Migrants, Cohesion and the Cultural Politics of the State: Critical Perspectives on the Management of Diversity

Abstract

A recent authoritative review of migration and settlement research in Europe identified a critical area for further research in the receiving society's treatment of migrants. This article sets out to respond to this call and, rather than examining specific immigration and integration policies, looks at the wider cultural politics of identity and difference that seems to underpin them. In particular, it focuses on the recent public debate on diversity and social cohesion that has taken place in Britain, paying special attention to the discursive practices of the state and its satellite organisations. Building on the assumption that the state is an embodied and performative entity involving a broad range of actors who operate within its frame of reference, the article examines the cultural politics of ministers, public service broadcasters and quangos’ representatives as an illustration of how discursive dominance comes into being. This examination is carried out through an intersectional approach which discusses representations of migrants and ethnicity not in isolation but in relation to those of non-migrants, class and national identity.

Keywords:

• Integration
• Multiculturalism
• Class
• Nation
• Intersectionality
• Representation

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Roger Bromley, David Parker, Nick Stevenson, Elisabetta Zontini and the two anonymous JEMS referees for their precious comments on earlier versions of this article. I am also very grateful to JEMS' Managing Editor, Jenny Money, for her editorial assistance.

Notes

1. ‘Cultural politics’ refers to the discursive practices of representation of social actors. In this article this expression refers to the specific powerful and authoritative institutional representation of migrants, nation, identity and cohesion that infuse public discourse.

2. Given the ‘super-diverse’ (Vertovec 2006) character of British society, it is important to specify that the term ‘British’ in this article includes (British-born) ethnic minorities and that my discussion is mostly about cohesion and integration in the context of (foreign-born non-EU) migrants. However, given that the public discourse of state actors often conflates these two groups, the discussion which follows has some relevance also to ethnic minorities while not being primarily about them.

3. The expression ‘management of diversity’ has been chosen as it is connected to the meaning and scope of the term ‘manage’, which refers to dealing with a problem as well as to being ‘in charge’ of an organisation or process.

4. The lack of citizenship and often of regular status (Vertovec 2006) is a condition that negatively affects migrants' lives, experiences and inclusion, as Wills et al. (2010) have shown.

5. In this kind of statement, migrants are assumed to be homogeneously unskilled and lacking resources, whereas they are highly differentiated in class terms.

6. For other intersectional discussions of recent broadcasting and political attention to the conditions of the ‘white working class’, see Gillborn (2010), Jones (2011), Lawler (2011), Sveinsson (2009) and Ware (2008).

7. Ted Cantle was the appointed Chair of the Community Review Team set up by the Home Office to produce a report on the 2001 disturbances. Prior to that he was Chief Executive of Nottingham City Council. He then went on to chair the panel advising ministers on how to implement the recommendation made in the 2001 report and, in 2004, was conferred the title of CBE. Currently he is Professor and Chair of the Institute for Community Cohesion, and Associate Director of IDeA.

8. As observed by Solomos, community cohesion ‘became part of a mantra that has been repeated with some regularity by the Blair government and by local politicians and community groups’ (2003: 169).

9. For an example of how differently the riots of the 1980s were examined, see Benyon and Solomos (1987).

10. Phillips' article came a month or so after an interview in The Times where he suggested that multiculturalism should be ‘killed off’ (Baldwin 2004).

11. As an example, see the article in the Daily Telegraph by the Chair of Migration Watch UK, Andrew Green (2006).

12. These insights of quango representatives appear consistent with those of my previous work on NGOs conducted in Bologna (Però 2005, 2007b) and Barcelona (Però 2007a) which showed how—despite a rhetoric of inclusion and empowerment—governance often translates into exclusionary practices.