Article Conceptualizing Psychosocial Disability in Social Exclusion: A Preliminary Discourse Justin Pallickal Jose 1 Shanuga Cherayi 2 Anvar Sadath 3 Abstract This article conceptualizes identity-mediated psychosocial disability of socially excluded individuals and groups from a socio-behavioural perspective. It postulates collective representations, inequitable social interactions and personal characteristics that lead to perception and internalization of negative identity in members of stigmatized groups. Non-dominant identity induces self-imposed and society-ascribed psychosocial disability through stigmatization and discrimination. Psychosocial disability is a state where individual or collective sense of incapacity restricts optimal use of individual and collective human agency to influence out-groups favourably to achieve self-expansion and communal expansion. The aspects of psychosocial disability include poor self-concept, low ethnic self-esteem, negatively internal- ized identity, poor social integration and conflicts in social relations. It results in psychosocial disability that further increases social exclusion, reduces quality of life and well-being. This article concludes that socially excluded individuals and groups experience psychosocial disability in everyday life. Keywords Psychosocial disability, human agency, self-expansion, communal expansion Introduction The concept ‘disability’ is complex and multi-dimensional. In socio-behavioural and health sciences, disability is conceived for its dynamic interaction with health conditions, environmental and per- sonal factors (WHO, 2002). Traditionally, disabled persons are persons with activity limitations and 1 Post Doctoral Fellow, Rabindranath Tagore Centre for Human Development Studies, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, India. 2 PhD Scholar, Department of Social Work, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, Pondicherry Central University, Puducherry, India. 3 PhD, Lecturer in Psychiatric Social Work, Department of Psychiatry, St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru, India. Corresponding author: Justin Pallickal Jose, Post Doctoral Fellow, Rabindranath Tagore Centre for Human Development Studies, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata 700064, India. E-mail: justinpallickaljose@gmail.com Contemporary Voice of Dalit 8(1) 1–13 © 2016 SAGE Publications India Private Limited SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/2455328X16628770 http://vod.sagepub.com