Those who live in societies which are in the process of being assimilated and incorporated into an emerging global society which the influence of Anglo-American and European cultures has brought into existence include people in developing nations, such as those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A proliferation of icons of North American popular culture can be found, for example, in the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas where indigenous peoples are protesting, among other things, their marginality relative to both Mexico City and the United States. Consciousness of marginality even influences debate in Latin America over which trade agreements would be most beneficial in bringing particular countries closer to the centers of power. The broader condition of feeling marginal relative to various concepts of the center, thus possessing a stigmatized identity, is often linked to concepts of otherness and alienation. It should be noted, however, that while a marginal person may feel alienated, a person who feels alienated is not necessarily marginal.
Marginal persons are victims of a seemingly immutable, structural alterity.
Those whose marginality is not best captured by the earlier definitions of living in but not belonging to two worlds, or living in an assimilating culture, fit in the alienated world of marginality, of subaltern otherness. Such marginal persons may be female, dark-skinned, very young or elderly, poor, disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual or transgendered, identified with religious or ethnic minorities, rural, or otherwise Geographically or ideologically peripheral to some center. Aristotle maintained that the Greek man was a rational creature capable of governing less rational creatures such as children, women, and slaves. In such a stance, marginality is a time-honored tradition throughout the history of Western philosophy. For Leopoldo Zea, marginality is a mechanism which one human being can use to deny the humanity of another.