Derek McGhee

Moving to 'our' common ground: a critical examination of community cohesion discourse in twenty-first century Britain

The paper focuses on the discourses, recommendations and programmes for facilitating community cohesion in the UK as recorded on the pages of an archive of documents such as: The Community Cohesion Review Team Report (2001), The Bradford District Race Review (2001) and The Local Government Associations Guidance on Community Cohesion (2002). These documents were commissioned in relation to the disturbances in the city of Bradford and in the towns of Oldham and Burnley in the north of England in the spring and summer of 2001. The facilitation of community cohesion, it shall be revealed in this paper, is a rather sociological enterprise involving the problematization and modification of the forms of sociation in communities and especially the structures of interaction between different communities. Community, civil society and social capital are central to this community cohesion discourse, and the towns of Oldham, Burnley and the city of Bradford are at the epicentre of this unfolding social project of attempting to alleviate disorder, disharmony and discord in these areas characterized by multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural communities. However, despite the best of intentions, the process of community cohesion facilitation as read off the pages of this archive of documents will be presented here as being blighted by three inter-related factors; (1) the practical problems associated with attempting to formulate a public policy of community cohesion on the assumption that common principles and shared values can be founded in multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural societies; (2) the relative de-emphasis of material deprivation and socio-economic marginalization in community cohesion facilitation programmes in favour of concentrating on inter-community relationships; and (3) with special reference to Bradford, the criminalization of young male British-Asian ‘rioters’ in the city is shown to be inconsistent with the rebuilding and re-orientation of social capital from defensive ‘bonding’ to inclusive ‘bridging’ in the judicial aftermath that is currently gripping this city.

Patriots of the Future? A critical examination of community cohesion strategies in contemporary Britain

This paper focuses on four inter-related areas of recent public policy in Britain associated with community cohesion, asylum and immigration, the Strength in Diversity consultation strategy and counter-terrorism. This paper comprises of a critical examination of the various reports, speeches and strategies associated with these areas of public policy. The central concern of the paper is to explore the relationship between these areas of public policy through illuminating the extent of the ‘policy tropes’ common to each, for example, (1) the problematisation of the weakness of ‘citizenship’ in contemporary Britain and the strategy for revitalizing it, common to all four policy areas; (2) the emphasis on ‘the material’ over ‘the cultural’ in the explanations of ‘weak integration’ in these policy areas; and (3) the ethnic and religious minority focus in all four areas. The relationship exposed between these policy tropes is then used in the paper to suggest that the focus on ethnic and minority communities (especially young Muslims) within this discursive formation, belies a barely repressed risk consciousness that informs the wider rhetoric of building community cohesion in twenty-first century Britain.

The paths to citizenship: a critical examination of immigration policy in Britain since 2001

ABSTRACT McGhee explores the Labour governments attempts to manage the challenges and protect against the ‘risks’ associated with a particular group of migrants to Britain: permanent immigrants. He examines how Gordon Brown conceives of his three-stage proposals for ‘earned’ British citizenship working with the wider managed migration strategy introduced by Tony Blair and Charles Clarke. At the same time, McGhee contextualizes the earned British citizenship proposals within the recent immigration policies and citizenship/integration strategies introduced by David Blunkett when Home Secretary. If the episodes of social disorder involving the second generation of settled immigrant communities in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the summer of 2001 were the events that triggered Blunketts new integration/citizenship strategies, including the introduction of English classes and citizenship lessons for would-be citizens, then the 7/7 attacks by so-called ‘home-grown’ extremists were the events that influenced the emergence of what will be described here as the institutional racialization associated with Browns recommendations. McGhee also explores the shift from Blunketts model of civic assimilation, with its Cantle-esque emphasis on participation, to the Brown model of civic nationalism, with its post-7/7-fuelled emphasis on loyalty, shared values and responsibilities.

At the crossroads: Gypsy and Traveller parents’ perceptions of education, protection and social change

This article uses empirical data gathered during a pilot study funded by a local education authority to consider Gypsy and Traveller parents’ perceptions of education. It examines the changing role of education within the lives of Gypsy and Traveller parents and children reflecting changing social circumstances, in particular how many parents now feel schooling has a greater place in their children’s lives than would have been the case a generation ago. The research demonstrated that many families felt their children could learn skills at school and that would be necessary to generate an income in the future. This adaptation towards schooling designed for a sedentary population carried with it a large degree of concern from the point of view of Gypsy and Traveller parents around issues such as cultural erosion and safety, (issues that in the past may have led to many children not attending school). Employing concepts such as Goffman’s umwelt and Putnam’s description of defensive bonding social capital this article considers such concerns. It examines how parental anxiety about the transition from primary to secondary schools and the associated perceptions of risk posed by the permissive culture of the sedentary population materialize. It also explores how this transition coincides with parental tensions surrounding the ‘early onset adulthood’ of Gypsy and Traveller children who are regarded within their families and communities as being adults from an early age. Within this context, the article examines some of the very fluid adaptations being made by families to changing economic and social circumstances and also the roles adopted by members of the education ‘community’, in particular Traveller Education Services, in their relationships with Gypsy and Traveller families.

Getting ‘Host’ Communities On Board: Finding the Balance Between ‘Managed Migration’ and ‘Managed Settlement’ in Community Cohesion Strategies

This paper is a critical examination of various community cohesion and asylum and immigration reports and strategies produced in the United Kingdom in recent years, and culminating in the Home Offices Strength in Diversity consultation strategy launched in May 2004. I argue that, in these various reports and documents, reducing race inequality and integrating ‘new’ migrants into British society take precedence over other considerations, and especially over problems facing the often already disadvantaged White ‘host’ communities that receive ‘new’ migrants through the National Asylum Dispersal Scheme. In this paper this emphasis on asylum-seekers’ ‘integration’ will be contrasted with recommendations found in the Community Cohesion Panels report The End of Parallel Lives? (2004), which advocates a balanced approach combining the managed settlement of asylum-seekers into ‘host’ communities and the Home Offices emphasis on managing ‘new migrant’ integration.

Post-Accession Polish Migrants—Their Experiences of Living in ‘Low-Demand’ Social Housing Areas in Glasgow:

Glasgow is a city well known for bringing together a ‘housing need’ with a ‘housing supply’. Post-accession Poles are the most recent population to fill the ‘void’ in Glasgows ‘unpopular’ and therefore low-demand housing in areas of social deprivation. In this paper we will focus on the intersection of individual paths with institutional projects occurring at specific temporal and spatial locations: through examining the housing-seeking activities of migrants and the low-demand accommodation letting activities of, for example, the Glasgow Housing Association. In the paper we examine the meanings, processes, experiences, and perceived advantages (for migrant families and for housing associations) and also the disadvantages associated with post-accession Polish families taking up and being potentially ‘steered’ into tenancies in particular areas of Glasgow.

Perverting London: The cartographic practices of law

This paper undertakes a reading of a report submitted by the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to the Wolfenden Committee which was undertaking a review of the law and practice applicable to homosexual offences. The report contains a map of central London showing the distribution of encounters between the police and men who have sex with other men. The map provides an opportunity to examine the relation between law and space. Here law and legal practice are examined as practices of cartography. Using the work of Michel Foucault, de Certeau, historical material and material contemporary with the Wolfenden committees review, the paper examines the institution of the police as an institution of space. Using recent writings in the fields of cultural and sexual geography, the paper examines the nature of space generated through the panoptic practice of policing. Using Bakhtins theory of the carnivalesque, through an examination of plain clothes police operations in public toilets, the authors analyse the transformation of legal practices of policing in liminal space.

The new commission for equality and human rights: Building community cohesion and revitalizing citizenship in contemporary Britain

Abstract This article is an examination of some of the key aspects of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights in Britain proposed in the Fairness for All White Paper in 2003. The article focuses on the role the new Commission will play in the specific areas of revitalizing citizenship, building community cohesion and in conflict resolution in contemporary Britain. It examines the presentation in the White Paper of the “anticipated future challenges” (in relation to ethnic and religious minority groups) that allegedly threaten 21st century Britain and the role the Commission is to play in responding to them. It will be suggested that the ‘core functions’ of the proposed Commission are closely related to many of the developments associated with radical democratic theory, that is: 1) the promotion of intersectional and de-centred social identities and concomitantly an intersectional perspective on inequality and discrimination; and 2) the development of an overarching project that encourages the construction of chains of equivalence between diverse ‘protected groups’ within a culture in which human rights are respected as the ‘common place’ of citizenship. The article concludes that the most significant threat to the Labour governments promotion of a human rights ‘culture change’ as suggested in the White Paper is the governments increasing disrespect for human rights in the name of the war on terrorism.

An ‘undeliberate determinacy’? The changing migration strategies of Polish migrants in the UK in times of Brexit

ABSTRACT This paper reformulates classical questions regarding the plans and strategies of Polish migrants in the UK – such as decisions to leave or remain in the host country, or be ‘deliberately indeterminate’ about future plans – from a sociologically situated ‘rights-based’ perspective. This approach considers migrants’ attitudes towards specific ‘civic integration’ measures in a medium-term time frame, as well as in the new context created by the UK’s vote to leave the EU. Based on the quantitative analysis of original survey data, we investigate the factors behind Polish migrants’ migration strategies, and we argue that basic socio-economic and demographic factors are inadequate, on their own terms, to explain future migration and civic integration plans. Instead, we find that aspects such as interest in and awareness of one’s rights, as well as anxieties about the ability to maintain one’s rights in the future are stronger determinants.

EU post-accession Polish migrants trajectories and their settlement practices in Scotland

ABSTRACT The presence and the apparent permanence of post-accession EU migrants in the UK is of significant interest to both academics and politicians. Studies have debated whether migration from new accession countries to the UK mark a new type of migration often described as ‘liquid’ and ‘open ended’, or whether these migrants will settle in the new destination countries. Based on a qualitative study of Poles who have lived in Scotland for at least six years, we observed four typologies of what we call migrants’ settling practices: (1) stayers, (2) over-stayers, (3) circular and transnational migrants and (4) economic migrants. The findings from this study demonstrate that Polish migrants do not have fixed ideas about the duration of their migration (in terms of a sense of permanence) but instead focus on diverse links, anchors or attachments in Scotland and Poland in describing their settling practices. Thus, the main contribution the article makes is to present an in-depth understanding of what settlement means from the perspective of migrants themselves. This paper concludes by providing a short comment on implications of the outcome of the Referendum on EU membership ‘Brexit’ in June 2016 on Polish migrants settling practices.