Community Cohesion

 
Breakthrough Britain: Social Cohesion

Recent figures indicate that both relative poverty and economic inequality have risen over the past 13 years in the UK.[i] It is also apparent that deprivation has increased even more strikingly among Britain’s minorities, and that second and even third-generation immigrants remain among Britain’s most deprived—undermining the belief that first-generation immigrants may suffer but their subsequent, British-born offspring will become better off. 2007 figures show that the poverty rate for Britain’s minority ethnic groups stood at 40%, twice the 20% found amongst white British people.[ii]

Furthermore, as faith identities have become increasingly reflected with such statistics—British Muslims are, a whole, by far the most disadvantaged faith group in the UK, for example—there are new concerns regarding forms of political extremism fuelled in part by such deprivation.

Complicating such statistics is an immigration rate which has quadrupled since 1997, with as many as 1,500 new immigrants arriving in Britain every day. Yet even if immigration rates were to be radically capped, the challenges that have arisen as a result of a society that has quickly become more culturally diverse would remain.

Concerns regarding social justice in Britain cannot ignore the distinctive needs such figures represent. Yet imposing top-down, target-based policies is not always the best solution. There is a profound need to consider how government policy might move beyond the frameworks of multiculturalism to encourage the best of local, grassroots efforts in a variety of sectors—housing, schools, local government, and the voluntary sector—to enable increasingly diverse communities, with their distinctive needs, to integrate and flourish.

Social cohesion by nature involves addressing multiple issues across a variety of sectors at a time, involving a complex interplay among everything from initial pathways for newly-arrived migrants, to housing and school policies, to the empowering of local authorities to address the particularities of social cohesion in their area, to polices which might incentivise social capital bridging projects in the third sector.

• What is the relationship between social cohesion, economic deprivation, and immigration?
• What pathways make for positive integration of migrants, and where do government policies need to join up in order for that to happen?
• How might provision of English-language tuition be increased?
• What is the role of schools and teachers in social cohesion, and how might they be empowered to develop approaches distinct to their local context?
• How do we cultivate the kind of shared civic spaces which encourage significant interactions between different communities?
• How might new housing developments and local housing associations best contribute to social cohesion?
• How might new community leaders be nurtured and developed in order to cultivate new forms of social capital in neighbourhoods?
  

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[i] See, for example, “Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2009”, IFS Commentary C109, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, 2009, pp. 1-2.

CHAIRMAN

Dr Jeff Bailey (Chairman)
Dr Bailey taught religion and politics at the University of Cambridge, where he remains an Affiliated Lecturer, with particular expertise in the intersection of modern politics and interfaith relations. He has been a consultant with the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, worked on religious conflict with the Clinton Global Initiative's annual conference, and published on these topics in various books and journals, including most recently theCambridge Review of International Affairs. He previously studied at Duke University in the United States, and spent several years living and working in the inner-city of Washington, DC.

WORKING GROUP

Jas Bains
Jas is CEO of Ashram Housing Association, which has won multiple national awards for its work in buildingcohesive communities in Birmingham. Mr Bains is the corporate director within the Accord Group for economic regeneration and neighbourhood development, is a Board Member of the West Midlands Regional Development Agency, and a member of the Poverty Strategy Group for the JosephRowntree Foundation.

Ben Hughes
Ben is the CEO of BASSAC (British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres), a leading umbrella membership body for multi-purpose community-based organizations throughout the country, dedicated to tackling the causes and effects of poverty, exclusion and discrimination in deprived neighbourhoods

Dr Hiranthi Jayaweera
Dr Jayaweera is Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). She co-authored a recent report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on ‘Immigration, Faith and Cohesion’,and has a long standing interest in the area of access to health care among migrants and ethnic minorities in the UK.

Angie Kotler
Angie is the Director of the Schools Linking Network, a programme which started in Bradford to engage schools and teachers in developing intercultural partnerships. SLN has received various forms of national recognition and, since 2007, at the request of the Government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families, has developed into a UK-wide programme.

Dr Philip Lewis
Dr Lewis is the author ofYoung, British and Muslim(Continuum 2007, with a forward by Jon Snow) and lectures in the Department of Peace Studies at theUniversity of Bradford. His research focuses on how complex multi-ethnic andreligiously diverse cities might better enable flourishing community life. He has been a commissioner for the Runnymede Trust inquiry which produced the 1997 report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, and is a scholar-consultant for the national Christian-Muslim Forum.

Niamh Mc Mahon
Niamh is research assistant for the CSJ Working Group in Social Cohesion, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Politics and International Studies. Her research seeks to compare immigrant integration strategies in European countries, drawing on her earlier work with the European Commission, various NGOs, and the private sector.

Glen Williams
Glen works in counter-terrorism and community relations with the East Midlands Community Contact Unit. Previous to this he served as Detective Constable with the Nottinghamshire Police Service for 30 years, where he worked with the Prevent strategy for Nottinghamshire. He has also been Vice-President of the National Black Police Association, and contributed to the Home Office Policing Green Paper ‘Policing Our Communities Together’.