Moving Up and Getting On

Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in the UK

Rutter, Jill, Jill Rutter

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781447314615
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447314646
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

In most developed countries immigration policy is high on the political agenda. But what happens to migrants after their arrival – integration and social cohesion – has received less attention, yet these conditions matter to migrants and to wider society. Drawing on fieldwork in London and eastern England, Moving up and getting on is the first accessible, yet comprehensive, text to critique the effectiveness of recent integration and social cohesion policies and calls for a stronger political leadership. Written for those interested in public policy, the book argues that if the UK is to be successful in managing migration, there needs to be greater emphasis on the social aspects of integration and opportunities for meaningful social contact between migrants and longer-settled residents, particularly in the workplace.

Part One:
Setting the scene

ONE

Introduction

The genesis of this book took place in the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, London. I was sitting in court hearing a request to release a young Iraqi Kurd from long-term immigration detention. I was not aware of the background to the case, but as it progressed I was informed that the appellant had a criminal record. He had served a sentence for a sexual assault on a teenage girl. At the time I felt unsympathetic towards this man. Later, I talked to his solicitor and learned more about his life. He had arrived in the UK as a 19-year-old asylum-seeker and been dispersed to live in Home Office-commissioned accommodation in a northern city. Regulations meant that he was not allowed to work or attend college to improve his English. Nor was there advice and assistance available to him from non-governmental organisations or members of his own community, as he had been sent to live in an area where there were few refugees. He had no close friends and, unlike in his home country, he could not turn to members of his own community to broker a relationship or marriage. There was no one to guide his behaviour and provide the informal counselling that most of us receive from friends and family. A friendly conversation with a British woman was misinterpreted by him and he ended up in prison with a recommendation of deportation at the end of his sentence.

Of course, the young man bears responsibility for his actions. But he was set up to fail by a system that prevented his economic and social integration. He could not work or study and had no social networks to guide him. At the time, migrant integration had slipped down the political agenda and I wanted to draw attention to this shortcoming of government. I wanted to try to prevent others from failing as seriously as the young Iraqi Kurd.

This man was a new migrant in the UK. Today the UN estimates that one person in 25 is a long-term resident outside the country of their birth and is thus defined as a migrant. This book is about two aspects of international migration – how migrants integrate and their social relationships within the UK.

Although international migration has always been a feature of life in the UK, it has increased significantly since the early 1990s, caused by more asylum arrivals, sustained student and work-visa flows and large-scale migration from the European Union after 2004. By Census 2011 the overseas-born population of England and Wales came to 13.4%.

These demographic changes have taken place alongside other socio-economic changes, particularly to housing and employment security. Nearly one million households with dependent children now live in private rental accommodation, double the number in 2007 (Shelter, 2012). There has been a loss of the UK’s traditional manufacturing base and, with it, many secure ‘male’ jobs. While new employment has been created, these jobs are disproportionally poorly paid and insecure.

For most adults, immigration is just one aspect of the changes they have seen in their neighbourhoods. Yet for many people – at least a third of the population, according to opinion polls¹ – it is an issue that is pre-eminent as a social problem. In the UK, debates about migration have risen to the top of the political agenda and at the time of writing were second only to the economy as an electoral concern. Migrants are variously seen as threatening in their sudden arrival and numbers, in their perceived cultural differences, or as taking what is felt to be ‘ours’. Although racially motivated violence is comparatively rare, there is hostility to migrants (and longer-settled minority ethnic groups) and real tensions in some neighbourhoods. These antagonisms indicate that sectors of the population and some areas find it difficult to manage the changes brought about by migration.

Integration and social cohesion: cases of policy neglect

Within the broader migration debate, immigration policy – determining who can enter and stay in the UK – remains a priority. Since the 2010 election the government has made a number of high-profile policy changes in order to meet the Conservative election pledge to cut net migration to less than 100,000 per year. These have included a tightening of the criteria for work, student and family migration and making it more difficult for those with time-limited visas to secure permanent settlement (Cavanagh, 2011). But there has been much less focus, from government, opposition parties and the media, on what happens to migrants after they arrive in the UK. Given the degree of interest in immigration, the issues of integration and social cohesion feel badly neglected.

Yet integration and social cohesion matter: to migrants themselves, to the communities in which they live and to wider society. These conditions are an important part of equipping the UK to cope with migration levels that are unlikely to decrease significantly in the near future. Failures of integration in the form of unemployment, educational under-achievement and social segregation are damaging to migrants and host communities, as well as being costly to the public purse. Perceptions that migrants have not integrated can also exacerbate negative public attitudes. Neglecting integration and social cohesion clearly serves no one’s interests.

Of course, many migrants find work, receive promotion, enjoy educational success and make new friends outside their communities. In these cases integration has been achieved with few interventions from government. But Moving Up and Getting On also argues that some migrant groups are being left behind in relation to their education and employment outcomes.

The book also examines social cohesion, a condition that in many policy documents is often used alongside and interchangeably with migrant integration. While integration affects individual migrants and their families, social cohesion is seen as being about the relations between all groups of people and usually refers to specific places: nations, cities, towns, villages or neighbourhoods. Social cohesion has attracted more attention from politicians and media commentators, but mostly in the context of worries about residential segregation and religious extremism. However, these concerns have not been translated into effective public policy.

Reframing integration

The book is about all groups of migrants, although over the last 15 years most of the debate about integration and social cohesion in the UK has focused on Muslims at risk of religious extremism. I did not want to write a book about the factors associated with religious extremism, as I regard this to be a separate, but overlapping issue.

The book aims to challenge current thinking on integration and social cohesion and calls for greater focus on these conditions from government, local public services, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and employers. The core message of Moving Up and Getting On is that a renewed vision for integration and social cohesion needs to be based on clear principles, as well as conceptual clarity about these conditions – redefinitions.

Moving Up and Getting On draws from research undertaken over a ten-year period. In this time my views have changed and it has been an iterative process to reach my conclusions. Drawing from evidence, the book argues that effective policy requires a clear definition of integration. This should go back to basics and stress integration both as a process and as a set of conditions that ensure social inclusion. The definition I use for integration is the capability of migrants to achieve social inclusion and well-being. Such a capability needs to be supported by facilitators: attributes and resources which may include English-language fluency, as well as structural factors such as permanent housing, a job and workplaces that support social mixing.

English-language fluency is one of the facilitators of integration. It empowers migrants and facilitates communication with those who live around them. Despite increases in funding for adult English language (ESOL) teaching at the turn of the century, the UK’s record in helping migrants learn English is chequered, and it is failing to reach some groups at all. However, the political space to reform ESOL teaching and other aspects of integration policy is limited in the UK by hostile public attitudes to migrants. While public opinion is complex, there is clear public resentment of measures perceived as helping migrants (Ford et al, 2012). Awareness and fear of this hostility makes politicians and policy makers reluctant to stand up for publicly funded interventions such as ESOL classes. Integration policy is thus directly associated with attitudes towards immigrants.

Social cohesion, conflict and change

As well as limiting the political space for progressive integration policy, hostility to migrants can sometimes escalate into conflict. Even where there is no overt violence, neighbourhoods, workplaces and schools where tension and mistrust are predominant are not pleasant places to live, work or study. My research has shown that some localities have been more successful in accommodating the changes brought about by migration than others. Those neighbourhoods that can accommodate international migration have been the subject of recent research, including Wallman’s The Capability of Places (2011) which examines social interactions in a number of urban neighbourhoods in London and Rome and how community resources and structures can help to manage change. Drawing from Wallman and others, I argue that social cohesion is about the capability of people and places to manage conflict and change.

Moving Up and Getting On argues that there are specific attributes that help to manage conflicts and changes associated with migration. First, I believe that neighbourhoods need transversal space where migrants and longer-settled residents can meet, mix and dispel misconceptions and hostilities. I define transversal space as a place where meaningful social contact takes place, that is to say the type of interaction that has the capacity to change views about out-groups. Such transversal space may include schools, parks and non-segregated workplaces. Second, local political leadership is important, both in terms of the messages that it sends out, and its planning to build social resilience and deal with sources of tension, as well as the type of democratic debate it encourages about immigration. Yet recent policy on social cohesion has focused on subjective conditions: trust, shared values and belonging. The book argues for a reframing of social cohesion policy to ensure that people and places can adapt to change and to provide transversal space and political leadership to do this.

Context and methodology

Moving Up and Getting On is written for an educated general reader as well as policy makers. I wanted to present a discussion and recommendations that are drawn from evidence, but I did want to write an academic text. Rather, I wanted to set out a normative articulation of policy that I feel might improve integration and social cohesion, within a framework of managed migration policy.

The book is based on research undertaken in 2012 and 2013, alongside insights from previous studies undertaken in south London and the east of England (Rutter, 2006; Rutter et al, 2007a; 2007b; 2008a; 2009). Over the last two years I have updated this earlier work and returned to re-interview some of the individuals I had previously met, thus enabling me to understand changes over a ten-year period.

The research for the book combines analysis of quantitative data with ethnography. I have always favoured a mixed-methodology approach to migration research: it enables the production of rich field data and a greater triangulation of findings. Indeed, a motivation for writing Moving Up and Getting On was my desire to make a case for mixed methodologies and ethnography to inform public policy.

In the ten-year period since I started my research there have been changes to immigration flows, to public opinion and to integration and social cohesion policy. As well as examining these changes at a national level I wanted to give an ‘on the ground’ reality to my ideas. I have thus based some of the book on events in two areas: Peterborough and its environs in eastern England, and the London boroughs of Lewisham and Southwark.

Peterborough sits on the western edge of the Fens, the UK’s agricultural heartland. The Fens span five local authorities: the shire counties of Northamptonshire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and the city of Peterborough, a unitary local authority. Once an inhospitable swamp, the moder...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Part One: Setting the scene
• Part Two: Moving up: migrant integration
• Part Three: Getting on: social cohesion, conflict and change
• Part Four: Developing the capabilities of people and places
• A postscript on Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
• Appendices
• References