The politics of race

Diversity versus Solidarity: A New Progressive Dilemma?
June 2004

Introduction

The politics of race erupt periodically in the United Kingdom. Sometimes the conflagration takes place on the streets: Notting Hill in 1958; Brixton in 1981; and most recently, in the towns of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001. Sometimes it is a politician who sparks the fire, as Enoch Powell infamously did with his 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And unpredictable but catastrophic events, like the IRA pub bombings of the 1970s or 9/11 can also produce deep unease as fear and insecurity get entangled with concerns about migration and ethnic difference.

Yet until recently, most people on the progressive end of the political spectrum have believed that underneath these periodic eruptions, long term socio-economic change is producing a more successfully integrated, less divided and less racist British society. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, it looked as if the race relations legislation of the post-war period was beginning to bear fruit and that second and third generation ethnic minorities were starting to prosper economically and suffer less discrimination. Debates focused increasingly on citizenship rights and race equality, rather than the pros and cons of immigration, cultural otherness or social cohesion.

Now those progressive certainties look increasingly fragile. Opinion polls show race and immigration in the top three of public concerns. The right wing media is full of stories about migrant 'floods' and 'hordes'. Even the Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality declares that multiculturalism is 'dead'.

So what is really going on here? Are we witnessing a rolling back of the social progress towards a more just and cohesive society? Or are there simply new challenges to face in difficult and dangerous times? In particular, is there a trade off for progressives between support for diversity and the social solidarity necessary for strong welfare states?

Migration & Diversity

Some 175 million people currently live outside their country of origin. As a proportion of the world's population, there has been little change in migrant flows since the 1960s. But migration into advanced capitalist economies accelerated in the 1990s and the pattern of flows became more complex, with migrants entering the developed world from countries in peripheral regions, such as Mexico in the case of the USA, or Turkey and Iraq in the case of the European Union. Alongside traditional migrant flows between OECD countries, and those between former colonies and their historic colonisers, recent migrations have both increased and pluralized the ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity of developed countries. (1)

This increased diversity has sparked an intense debate in UK, led by the editor of Prospect magazine David Goodhart, as to whether a new "progressive dilemma" has arisen between liberal commitments to diversity, migration and the rights of migrants on the one hand; and support for social solidarity, redistribution and strong welfare states on the other. (2)

The populations of advanced welfare states, the argument runs, do not want to share their prosperity with others who, put crudely, are 'not like them.' Consequently, support for redistribution will wane as ethnic diversity, driven by accelerated migration, grows.

Diversity vs Trust?

There are a number of different strands of recent academic analyses and political argument bundled up in this debate and it is worth unpacking them.

To begin with, there is evidence marshalled by theorists of social capital, particularly in the USA, that increased ethnic diversity is associated with lower levels of trust and civic-ness between citizens. (3)

This can take two forms: particular ethnic groups might exhibit lower levels of social capital, which then contributes to lower overall stocks of social capital in diverse societies (a compositional argument); or, more commonly, that it is in the interaction between different ethnic minorities and the majority population that trust and belonging are undermined (a contextual argument).

On the face of it, most observers would agree that when people from very different backgrounds come together in the same community, there is likely to be some suspicion, distrust and even outright hostility. Yet one would expect these problems to smoothen out over time, as mutual adjustment, economic and civic integration, and eventually a redefining of original identities took place.

This is indeed one way of reading what has happened to high migration societies over the generations. Negative correlations between diversity and trust appear to be temporary and disappear gradually as migration flows settle down and communities intermix and integrate. It is reasonable to postulate that these long-term trends are only disrupted if migration flows are complex and continuous or spatial segregation becomes entrenched, so that intergenerational patterns of integration do not take place.

Questions of trust must also be addressed through the lens of diversity in its different forms. Diversity in liberal societies is not solely a function of immigration or ethnicity. Differences also flow from age, class, lifestyle and value systems. Too often, this wider diversity, and the political or social tensions associated with it, gets reduced to its ethnic dimensions, which are then given political prominence in the diagnosis of the apparent decline in social trust (indeed, even within ethnic minority communities, the different issues confronted by new migrant groups and those of relative long-standing are glossed over). The fact that value pluralism is constitutive of liberal democracies, and has been so even during periods of greater class homogeneity, is consequently underplayed.

Conversely, trust does not necessarily exist prior to the political action that generates solidarity. Interpersonal trust and civic belonging are themselves often forged through social struggles, and the creation and maintenance of institutions and practices that generate and sustain other-regarding virtues. In other words, there are complex relationships between interpersonal trust, solidarity and redistributive policies. (4)

Geographical and national contexts are also important. Studies in Canada and elsewhere have generated very different results from the negative findings in the US literature that are most commonly cited in these debates. For example, Aizlewood and Pendakur, in their recent study of Canadian survey data, find that urban context, particularly city size, is much better at explaining lower levels of interpersonal trust than ethnic diversity: 'generalized trust in cities is reduced because familiarity is a more selective, network-based phenomenon'.

They also find that 'mitigating the effect of city size are the individual characteristics of education and income', with higher levels of schooling and perceived income associated with higher levels of participation and interpersonal trust. They conclude that 'controlling diversity is neither justifiable nor realistic, but more importantly does not appear to be the answer. Education and income appear to be far more effective levers for affecting social capital.' (5)

These are important conclusions. They appear to buttress the progressive case that higher social capital between strangers can be achieved if sufficient investments are made in education and rewarding employment. The Canadian studies also point to the importance of both urban and national contexts - and correspondingly, state institutions and strategies - in successfully combining diversity with social solidarity. I return to this below.

Diversity vs Strong Welfare States?

Proponents of the diversity versus solidarity argument also put forward a tougher claim that ethnic diversity leads to weaker welfare states, since it decreases the willingness of citizens to redistribute their incomes.

Here again studies appear to show that the fractious politics of race in the USA have contributed to a weaker welfare state than those found in Continental Europe. (6)

The poor in the US are predominantly Black and Hispanic, and spatially segregated. Consequently, welfare transfers (apart from in-work benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit) are visibly racialised. Historically this has led (white) middle and higher income groups to resist increases in redistributive welfare spending.

World Bank studies of the debilitating effects of ethnic division in developing countries, particularly Africa, are also cited in support of this claim (although the evidence suggests that both homogeneous and highly heterogeneous countries are less likely to be conflict ridden) but also from cross-national studies of advanced welfare states. For example, Soroka et al find that:

'International migration does seem to matter for the size of the welfare state. Although no welfare state has actually shrunk in the face of the accelerating international movement of people, its rate of growth is smaller the more open a society is to immigration. The typical industrial society might spend 16 or 17% more than it now does on social services had it kept its foreign-born percentage where it was in 1970.' (7)

This evidence looks startling and should be treated with some caution. But it is also important at the level of theoretical argument to keep ethnic diversity in perspective. Most theorists of the welfare state have sought to explain different levels of social expenditure and the structures of welfare states by reference to class factors (such as the strength of organised labour); wider economic and demographic variables (the openness of the economy, economic growth, levels of unemployment, the age profile of the population); and political forces (the strength of political parties, electoral systems etc). Ethnic diversity has only recently entered the analytical picture and even when it is considered to have causal force, the strength of that causality must be set against other key factors.

The US experience also distorts the debate. As Will Kymlicka and Keith Banting put it in a reply to David Goodhart's paper, there is 'an excessive fascination' with the US experience. Race politics have played a 'long and sad' role in the USA, but a particular national history does not generalise into a natural law or natural 'tipping point' between Europe and America. (8)

Indeed, the role of strategies pursued by different nation states is crucial. In a separate study of Canadian data, Soroka, Banting and Johnston (9) found that ethnic diversity had only a very weak impact on support for the welfare state, and proffered three reasons why Canada had been relatively successful in maintaining welfare expenditures. First, the Canadian welfare state places relatively little reliance on means-tested benefits that immigrants might qualify for on arrival, mitigating hostility to welfare transfers. Second, immigrants have historically been integrated into the workforce relatively rapidly, which again promotes a perception that newcomers are making a positive contribution to society. Third, and most tentatively, Canadian national identity has from its inception both encompassed difference and stressed commonality of citizenship, and this may have been critical in Canadians' relative acceptance of diversity. Perhaps too Canadian immigration, naturalisation and multicultural policies have fostered a sense of national identity in new arrivals.

The upshot of this evidence is that local and national state strategies to promote civic and economic integration may be particularly important in facilitating trust and reciprocity between majority and minority communities. Indeed, such strategies may overcome any potentially negative effects (if these exist at anything other than weak impact levels) of diversity upon support for welfare states. This is an area where further research is needed.

Integration with Diversity vs Multiculturalism?

Does this mean that multiculturalism should be abandoned in favour of strong assimilationist policies? Conceptually, it is important to distinguish between integration and assimilation. The former recognises and respects cultural diversity, whilst focusing on the (liberal and integrative) rights and duties of citizenship; the latter insists on assimilation to prevailing cultural norms.

In a liberal democracy, insistence on cultural uniformity is ethically objectionable. But is also pragmatically impossible to conceive of culturally homogeneity in contemporary democracies. In contrast, integrative strategies welcome cultural diversity but stress economic inclusion and national civic belonging, putting the emphasis on language acquisition, civic education, tests and ceremonies, and race equality in the workplace. Such policies have long characterised Canadian policy and are increasingly prevalent in the European Union (notably the UK). They seek to enrich liberal policy frameworks of rights and duties with a positive account of civic knowledge and virtues.

It might still be argued that multicultural strategies are very different from those which favour integration with diversity (as the Chair of the UK Commission on Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, has recently set out.) (10). In part, this depends on what you call multiculturalism. The Canadian and UK examples demonstrate that policy frameworks can successfully combine multicultural entitlement and anti-discrimination measures with those that promote civic engagement and overarching but inclusive national identities. Only if multiculturalism is antithetical to the second half of this equation, and privileges cultural difference and anti-racism over civic integrative measures, is it possible to make the case that it should be abandoned or substantively modified. (11)

Conclusion: Ways Forward

Current anxieties about immigration and diversity rehearse familiar discourses from periods of new, high or growing net inward migration to Western democracies. In the context of concerns about terrorism and economic insecurity, it is of little surprise that the recent period of migration should have occasioned such soul searching.

However, the academic evidence on ethnic diversity and its impacts on social solidarity does not sustain the case that there is a powerful tension or fatal contradiction between basic liberal commitments. It would be foolish, of course, to deny that the politics of race can be traumatic and even explosive. But that is a very different claim from one which posits an irreducible conflict between core values (whose very terms are subject to debate and change).

However, the evidence should give progressives strategic pause for thought. New measures to promote economic and civic integration may help buttress social cohesion and provide support for progressive welfare policies in conditions of increased diversity. This does not mean abandoning established anti-discrimination policies. But it does require a new focus on integration and 'finding new ways to incorporate newcomers into national fabrics, to construct new forms of citizenship and national identity that can sustain a sense of social solidarity'. (12)

A progressive policy framework therefore needs to contain the following basic elements (many of which are common currency in countries of historic immigration and are now being introduced in the UK and elsewhere):

A strong focus on achieving race equality through improvements in public services (particularly for disadvantaged ethnic minorities), and the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. Economic integration can drive wider civic integration, countering social and spatial segregation and lessening the perception of unfairness amongst the wider community of welfare state entitlements for new migrants;
New tools for civic integration, combining language and citizenship education, citizenship ceremonies and tests for new migrants (extending education to those with Permanent Residence as well as applicants for citizenship). These measures should promote faster, deeper civic integration and help construct shared civic identities;
Locally-based community cohesion strategies which draw citizens into active engagement with local social and political issues, across ethnic boundaries. Many of the localised problems associated with asylum seekers on the one hand, and settled but segregated communities in the UK on the other, arise from weak local capacity and/or authority to address 'on the ground' issues;
A renewed focus on geographical context, so that the different nature of the challenges faced in relatively homogeneous surburban and small town settings, and those of heterogeneous cities, can better be addressed;
Active welfare strategies that prioritise labour market engagement but do not retreat into "gastarbeiter" dualities of entitlement (beyond those that pertain to residence requirements etc). It is also an open question as to whether ID cards are now necessary in countries that have historically resisted such identification requirements if they are to combine strong entitlements to public services with relatively liberal managed migration; and
Attention to the drivers of public perceptions on race and migration. The role of the media in shaping public opinion on race, immigration and ethnic diversity is well documented but relatively poorly researched (particularly in relation to specific groups, like asylum seekers).

Three further broad areas of policy are beyond the scope of this paper but need registering. First, there is a clear gap in multilateral governance structures in respect of the management of migration flows, and the international institutions and regulatory frameworks that are needed to achieve better, coordinated management of people movements. National governments are only now beginning to integrate welfare-to-work, migration and overseas development policies, so that the contribution of each to social and economic goals (as well as the trade offs between different objectives) can be understood and policy formulated accordingly.

At international level, the capacity is even less developed. The EU has moved to common asylum and immigration policymaking and countries within the Schengen area have abolished internal borders. But the rhetoric on the management of migration into the EU is a long way ahead of the reality, and most member states have spent the best part of the last decade in a competitive race to be the least attractive destination for asylum seekers and economic migrants.

Likewise, it is widely recognised that international arrangements for supporting refugees are in serious need of modernisation, whilst - as anti-globalisation protesters never tire of pointing out - the legalised movement of labour has yet to catch up with the free movement of capital. None of this means abandoning border controls or the proper enforcement of immigration laws. But it does mean the creation of new multilateral structures and mechanisms for managing people flows.

Second, in an era of conflict in Iraq and the wider Middle East, the question of religious identity, as well as religious discrimination, has become increasingly important, particularly to Muslim populations in Western countries. Policies need to be double-headed: addressing religious minorities as full and equal citizens, at the same time as challenging small but vocal groups (and their fringe supporters) who are essentially hostile to basic democratic norms.

Finally, there is the question of national identity in its fullest sense. The political right has always been able to reach the parts of national sentiment that the centre-left has struggled (sometimes for good reason) to reach. Internationalists have always found it difficult to capture the ground of patriotic national bonds, even when the state has been constructed from different regional and national identities (as in the UK). In a pluralist society, that task is made both easier (as identities are shaped and reshaped) and harder (as exclusivist national stories are drawn upon to counter fear and insecurity).

For a progressive agenda to be robust, it needs to integrate policies for migration and asylum, with those that strive to achieve equal citizenship, within a narrative that speaks to an inclusive sense of national identity and belonging. This cannot be based on a substantive religious or moral ethical worldview that the state privileges above others, for the reasons given earlier. But it must connect to a national story and shared feelings of belonging.

Pursuing a policy agenda that successfully embraces these connected issues is a hugely challenging ambition, and one that requires principles and political guts. But the building blocks are already there and the evidence presented in this paper suggests it can be achieved.

Notes:

Soroka et al, Immigration and Redistribution in a Global Era, forthcoming in Bowles, Bardhan and Wallerstein eds, Globalisation and the Politics of Redistribution (working title), Russell Sage Foundation. Of recent migrants, 16% travelled from one OECD country to another; 2% from the OECD to the rest of the world; 25% from the rest of the world to the OECD; and 57% between non-OECD countries.
See in particular, David Goodhart, "Too diverse?" Prospect, (Feb 2004 ) http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/start.asp?P_Article=12394
For example, Alesina A and Ferrara E, The Determinants of Trust, NBER Working Paper (2000). See also Saguaro Seminar, Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, Harvard, JFK School of Government (2000), http://www.ksg.Harvard.edu/saguaro/communitysurvey/results/html
For slightly different version of this argument, see Parekh B, What are civilised rules? http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/HtmlPages/parekh.htm
Aizlewood A and Pendakur R, Ethnicity and Social Capital in Canada, Vancouver Centre of Excellence, Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis (2004)
Alesina A et al, Why Doesn't the United States have a European Style Welfare State?, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, (2001)
Soroka et al, op cit. p18. Social spending is defined as total social welfare spending as a proportion of GDP, drawn from OECD data. Over the period 1970 and 1998, the authors argue that such expenditure typically doubled its share of GDP.
Banting K and Kymlicka W, The Worrying American Model, Prospect http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/htmlpages/bantingandkymlicka.htm
Soroka S, Banting K and Johnston R, Ethnicity, Trust and the Welfare State, (2002)
"Multiculturalism's legacy is 'have a nice day' racism." The Guardian, 28.5.2004
There is a separate but related debate amongst political philosophers about the merits of multiculturalist political theory, exemplified by exchanges between Brian Barry and Bhiku Parekh.
Soroka et al op cit p20.

End notes.