Is the curry college part of a new dawn
Is the curry college part of a new dawn
Professor Mike Hardy CMG OBE, 20th November 2011
….School to train UK nationals in line with Tory policy of deep cuts in immigration and scrapping language of multiculturalism….
The long-expected Coalition strategy for integration is expected very soon. From all accounts, there is a big change in language, and a stated need for disassociation with both past talk and actions promoting cohesion at local levels towards talk and actions that promote integration.
The emerging new approach includes a focus on tolerating difference within a clear and greater commitment to national identity, and on stronger ties between strategies for diverse communities and both social and labour mobility, including immigration. The ‘curry colleges’ strategy for preparing British-based workers for British-based jobs (to reduce the negative consequences of restricting the immigration of specific key skills) illustrates the point.
It may be that the important change is that integration is now seen as an essential element in top-down economic and social policies, rather than mainly as a response to the challenges that diversity and multicultural neighbourhoods bring to our cities and communities. But this is a big change and includes explicit assertion of the relationship between economy, immigration, the issue of ‘Britishness’, hate crime, particularly the anti-Muslim hatred in Britain, and the concern for peaceful togetherness at the level of communities.
All this is to be welcomed as society continues to struggle with the super-diversity fuelled by open markets, huge population movements and the growth in free-moving ideas and speech. And all this is against a backcloth of economic strain, growing economic inactivity among the wannabe super-active young and a worrying growth of intolerant, anti-minority groups seeking both scapegoats for social and economic difficulties, and opportunity to proselytise their, mostly, hate campaigns.
The change appears to validate the view that the path to a cohesive society will require actions at both local and national levels –and, indeed, might also need interventions in the region and beyond. Through the new lens of the Coalition-led discourse, community cohesion can no longer be seen simply at very local levels. The attention to a set of overarching conditions for integration creates the opportunity for a better understanding of the whole story, rather than just some of its parts.
It is clear that in our interconnected world, both big and small external events have significant and almost immediate impact on local communities; so, events overseas may trigger waves of economic or political migrants who radically change the cultural composition of local places. So developing policy approaches that identify and help dismantle barriers, alongside policies that identify and set in place incentives to integration will be important.
At the same time, when we add up all the locally cohesive communities do we arrive at a cohesive Britain? Clearly not. It is encouraging that, as the Coalition develops its cross-Whitehall buy-in to a strategy, stronger recognition appears to be emerging that national, regional and even global dynamics have a significant impact on the willingness and abilities in local communities to work on cohesion, let alone integration.
What we understand to be four strands to the new integration strategy lift the agenda to the national level:
Firstly, by wanting to strengthen our identification and engagement with ‘our nation’ through actions such as national eventism (the Queen’s diamond jubilee, the Olympics and Para-Olympics) or looking for stronger guarantees about competence in English as a common language from new arrivals.
Secondly, with a commitment to greater involvement and inclusion of ordinary citizens and explicit policies against intolerance and extremism. This will include a specific and important new drive against “anti-Muslim hatred”, new national conversations and interactions to help remove the obstacles to working and living together with difference.
Thirdly, by establishing a clear link to social mobility, and seeking to create a real change that will deliver believable potential for people and their families to flourish and where ‘birth is never destiny’. The strong perceptions held by some that they just do not have a stake in our society must be one of the most important barriers to bust.
And fourthly, by seriously establishing more common ground at both national and local levels with some of our most challenged community relations, such as the Gypsy and Traveller communities. There is a component, also, that focuses singularly on thousands of troubled-families.
This is by any measure a big agenda, and it feels more and more like a new social contract. There are big benefits in getting it right, and providing we can be convincing that the benefits will be shared, openly and fairly, we should be able to mobilise those with influence. This will, however, mean delivering one very special and important common ground – the ‘fairness’ that lies at the centre of the Coalition’s words. The government’s strategy for social mobility aims to tackle unfairness at every stage of life with specific measures to improve social mobility from the foundation years to school and adulthood.
But so far, children born to poor families are still less likely to break free of their background than they were in the past, and the amazing expansion of university places over the past few years has benefited those from richer backgrounds far more than poorer, younger people. A continuing strong relationship between family income and education attainment remains at the heart of Britain’s stickiness in social mobility. And other relationships between ethnicity, faith, and family stabilities with educational attainment highlight the challenge.
Busting this barrier to integration through leveling the field a bit for those in disadvantage will not be just about income redistribution. The so-called intergenerational mobility that will lead the young to aspire to outperform their parents in terms of jobs will more than likely require targeted services in addition to sharing out the income pot a bit more fairly. Improving schools for deprived communities and promoting and supporting participation in post-compulsory education and training will help with the barrier of poor educational attainment.
To start on this journey, we need to be clear about the parts as well as about the whole. So when we talk about communities whom are we including? And when we speak about common ground and stronger national identity are these clear and widely understood? Or is there a danger that these are coded labels that may not attract the necessary trust from all sides?
We could start by being much more open in our definitions: national cohesion is a complex idea and not one that is simply about diverse communities pulling together, constructively in times of stress and challenge. Communities might be local places where people live together and have feelings about belonging, about a shared future. We hope that this is possible even where people are very different from one another, so we look for places and conditions where difference is not an obstacle or something negative, but where, in the overall scheme of things it actually doesn’t matter that much. Difference might actually bring untold benefits, new coalitions and new potentials.
National cohesion is not just the sum of cohesive communities. Many leave their immediate communities every morning to join diverse workforces, schools or colleges. Workplace cohesion has serious implications, we think, for workplace success –whether measured by commercial performance or by the well-being of the workers. And further, our general feelings of belonging, together in a serially joined-up way are also important criteria for national cohesion. We know that in our British journey this is not about absorption and assimilation of the new to the existing and we all seem to agree that it has to include an important sense of acceptance of difference. In this sense it maybe is very important to set out the rules, the behaviours, the limits and the expectations against a real shared commitment to the fairness which our words declare as non-negotiable.
Working at both the national and local levels on this agenda has serious resource implications, but it is an agenda we need to take seriously, and a priority that should rank very highly.
Professor Mike Hardy CMG OBE, 16th August 2011
The noisy, brutal and unacceptable and criminal behaviour in our cities which we have witnessed over the past four days is a huge challenge for communities as well as being a huge challenge for the nation as a whole.
It is at the level of communities where neighbours, community and faith groups and schools, helped often by hard-pressed local governments, have made so much progress over the last ten years or so. Many suggest that there was still much to do, but most argued that, though still a challenge, the reality of ‘living, working and playing together’ in the permanent, super-diverse communities of our age was beginning to show more positives than negatives at local levels.
This ‘longer’ view asserts the importance of time, time to build and time to learn; time to think through what actions can be taken to create the links between differences and build the bridges that will help create more mutual recognition and understanding of those differences. Differences will never be removed or somehow washed away, but they should not be the source of conflict and insecurity in cohesive communities.
The longer view also allows us to look at the so-called underlying political, social and economic issues which may lead to frustration and to social discord –issues of discrimination, inequality, absolute and relative poverty, and matters of faith, or parenting, of intergenerational relations, or continuous drip-feeding of new migrants; of unemployment and the cost of living and of the tribalism of gang-cultures or football fans.
The short view focuses correctly on security and public order, on the outrageous and the criminal, and on the copy-cats and the attractions and adrenalin surges of the moment at hand. And the short view looks for instant explanations, the ‘pure and simple’ descriptions of cause. The short view solution on night three of the riots was, for London, a massive police presence –a trebling of police on the front line. This is a short view as few want a society where acceptable behaviour happens because of policing.
There was and is nothing pure and simple about the rioting. There is merit, in my view, in reflecting on the real complexity and confusion of what is happening.
It is important to challenge the view that the riots and looting were matters of race, faith or even class. It is important also to recognise that people from all backgrounds are the subject of arrest warrants and court appearances. More basic forces are at work.
I have reflected in recent days about the reality of a new community-based diversity (or difference) between the 'haves' and the ‘have-nots'. This is NOT about having or not-having material things -goods, sneakers, plasma TVs etc, it is more about the haves/have-nots in terms of hope, a future, prospects, a feeling of being valued/wanted, a meaningful place in society. This powerful feeling of ‘have-not’ may be reinforced by other forces of exclusion –price inflation, lack of jobs, or by the relative impotence of the criminal justice system. Worse, it may be reinforced by the enhanced visibility of difference facilitated by close coexistence in London boroughs of rich and poor, or by the digital and social media world of instant sharing.
Those who feel that they have a stake in their community or society take a longer view; sometimes they invest in a longer view. Those who do not, have no reason at all to look beyond the here-and-now, the observed great adventure of confrontation and looting, or challenge to anything resembling authority, or, indeed, the ‘haves’. These resemble a generation with a belief that others must provide for them.
This is an issue of a special identity driven by a powerful and short term perception of powerlessness, of a complete lack of 'connect' with the contemporary mainstream. Disconnected (mainly young) people are little concerned about the longer term and are completely indifferent to the consequences (intended or unintended) of their actions and behaviour and because of their strong sense of disconnect, have little association to our concept of community.
To apply community cohesion talk in this context is challenging as our normal approach would be to expect community members to work, supported by cohesion instruments, at building bridges and creating links between difference so as to develop greater cohesion. But these young disconnects are actually outside the community that they live in. They do not feel part of the narrative at all. This at no time should condone violence and the senseless destruction and criminal thieving -and public order must be a priority -but I think we need a new paradigm of thinking to begin the address how we will get out of this mess.
Is there a link to the mayhem of the so-called Arab-Spring? There is a link maybe in only one respect. Observers of the events in the Middle East and North Africa wrote a lot about dignity and its importance to individuals and to communities. When dignity is attacked (by dictators or by being ‘continuously dispossessed in a society rich in possessions’ (Camila Batmanghelidjh)) young people begin to feel themselves to be disconnected and so encouraged to take the short view.
Finding a short-term re-connect is going to be very challenging indeed.