‘Too Diverse?

Migration is customarily conceptualized as a product of the material forces at work in our society. It is in this context, that the popularity of migration model metaphor takes significance. Migrants are also seen in other models either as a rational economic individuals choosing personal advancement by responding to the economic signals of the new career opportunities, or as a virtual prisoner of his or her class position, and thereby subject to powerful structural economic forces set in motion by the logic of wealth accumulation.

However, the common sense knowledge of migration as a phenomenon which is in part culturally produced, culturally expressed, and cultural in its effects, perceives migration, cultures and cultural change in Britain through different lenses. The reason that there are few researches on cultural aspects of migration is because researchers correctly shy away from the excesses of the culturalist and other idealist forms of explanation of social events so common among other writers. Other reason is the emphasis of academia on material production and playing down cultural production and the role of consciousness and values in shaping behaviour. And since culture is poorly defined, it is then far too difficult to measure, for it to figure in empirical research.

Democratic rules and regulations allow migrants who are culturally eccentric or even intimidating present persuasive arguments to occupy separate spaces in British societies not only to advocate their visions and values but do it with great persuasion.

‘Separate educational arrangements, community and voluntary bodies, employment, places of worship, language, social and cultural networks, means that many communities operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives. These lives often do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any meaningful interchanges.’

In these separate spaces ‘Ignorance … can easily grow into fear’, and ‘In such a climate, there has been little attempt to develop clear values which focus on what it means to be a citizen of a modern multi-racial society’.

‘Multiculturalism, like that other dangerous “ism”, communism, is based on a mistaken idea of human nature. Multiculturalism has accentuated the differences between people, not their similarities and shared purpose’. David Goodhart (2004)

These are among many signs to be, if recognition demands equal respect for all cultures because they are considered of equal value - the end result is a form of relativism which destroys the idea of value.

It is suggested that the plural society, which encourages diversity but rejects multicultural separatism is a ‘recent and fragile entity’ and asks, ‘at what point must pluralistic tolerance make room not only for “other cultures” but for “hostile cultures”’. In his article he lists numerous demands including Muslim schools, and observes that they will soon be asking for the right to undertake polygynous marriages and circumcise women. ‘Pluralism means living together in difference and with differences’, but membership of a pluralistic community involves giving as well as taking.

Pluralism assumes intersecting social and cultural divisions and seeks to balance representativeness and governability, multiplicity and cohesion.
‘Is Britain becoming too diverse’, ‘to sustain the mutual obligations behind a good society and the welfare state?’:

‘In a developed country like Britain … we not only live among stranger citizens but we must share with them. We share public services and parts of our income in the welfare state, we share public spaces in towns and cities where we are squashed together on buses, trains and tubes, and we share in a democratic conversation - filtered by the media - about the collective choices we wish to make. All such acts of sharing are more smoothly and generously negotiated if we can take for granted a limited set of common values and assumptions. But as Britain becomes more diverse that common culture is being eroded’.

Thus ‘sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity’, and ‘negotiating the tension’ between them ‘is at the heart of politics’.

Those from the same place tend to ‘congregate together’, and public policy should ‘try to prevent that consolidating into segregation across all the main areas of life: residence, school, workplace, church’.

‘the laissez-faire approach of the postwar period in which ethnic minority citizens were not encouraged to join the common culture (although many did) should be buried. Citizenship ceremonies, language lessons and the mentoring of new citizens should help to create a British version of the old melting pot culture.’

What emerges, idealistically, is a multicultural society constituted politically in a non-essentialist way in institutions and practices. A presumption of tolerance and of assumption of the possibility and value of dialogue, but these must be supported by mechanisms which would assist in the processes of negotiation, helping people determine what the boundaries are, and perhaps above all a conducive public culture and civic consciousness. This is easy to say, but in practice extremely difficult to achieve. How can we foster individual and collective engagement in intercultural dialogue and above all get beyond deeply engrained defensive barriers between cultures?

However, one thing need not rule out another. The problems are multi-level and solutions must be multi-level and multifaceted too, coming at the issues in many different ways, from many different angles, simultaneously. The strategic aim is an egalitarian form of weak multiculturalism which recognises difference and defends the right to be different in the private sphere, inviting it into the public sphere only when all parties concerned agree that it should become part the ‘interculturally created and multiculturally constituted common culture’; a new order which emerges through negotiation and dialogue.

The ongoing debate in Britain in 2004-5, when things became more complicated, with a shift towards a more nuanced view of the relationship between diversity and cohesion, this was signalled with the publication of a Home Office Consultation Document (2004) titled ‘Strength in Diversity’.


‘There is space within the concept of “British” for people to express their religious and cultural beliefs. We see this in practice in the sensitisation of public services to accommodate different expressions of identity or belief, for example the adaptation of uniforms in schools and key public services, like the police, to include Muslim hijabs and Sikh turbans’ (Section 2.5).

The white paper had set out what it meant to be British (Section 2.7) emphasising the importance of ‘respect [for] those over-arching specific institutions, values, beliefs and traditions that bind us all, the different nations and cultures, together in peace and in a legal order’, and that ‘diversities of practice must adhere to these legal frameworks’. At the same time (Section 2.8) ‘to be British does not mean assimilation into a common culture so that original identities are lost’, and as this phrasing suggests it might, the Report goes on to quote with approval the Jenkins Formula (Section 2.9), adding (Section 2.10) that their understanding of ‘integration’ means ‘neither assimilation nor a society composed of, as it were, separate enclaves, whether voluntary or involuntary’, and further that it involves ‘not simply mutual respect and tolerance between different groups but continual interaction, engagement and civic participation, whether in social, cultural, educational, professional, political or legal spheres.

‘Respect for diversity must take place within a framework of rights and responsibilities that are recognised by and apply to all - to abide by the law, to reject extremism and intolerance and make a positive contribution to UK society. Different ways of living our lives, different cultures or beliefs all coexist within this shared framework of rights and responsibilities’ (Section 2.6).

‘Faith communities’ and their leaders have an important part to play in this (Consultation Document 2004: Section 2.5, see also Final Report of the Community Cohesion Panel 2004). Faith communities, says the Panel, might contribute to community cohesion because of their ‘in-depth knowledge and understanding of local neighbourhoods, their histories and the issues that are important to them’, their central place in social networks and their ability to ‘create social capital by binding people together in particular locations and developing local leadership and the capacity to organise’; they may also ‘promote values and virtues that are necessary for cohesive communities - neighbourliness, care for the weak, civility and mutual respect, honest dealing’ (p. 32). This represents the ‘British model’ which is ‘widely respected throughout the world and by the minority communities who have settled here’ (p. 9)


Extracted from:

Grillo, R.D., Identity and Cultural Politics, Backlash Against Diversity? Centre on Migration, Policy and Society , COMPAS, Working Paper No. 14, University of Oxford, 2005

www.barcelona2004.org/eng/eventos/ dialogos/docs/interaccionfeng2.pdf

Goodhart, D. (2004). ‘Too Diverse?’. Prospect Magazine. 95

Grillo, R.D. (2005c). Debating Cultural Difference in Multicultural Societies. Paper presented to COMPAS/ISCA Seminar Series, University of Oxford, April 2005.
Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Theory of Liberal Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press