SOCIAL COHESION AND TOLERANCE

Directions for Further Research & Policy

As indicated by much of this essay, social cohesion and tolerance surrounding immigrants and ethnic minorities involve much more than quantitative parity in stratification systems such as described (like in a vast amount of research) by indices of income, education, residential segregation and economic activity. Important as the quantitative data is, there is pressing need for more qualitative research in a number of fields. There is certainly much work of significance which has been done in this way, especially on ethnic organizations, schools and the education system, linguistic services and language policies, health and social services, police and justice system. There is a certainly need to continue important study and policy-development in these fields. The areas of research and policy listed below suggest critical fields which are either emergent or under-researched and under-addressed by policy..

local level patterns and dynamics, day-today integration

The variable potentials, hurdles and dynamics of social cohesion needs to be examined and cultivated locally. In one illuminating study, Syd Jeffers, Paul Hoggett and Lyn Harrison (1996) found wide variations in the development of patterns of race, ethnicity and community issues and initiatives in Bristol, Leicester and Tower Hamlets. Municipal policies affecting local organisation and communities (however defined) can exacerbate the cohesion-threatening competition of groups, or assist in their coordination and cooperation. In the same way, ethnographic studies demonstrate plenty of instances of individuals and communities of immigrants, ethnic minorities and ‘autocthonous’ populations forging closer ties (see for instance Lamphere 1992). We need to gain a better understanding of how policy may inhibit, or can foster, these everyday modes of social integration and cohesion.

multi-identity politics, networks and alliances

Such everyday modes of interaction are increasingly giving rise to new networks of mutual interest cross-cutting affiliations of gender, ethnicity, class and locale (see Clark 1994, Vertovec 1997a). This trend links with a variety of calls, particularly among some political scientists, to recognize and make political provision for the multiple identities which all of us have (e.g., Mouffe 1993). While researchers should look to studying emerging patterns of social relations and political consensus, city governments and urban managers should both (a) encourage and facilitate the building of mutual interest networks, and (b) make links and establish common cause with them to make best use of limited resources. As Patsy Healey and her colleagues (1994: 282) advocate,

An urban management which makes a difference needs to develop an appreciation of what are the critical relations, the key links, which need to be fostered in an area. What are the networks aimed to get access to and which existing relational nodes are the best route to this? What practices and ways of behaving, and what manipulation of roles and resources, will help achieve such relation-building work? ...In such conceptions, the task of urban governance moves beyond that of provider of welfare and support services for economic activity, to that of a strategically shaping enabler of the lively coexistence of multiple relations.

youth

Although already the subject of a considerable amount of research and policy (especially in the fields of education and leisure), there is nevertheless a considerable need for further policy-oriented research concerning the changing position and needs of young people of immigrant origins, either who have migrated themselves or who are the children of immigrants. Among such young people, racism and the lack of opportunities due to discrimination, lack of access to resources, high material aspirations (consequent to media bombardment of youth-oriented consumer goods) and particular kinds of pressures (especially to ‘maintain the [ethnic] culture’) from their parents and co-ethnic elders combine to create highly constraining contexts for everyday action.. Recent work therefore often reveals a wide range of patterns of differential, hybrid, segmented and selective modes of integration (concerning language, education, values, lifestyles and life strategies, political and economic activities) among young people from a variety of immigrant origins -- patterns which are likely to be of a very localised, gendered and group-specific nature (see Portes & Zhou 1993, Back 1996).

Public space: changing public perceptions & attitudes

The notion of ‘public space’, into which there is also need for new research and policy concerning immigrants and cities, has many meanings (Weintraub 1995). One meaning refers to places such as parks, streets, restaurants and shopping malls: there is little known about how immigrants and ethnic minorities make use of -- or are variously excluded from -- this kind of public space where common activities are sustained (Weinfeld 1997; cf. Young 1990).

Another meaning is more abstract, referring to a ‘space’ of images and representations produced and reproduced in the media and advertising, public services and political debate, and numerous sites of popular discourse. Here, while immigrants and ethnic minorities are often to be found, it is usually not on their own terms. Bhikhu Parekh (1990a: 67) comments upon the way that multiculturalist discourse often serves to marginalize minorities:

It confines minority cultures to the private realm and hands over the public realm of common culture to the majority. The minorities are free to cherish their differences, but as far as the shared public realm is concerned they are required to accept it as is. The liberal response thus does little more than carve out a precarious area of diversity on the margins of a predominantly assimilationist structure.

What are needed, instead, are new modes of representation which, rather than tacking minorities onto a majority culture backdrop, actually create new ‘publics’, new images of social cohesion (see Vertovec 1996b). In this way, Parekh (in Parekh and Bhabha 1989: 27) has advocated that

Multiculturalism doesn't simply mean numerical plurality of different cultures, but rather a community which is creating, guaranteeing, encouraging spaces within which different communities are able to grow at their own pace. At the same time it means creating a public space in which these communities are able to interact, enrich the existing culture and create a new consensual culture in which they recognise reflections of their own identity.

Here research and policy can be directed toward examining media perpetuation of stereotypes, new representations of immigrants and the changing common culture, and public knowledge on the net costs and benefits of immigration. Since at present ‘there is little conclusive evidence about long-term impacts of such campaigns on either levels of tolerance among the public, or those specifically targeted groups of professionals, such as police officers’ (McAndrew & Weinfeld 1996: 18), there is also a need to construct better methods of evaluating the successes and failures of measures aimed at altering public awareness.

methodology

Research on social cohesion often begs a fundamental question: is it a condition or a process? Further, what are criteria for judging whether social cohesion is present, absent, high, low, declining or underway? Methodological implications follow, including whether and how the researcher is to be engaged in describing or measuring indices and understanding patterns (such as vertical & horizontal mobility). The choice of methods --such as the compilation of indices of dissimilarity and other comparative statistics, ethnography, and network analysis -- follows accordingly.

Rather than the common approaches of assessing individual and group differences in rates of assimilation or economic advancement -- as has often been the norm in studies of immigrant integration -- Robert Bach (1993: 157) advocates ‘refocusing immigration research to include community transformation as a whole’; that is, including examination of established populations and how immigration ‘has changed the composition and relationships between members of groups in urban communities.’ This represents perhaps one of the most innovative and fruitful areas of policy related research: tracing the contours of trust which are formed or stifled in social fields affected by immigration. This would entail description and analysis of social networks, cross-cutting ties and sources of multiple identification which might form the stuff of new associational activity and forward-looking modes of civil regeneration (Vertovec 1997a).

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