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Katie Hill
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- 15/06
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What does our shared future look like?
Community cohesion and intercultural tension is the defining issue of our time. It was a hot debate five years ago, and it’s as hot, if not hotter today.
Five years ago the Cantle Report was published in an effort to investigate the roots of a series of race riots across the UK in 2001. Today, whilst Hamas captured Fatah’s HQ and overran Gaza, the Commission for Cohesion and Integration in the UK published ‘Our Shared Future’ (http://www.integrationandcohesion.org.uk/Ourfinalreport.aspx).
So what does our shared future look like and how are the debates different today to those of 2002? Some debates remain the same, such as the call for greater citizenship and the controversial ‘lessons in British-ness’ and more English language lessons for immigrants. We’ve seen this manifest itself in citizenship education in schools. Is it working? Or is citizenship the new General Studies – a seemingly pointless qualification that we all had to get, but never quite knew what it was or how it would help us?
Provision for immigrants to learn English (never mind Englishness) still seems to be sadly lacking. My own experience of working with refugees and asylum seekers is that many are desperate to learn English, but the classes available to them are so few and far between, that a meaningful education in the English language is nigh on impossible to get, making getting into employment even more difficult.
An interesting new twist in today’s report is the emphasis on localism. The new fear for tension in communities due to mass immigration is in our rural communities, with a wave of migrant workers making their way to our country towns and villages to work in service industries in tourist areas, and on farms and in factories. Whilst there is definitely apprehension about the changes this will bring to communities that have remained relatively unchanged for generations, there is also starting to be some murmurs of optimism from commentators who recognise that this could be the very thing to reinvigorate our rural economies. Personally, I think it’s high time our rural renaissance got underway, and if handled positively this could be a great opportunity for rural communities.
Posted on 15/06/07 in Participation
Comments
Katie
Overall, providing the government has a handle on immigration (which it is slowly getting) and we know who is coming into and going out of the country (which is down to good planning, hard work and diligence, rather than hi tech solutions such as biometric testing), then migration can, if carefully managed, be a real boon. It has been in the past (Huguenots, Jews, Bangladeshis etc.) and will be with the current intake. The UK will look back in twenty, thirty or fifty years and feel proud that we were so positive about migrants.
However, the idea that all migrants are beneficial (and we should have no or minimal controls) or that we should profoundly limit migration are both foolish and we should resist both positions at all costs.
My work in rural communities shows that, generally, migrants (dominated by Poles, Portuguese and Lithuanians at the moment) are very welcome, providing low cost labour to farmers and food processors as well as the wider service economy. Generally host communities aren’t racist or negative but appreciative and welcoming.
The challenge that is often forgotten is that these migrants are not ‘taking our jobs’ but nevertheless the result is a substantial number of local people who once would have done such hard low pay work but now can’t (or won’t) compete against hard working migrants (for low-ish incomes) as they once would. How do we support (or perhaps force) those people to generate their own income and contribute to the local economy rather than feeling despondent or worse, sitting back and taking benefits?
Is this current wave of migration a sticking plaster for low pay / low value rural industries that can’t (because we want our food so cheap) pay better?
These are hard questions that local and national government aren’t even asking, never mind trying to address. It’s way too easy to accept the migrant workers doing the dirty jobs and then moan when there are some local difficulties.
19/06 at 07:56 from Alistair Turnham
Having discovered this blog whilst researching ‘communicating change’ I’m interested to find a post about the effects of migrant workers upon rural renaissance.
Working for a development trust that engages with local groups and migrant workers, we’ve worked to bring together communities to share their similarities and differences and learn more about each other.
Adrian, I think that the issue with rural community groups having difficulty accessing training and employment has been a growing concern for a number of years. Perhaps the influx of migrant workers has not caused this issue, moreover it has highlighted a problem that was there before?
19/06 at 18:41 from Serena
