The Network for Protection against Discrimination within the project “Joint Action for the Promotion of Equality and Social Justice of Marginalized Communities” and financially supported by the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia, prepared a report on the research on the impact on the welfare and health of marginalized communities, entitled ” The daily and emotional life of injustice: discrimination, health and relations “, by authors Ana Blazhevska and Slavcho Dimitrov.
The need for this research arose from years of experience and insights into the disadvantaged position and the multitude of unfavorable factors affecting marginalized social, ethnic and sexual minorities. The idea is to address the various aspects and influences on the position of minorities and their marginalization through subjective experiences and experiences of discrimination and injustice, and their overall health and social status.
The aim of the research is to understand how discrimination and injustice affect everyday life, shape experiences and worldviews and frame the social position, relations and worlds of discriminated communities.
Discrimination in research is not treated exclusively as a formal absence of equal and consistent treatment but as an absence of essential, systemic and structural equality, which in addition to redistribution of goods, includes personal/subjective position, psycho-physical health and well-being, and social dynamics.
The focus is not exclusively on one-time or repetitive actions, which can be legally easily identified as acts of discrimination, we want to explore the experiential, affective and social effects of social injustice and inequality, visible through the wide and historically accumulated institutional obstacles to the development of values, vision for a good life, development and practice of capacities, expression of own experiences and needs, as oppression, on the one hand, and domination, i.e. as institutional barriers to self-determination of one’s own actions and conditions of action, on the other hand ( Young 1990: 33-37).
The complexity of the phenomenon and the multiperspective of the approach enables a more complete, but also more layered analysis which can then be used in developing different (social, health, educational) policies and a multi-sectoral approach in dealing with discrimination and its concrete and material effects. The research covered three target communities: lesbians, bisexuals and gay men, textile workers and Roma, in order to examine the impact of sexual orientation, gender, class and race.
You can download the report at the following link
Below are presented key findings, conclusions and recommendations through infographics.
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1 March 2022