Restrictive conditions have made it harder for those legally resident to commit to British society
Since the introduction of the concept by then-Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins in the mid-1960s, integration has never been a priority for UK governments. The anti-racist movement and black communities have been suspicious of the term, seeing it as too close to assimilation.
Integration has had little traction on the right either, where there has been distrust for any accommodation with migrants and minorities. Labour started talking about integration under Blair, but usually as a footnote to cohesion or in relation to refugees.
The Coalition government launched an integration strategy in 2012, but it mainly argued that national government needed to leave it to local governments.
In a time when net migration remains high and has transformed the demographic profile of every region of the UK, when we see persistent gaps in health or employment outcomes for some ethnic groups, when concerns about de facto segregation continue, and when politicians talk about particular minorities ‘quietly condoning’ non-British values – is it time to put integration back on the policy agenda?
The 2015 edition of MIPEX, the Migrant Integration Policy Index, is published today. It measures policy commitment to integration in 38 developed countries.
The timing of this might help us re-frame the integration debate in the UK. The last edition of the index was published in 2010, in the final months of the Brown government, so the new edition offers a timely assessment of the changes made in the Cameron/Clegg half-decade.
The headline is that the UK has fallen from the top 10 to mid-table 15. We have dropped points in areas where we perform strongly, such as education and anti-discrimination, because of austerity-driven cuts.
While there are schools across the country being confronted for the first time with children who don’t speak English at home, the funding which supports them to do this (the EMAG grant) is no longer ring-fenced.
While the gap between mainstream and minority employment is bigger than ever, the requirements to enforce equality law are being loosened and seen as excess red tape.
We have lost points too for the indicators relating to routes to settlement and to citizenship, as restrictive conditions brought in to help meet the net migration target have made it harder for those legally resident to commit to British society.
Most dramatically, we have fallen to the very bottom of the table for family migration, meaning we are the hardest place in the developed world for separated families to reunite; we have the most restrictive definitions and stringent requirements, long delays and high costs.
Separated non-European families are now less likely to reunite in the UK than on average in Western Europe, with numbers falling by 20 per cent after the UK imposed one of the highest income requirements for family reunion in the world, one which 50 per cent of working people in the UK could not afford.
The MIPEX index does not measure integration itself. It measures how favourable a country’s policies are to the level playing field that would make integration possible.
This approach has limits, and a resetting of the integration debate would need to look at other measures too: how social integration and a shared sense of belonging can be promoted, for instance.
But the results of the new index show just how far integration has fallen down the policy agenda in the drive to reduce migration and cut costs. Can we afford to let it keep slipping?
Ben Gidley is a senior researcher at COMPAS. Follow him on Twitter
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36 Responses to “It’s time to put integration back on the agenda”
steroflex
Round here, the schools are doing a simply fantastic job. They really are. Mind you, we are completely Baltic in our immigrants and they come from similar backgrounds. Because we only have tiny input from Africa at the moment and no Muslims at all really, the ones that do slip through are treated as complete equals by the rather racist Russian and Baltic people too.
damon
Interesting points stevep. They are ones that could be the start of a really vibrant discussion, with people arguing hard back and forth. If they are your opinions, fair enough and I could respect them to a degree.
I might also respect someone who tore into them and tried to dismantle the logic behind them.
Personally, I’m on the fence a bit – but see your opinions as a bit to ideological for my liking really.
First of all in a democracy, do people have the right to not want massive cultural change in their country?
I think they do, and that’s why I don’t denigrate people as Sun and Mail reading ”morons” or whatever.
Multicultural societies are still a work in progress and have thrown up very difficult problems and divisions. See how much resentment there is about he police within the black community for example.
Many say it’s institutionally racist. And that most of our institutions are institutionally racist also.
I just read this in the Guardian today. By a black American poet called Claudia Rankine.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/29/poet-claudia-rankine-invisibility-black-women-everyday-racism-citizen
She questions a white American man as to why he is not supporting Serena Williams at a tennis match, but cheering on a white woman from eastern Europe. See how she immediately suspected him of being racist. And was calling him out as to why he wasn’t supporting the woman from his own country.
That kind of suspicion exists in multicultural societies. He should have told her to mind her own business.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/29/poet-claudia-rankine-invisibility-black-women-everyday-racism-citizenpoet-claudia-rankine-invisibility-black-women-everyday-racism-citizen
You seem to argue that it’s wrong for people of different nationalities or races and cultures to have an affinity with one another, and that what is actually better is the diversity of our most diverse boroughs.
Like Newham or Hackney in London for example. That it would be better if Devon had a demographic profile more like them than the one that it does. Which is almost racist in a way itself.
As for population density and the idea that we have loads of space, how much more motorway do you propose building? At this moment there is a huge traffic jam on the M25 in Surrey. I drove on that section just yesterday, and the western side is constantly getting jammed up. Do you propose we buld another orbital motorway on the outside of that one? As we’ll need it if the population keeps going up.
stevep
Britain is a multicultural society, has been for centuries. Invaders (Romans, Vikings, Celts, Saxons, Normans etc., slaves and migrants have made it that way. Fact.
All these different cultures have integrated into various parts of Britain rather than keeping strict separate cultural identities. We all have a bit of Roman, Celt or Anglo-Saxon etc. in our genes mingling about somewhere!
The Romans and Normans didn`t conquer Britain by keeping separate, They inter-married with local nobility, did deals with tribal factions to ensure their safety in return for a supply of food and men to be trained as soldiers etc. The assimilation was gradual and definitely not without it`s problems.
Norman Tebbit was once asked: “how can you tell a naturalised English person”?
His reply was: ” see who they cheer for when their former nation is playing England at cricket”.
Illuminating, but flawed. Assimilated migrants will always have an interest in their former home country, even generations distant.
Citizens of every country on the planet are propagandised from birth to respect Royalty or the Republic and to learn their national anthem by heart. Small wonder then that when they settle elsewhere, their natural national affiliation is still in their hearts. They (we) can`t help it, even though they may love their adopted home country.
I didn`t call SunMail readers morons. But if anyone is subjected to constant propaganda that is so skewed and biased towards a certain ideology, they become indoctrinated into that way of thinking and lose the ability to think outside of the narrow narrative that the perpetrators want them to stay within.
That`s why so many otherwise rational UK citizens show such indignation towards migrants — because they`re told to.
All states use propaganda to shape their citizens and to divert their attention in a certain direction or away from it to suit the prevailing agenda.
As for the population debate, it`s not confined to the UK. It`s a worldwide issue, the big elephant in the room that no-one can apparently see, but everyone moves adroitly around. Sensible and rational discussion is needed.
It is indeed nice to see a proper discussion starting to take shape amongst us about an issue that has been subject to knee-jerk reactions for aeons.
damon
Hmmm, if that is your view, fair enough. I think it’s quite weak though.
Of course Britain has been made up of people from different parts of Europe historically. And we all have roots that would show up in dna profiles etc.
But by the turn of the twentieth century we had by and large become what it was then.
That’s what we called British. We had obvious minorities like Jews and Irish, and then small international communities living in port cities who had ended up living there because of the sea links to the world.
But that’s very different to the modern diversity where ethnic minorities make up majorities in some places locally. Whole boroughs even.
Yes integration does take place, but there are also some serious drawbacks too.
Remember, that many people call Britain a racist country, so ethnic minority immigrants are almost bound to face difficulties if that’s the case. If we’re that racist, why force immigration on a racist people?
Btw, I find these accusations that we’re a bunch of racists a bit annoying actually, but that’s what comes with diversity.
To say that people only know about what living with extreme diversity is like, only from what it says in the media is patronising I think. Sure, many people have never been to places that have a high BME population, but many tens of millions will have.
People presume that UKIP voters in Essex have never been to east London in the last twenty years.
This is just one negative aspect that immigration has brought us:
”At the age of 14, London should be his oyster. In reality, Reggie’s boundaries extend no further than the half-dozen or so streets around the small Tulse Hill housing estate where he lives with his mother and two younger siblings.
To venture beyond these invisible boundaries which encompass his school, the local park and a nearby shopping centre would be to invite others to attack or rob him, purely because he had dared to stray from his home turf.
“There are places you just don’t go,” he explains. “Not unless you know someone there really well or you’re travelling as part of a much bigger group. If you’re on your own and you’re a new face, people will rob you, take everything you have. The only way to stop it happening is not to go to those places.” ”
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/imprisoned-in-my-postcode-6536199.html
MaryCSmith
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