Learning to manage multiculturalism

This week David Cameron's Conservatives were forced to address the policy area that dare not speak its name: immigration. Cornered on BBC Two's Newsnight programme, David Cameron averred that immigration over the past ten years had been too high, but that the concerns people had on the issue were not to do with race and culture, but with the increased pressures on public services.

The Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green also weighed in yesterday, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme:

"Inevitably many of the incoming communities do cluster together, it’s a natural thing to do, and therefore if that’s unplanned and unexpected then it’s very difficult for the local authorities to cope.

So actually having a firm immigration policy is a way of contributing to better community cohesion in this country."

Whether or not this represents a "lurch to the right", or a desperate reversion of Team Cameron to a "core vote strategy", it is fair enough that the new Conservative Party have the opportunity to address this issue. Unfortunately, while it is still true that immigration must be controlled, for a number of reasons, it is no longer the case that immigration controls can enhance social cohesion to any great extent.

The reason for this is revealed in today's Daily Telegraph:

Ludi Simpson, a social statistician at Manchester University, said the Pakistani population in Birmingham was likely to double by 2026, but with two-thirds of this increase due to the relatively younger age profile of Pakistanis, rather than increased immigration.

Dr Simpson said: "The overall picture is one of rapid natural growth plus some immigration, mainly of young spouses.

"Birmingham is likely to become a minority white city in 2027, but a diverse one in which the white population remains more than twice the size of the Pakistani population which is predicted to become one fifth of the district's population by then."...

Nissa Finney, also from Manchester University, told the Royal Geographical Society's annual conference that 35 towns and cities in Britain had at least one ward which was "minority white". These included Birmingham, Burnley, Slough, Peterborough, Bolton and Derby, as well as Brent, Tower Hamlets, Ealing and Newham within London.

Miss Finney said the increasing proportion of non-whites in these wards was more linked with "natural population dynamics" like moving areas to be nearer family or friends, than with immigration.

She told the conference: "Clustering is the result of benign and natural population dynamics. There is no evidence of self-segregation or exceptional 'white flight'."

The implication is that immigration is no longer the principal driver of increased cultural and racial diversity in Britain. Natural population growth and population movements within the United Kingdom are now of greater significance.

Furthermore, as has recently been reported, emigration from the United Kingdom has reached a new high:

The number of Britons emigrating in the 12 months to July 2006 reached 385,000, the highest since present counting methods were introduced in 1991, new figures show.

This is almost certainly the greatest emigration since the 1960s, when thousands left to start new lives in Australia. It could even be the highest since before the First World War, though official figures are not available. Latest figures show that one British citizen leaves the country every three minutes.

Almost 200,000 of those leaving for a year or more were British citizens - one every three minutes - and the rest were foreign nationals returning home or going elsewhere.

Since 1997, 1.8 million British nationals have left the country and about 900,000 have returned. At the same time, more than three million foreign nationals arrived and about half that number left.

The departure of so many Britons is exacerbating the demographic and cultural changes wrought by high levels of immigration.

Despite the exodus, the population is rising - because emigrants are more than balanced by immigrants, with 574,000 arriving.

Those who hope that calling a halt to immigration will substantially limit the pace of demographic and cultural change are deluding themselves. We actually need immigrants to offset the loss through emigration. Differential birth rates between communities are also a major factor in altering the demographic balance of the nation. The goal of immigration control should be to allow for legitimate population movement and to meet our own economic needs, while ensuring that undesirable criminal elements and security threats are excluded. These objectives are largely independent of the need to build and maintain social cohesion, which promises to be a major challenge of this century not just in Britain but also in other western countries. Political parties need to make clear that the clock cannot be turned back, and that the transition to a multicultural society is already past the point of no return. The process cannot be reversed: we need to learn how to manage it.