Since the literature on problem of identity is huge, here we mention some of the work connected with capability approach (Sen 1999; Sen 2006; Teschl and Derobert 2008) but also work on identity which focuses on ethnic and religious or cultural identity which is characteristic for Croatia (Miller 1995; Malešević 2016; Gilbert 2010; Jakelić 2016; Tamir 2019). In our text, we focus on Bilgrami et al. (2018) because it demarcates clearly between affiliation as identity and affiliation as solidarity even though these two dimensions – identity and solidarity – are not mutually exclusive.

4 Relationship between identity and solidarity has been widely discussed in O’Neill 1996; Habermas 1998; Hollinger 2006; Sen 2006; Derpmann 2009; Miller 2017; Banting and Kymlicka 2017; Holtug 2022; Sangiovanni and Viehoff 2023. We do not enter into this debate because the aim of the paper is not to juxtapose identity and solidarity but rather to explore which dimension is more dominant in perception of affiliation among our respondents.

5 We are aware that the notion of “social affiliation” can be problematic but we use it here as contrast to “associational affiliation”. Further in text we will discuss appropriateness of this division.

6 This kind of relationship is also labeled as civic friendship (Schwarzenbach 2009).

7 Cooperation with the NGOs in a manner of coproduction had dual purpose, to conduct the research and to support the NGO's work.

8 The whole 8-page codebook is available from the corresponding author upon request.

9 Test-coding results are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under Grant UIP-2017-05-3462 “Well-being, affiliation and social justice”.

Notes on contributors

Ana Petek

Ana Petek is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her research interest is primarily in studying public policies, grounded in cross-sectoral comparative research design and qualitative methodology. Recently she published papers on policy goals, their features, and dimensions, that offer novel and original classifications of this phenomenon.

Ana Gavran Miloš

Ana Gavran Miloš is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia. She is mainly interested in ancient philosophy, particularly Hellenistic epistemology and ethics, and philosophy of well-being and capability approach. Currently, she is working on capabilitarian approach, with a special focus on the development of Aristotelian account of civic friendship within capabilitarian framework and a capabilitarian theory of well-being.

Nebojša Zelič

Nebojša Zelič is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. He is also head of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Rijeka. He published articles on political legitimacy, distributive justice, immigration, and the role of religion in the public sphere in various journals. He was the principal investigator of the project “Well-being, affiliation and social justice” funded by Croatian Science Foundation.