This part of the thesis reviews the central government’s activity in integration matters. Firstly, it will examine UK integration policies targeting refugees, an area where central government showed significant activity. Secondly, (the lack of) integration policies designed for the whole group of immigrants will be studied. In doing so, shifting integration
definitions found in related high level policy documents and reports will also be examined.
(i) Integration-Related Documents Targeting Refugees
Early integration policies in the UK focused mainly on refugees, a small and geographically more restricted fraction of the total immigrant population. Thereby integration of migrants, as a whole, was not given adequate attention. The ‘UK Refugee Council Working Paper’ (1997) defined integration as
a process, which prevents or counteracts the social marginalisation of refugees, by removing legal, cultural and language obstacles and ensuring that refugees are empowered to make positive decisions on their future and benefit fully from available opportunities as per their abilities and aspirations. (Ager and Strang 2004: 14)
This definition recognises refugees’ vulnerable position in a new country and suggests that the obligation to act so as to enhance refugee integration rests mainly with the state. As seen from later papers, this is not the standard way to define integration at the policy-making level; however, the nature of the group to be integrated (i.e. refugees) could justify such a positive state approach. The Working Paper was soon followed by a mainstream refugee integration strategy called ‘Full and Equal Citizens’, published in 2000, which stated,
[the] aims of the integration strategy [are]: to include refugees as equal members of society,
to help refugees develop their potential and contribute to the cultural and economic life of the country,
to facilitate access to the support necessary for the integration of refugees nationally and regionally. (p. 2)
As the strategy’s title suggests, the Government’s aim is to ensure that refugees become ‘full and equal’ citizens of the UK. All such aims appear to be the subject of actions to be taken by the host society, and accordingly refugees’ responsibilities in integration have not been laid down. The document reflects a rather permissive, positive attitude to integration by formulating action requirements primarily for the state, thereby recognising refugees’ weaker agency position. As we will see, such an approach is in contrast with more recent, angled viewpoints on integration that stress the need for incomers to take positive action, whilst obscuring the precise role of the state in such process. To back up the Government’s refugee integration initiative, an active integration framework, both nationally and locally, was launched focusing on main areas such as accommodation, education and training, employment, access to healthcare and community development. Sadly, the document remains vague; it fails to detail the level and type of activities that refugees were expected to carry out in order to integrate. Nevertheless, it suggests that the rate of integration can be measured by a high level of structural integration, typically in the labour market (Ager and Strang 2008).
Later, in 2005, the refugee integration strategy was reworked, following which a new policy document was made public under the name ‘Integration Matters’, complemented by the paper ‘Moving on Together: Government’s Recommitment to Supporting Refugees’. According to this strategy,
integration takes place when refugees are empowered to achieve their full potential as members of British society; contribute to the community; and access the services to which they are entitled (Home Office 2005: 15).
Compared to the previous refugee integration definition, the above policy document focused more on how refugees could achieve integration in a way desired by the state, i.e. by
contributing to the society, by acting in a way to achieve their full potential, at the same time remaining silent about how the state envisages empowering refugees to do so. The strategy’s integration definition was slightly fine-tuned by way of a consultation paper in 2006, ‘A New
Model for National Refugee Integration Services in England: A Consultation Paper’, as
By ‘integration’ we mean the process that takes place when refugees are empowered to achieve their full potential as members of British society, to contribute to the community, to access public services, and to become fully able to exercise the rights and responsibilities that they share with other residents of the UK.
Such a definition clearly lays down that residing in the UK entails responsibilities as well as rights. At the same time, obligations falling on the state, such as empowering refugees, sound convincing but remain soft and general. It is not clear what the role of the state is to enhance integration.
Even though the document called ‘London Enriched’ (2009) was not a government-level but a local refugee integration policy, it still is interesting to consider, due mainly to the
importance of London within the UK as a major immigrant hub, and also because most of the participants in this research reside in the Greater London area. Even though the policy targets refugees only, it explicitly aims to expand its scope to cover all immigrants living in London. It contains the following definition of integration:
Integration takes place in all aspects of life: economic, social, cultural, civic and political. The process may continue for a long time after arrival, and must be a two-way street, built on positive engagement by both refugees and the settled communities (p. 1).
The core areas where integration was assessed were described as ‘English language, housing, employment, skills and enterprise, health, community safety, children and young people, community development and participation’ (p. 4-5; see also Gidley & Jayaweera 2010). Although most of these played out at the local level, refugee agency alone is not sufficient for their implementation. The definition recognises that integration has diverse sites, it encompasses ‘all aspects of life’, and is a process done over a long period of time. The document clearly focuses on an active approach to integration by migrants and refugees. At one point it invokes engagement between incomers and the settled population, thereby echoing ideas of social cohesion. The role of either the municipality or the state in enabling integration is not discussed at all. The formulation of such a definition of integration projects the image of expectation of self-responsibility and active agency on the refugees and
migrants’ side, whilst the municipality seems to remain relatively passive in this equation. The suggested positive engagement by refugees and settled communities is an idea that is welcomed. Yet, the duties of the settled population in this respect have not been elaborated, which renders the ‘two-way street’ idea hollow.
An integration-related document came out in the same year of 2009. The UK Border
Agency, by way of its Survey on New Refugees, aimed at investigating integration in the UK of recently arrived refugees. Findings of the survey were published in a research report called ‘Helping new refugees integrate into the UK: baseline data analysis from the Survey
of New Refugees’ (2009). Although the survey focused only on new refugees, which is an
even tinier group than the entire refugee population, its importance lies primarily in its approaching integration from the perspective of the refugees. A similar research report from 2010, ‘Spotlight on refugee integration: findings from the Survey of New Refugees in the
United Kingdom’, which was based on the previous survey, set forth three ‘key indicators of
refugee integration’, i.e. housing, employment and English language skills. Also, the document showcased a range of factors that could be closely linked to refugee integration in the said three areas, and thus shaped their pattern of integration. These factors were country of origin, time spent in the UK, English language skills, age, sex, health, previous education and employment, and family and friends. Acknowledgement of the formative effects of such factors on integration meant recognition of various paths and outcomes of integration that needed to be taken into account when designing integration policy.
(ii) Integration-Related Documents Targeting Immigrants as a Whole Group
In 2000, a very influential and often cited report was published, the so-called Parekh
Report. The report described an ideal society into which migrants were expected to integrate.
Britain was put forward as a ‘community of communities’ (p. 10), composed of different ethnic groups with different values, customs, and traditions. It was grounded in two chief theoretical approaches: liberalism, emphasising rights and freedoms of individuals, and multiculturalism (in a politico-theoretical sense), arguing for the same but in the case of groups. Parekh saw the political community as the foundation of a sense of belonging, instead of the widely repeated ‘shared cultural, ethnic and other characteristics’ (p. 341). In doing so, his approach turned its back on those voices on multiculturalism that highlighted ethnic communities and cultural differences as primary markers of a multicultural society. Although it was innovative and interesting, the report was critiqued chiefly on grounds of its idealism, that fails to fully consider everyday British realities. The notion ‘community of communities’ suggests Britain is composed of a series of close-knit, homogeneous and long- standing communities, each with a long common past. Even though groups of people often form communities and thus build solidarity based on belief in a common ethnic heritage,
many have challenged his simplistic and rigid concept of society as unrealistic (see Yuval- Davis 1991; Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992).
Use of the term ‘community(ies)’ as the foundation of British society became widespread in mainstream political discourses, especially following the emergence of the
Cantle Report in 2001. The report came out following certain major international and
internal events, which acted as a trigger to reshape (or rather to harden) official attitudes towards immigration and integration in the UK. Multiculturalist policies were openly discarded, and securitisation as a line of action impregnated immigration-related state actions. In such socio-political circumstances, the document still followed an implicit multiculturalist agenda by attempting ‘to examine and consider how national policies might be used to promote better community cohesion, based upon shared values and a celebration of diversity’ (foreword). The document delved into community cohesion, which was to materialise as ‘situations in which individuals are bound to one another by common social and cultural commitments’ (p. 70). However, blurring the boundaries of community cohesion and integration was regrettable, as they do not refer to the same social action (Griffiths et al. 2005; Rutter 2013).
In 2002 the first mainstream policy tackling integration of immigrants as a whole group emerged in the form of a White Paper. Its title, ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven’ immediately signalled a change in main priorities of policy makers; securitisation and safety became core lines of action for immigration control. Integration, thus, became secondary. The document argued for tougher border controls, attempting to combat illegal immigration ever more strongly, and to manage immigration by letting in only the highly skilled/educated, i.e. the ‘deserving’ (Sales 2005: 459). Aims not directly related to securitisation revolved around citizenship and nationality, thereby deepening the cleavage between the us and them. The subtitle of the document, ‘Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain’, suggested elaborate integration measures. In reality, immigration control measures abounded, to the detriment of integration-related actions. In the preface, integration (although not defined there as such) was described as a ‘two-way street’ with liabilities and obligations on both host society and migrants. In line with this, the host society would ensure that basic human rights were upheld, and racism and animosity towards migrants were duly dealt with. In return, migrants would have to contribute actively to their smooth integration and inclusion into society. The concept of integration within the document was limited firstly to the wish to build cohesive communities where social integration was meant to happen (p. 28: 1.25), subsuming integration once again under the concept of social cohesion, which as already discussed
meant something else. Secondly, integration was equated with British citizenship and attached rights and responsibilities, supposed inherently to lead to a feeling of inclusion in society (p. 29: 2.1), which is widely accepted to be false. Finally, the document
acknowledged the positive economic contribution of migrants in the UK, which was a major progress from previous governmental attitudes to immigration (Sales 2005). The depicted attitude towards integration is visibly very different from the one defined a year earlier, in 2001, in the refugee integration strategy ‘Full and Equal Citizens’. Integration was seen as a set of obligations that entirely rest with the migrants and are fulfilled at the local level, that of the communities, so that no central governmental policy making in the area was pressing. The document seemingly established only one obligation for the state, which was to deal with racism and xenophobia, however without specifying how this should be achieved. Furthermore, by focusing on securitisation and border control, the document failed to consider the already settled migrants and subsequent generations of migrants (that often formed ethnic minorities). Altogether, as Sales (2005) put it, the document was in contrast with the overarching values of human rights and democracy that are core elements of Britishness.
In 2007 the Commission on Integration and Cohesion’s report ‘Our Shared Future’ suggested a distinction between the by then widely used notion of cohesion and that of integration. According to the document,
… cohesion is principally the process that must happen in all communities to ensure different groups of people get on well together; while integration is principally the process that ensures new residents and existing residents adapt to one another. (p. 9)
Also, the paper provides a definition of an integrated and cohesive community, thus amalgamating the two concepts:
There is a clearly defined and widely shared sense of the contribution of different individuals and different communities to a future vision for a neighbourhood, city, region or country;
There is a strong sense of an individual’s rights and responsibilities when living in a particular place – people know what everyone expects of them, and what they can expect in turn;
Those from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities, access to services and treatment;
There is a strong sense of trust in institutions locally to act fairly in arbitrating between different interests and for their role and justifications to be subject to public scrutiny; There is a strong recognition of the contribution of both those who have newly arrived
and those who already have deep attachments to a particular place, with a focus on what they have in common;
There are strong and positive relationships between people from different backgrounds in the workplace, in schools and other institutions within neighbourhoods. (p. 42)
Integration and cohesion are thus consistently used in the paper as ‘two tightly interlocking concepts’ (p. 37), without real attempt to disconnect the two distinct notions. This eventually led to peculiar understandings of integration, echoed in policy discourses. Also, the
‘integrated and cohesive community’ definition seems to be asymmetrical, with agency implicitly required from the migrants, and lack of assignment of specific roles to achieve such for the state or municipalities. Integration again seems to be short of the ideal of the ‘two-way process’. Although harmony between migrants and settled communities is seen as desirable, it is not specified how such harmony is envisaged, and what the role of the settled or native community is, if any. Not to mention that it is not clear whether such communities indeed want to contribute actively to cohesion building and integration of migrants. By positioning local sites such as schools, workplace, sports, culture and leisure, and shared public spaces and residential areas as the focal point of the level of action, integration is relegated to local politics instead of being dealt with at central government level. Thus, integration remains outside the mainstream political agenda (Rutter 2013), despite explicit acknowledgement of the need for a higher-level, national integration framework. By expressing that integration and cohesion should not be ‘a special programme or project’ any more as ‘it is [also] not about race, faith or other forms of group status or identity. It is simply about how we all get on and secure benefits that are mutually desirable for our communities and ourselves’ (p. 6), a desire to mainstream integration is conspicuous. In this respect, integration policy would be incorporated in other, general, mainstream policies targeting the population as a whole, instead of specifically addressing immigrants. A positive aspect of the document, however, as noted by Kalra and Kapoor (2009), is that instead of stressing common values as binding social factors, as accentuated in policy discourses following the Cantle Report, it proposes a shift towards co-existence.
A year later, in 2008, the Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration, a public body advising the Government on issues related to citizenship and integration, developed an integration definition in its Final Report, which runs as follows:
It has long been accepted that integration is a two-way process and that one key component of it is participation in public, economic or social life, which brings interaction between different ethnic and linguistic groups with the receiving community. The aim of the current naturalisation requirements was to promote the learning of language skills to encourage migrants to become socially and economically active and thereby foster in them a sense of belonging to a wider community (p. 22).
This definition reflects the Government’s new approach to integration, focused on ‘civic integration’ (Joppke 2003, 2004). Such a perspective links English language and civic knowledge to naturalisation, this latter being a legal status of the immigrants, instead of reflecting on the long process of socio-economic integration of migrants. One cannot deny that knowledge of English language can significantly enhance participation in everyday life in the UK. However, it is unfortunate to conflate integration as a process with civic measures focused on language knowledge, the requirement to be economically active, and external border control (e.g. Boujour and Kraler 2015) regulating admission of potential migrants (Grillo 2008; Wray 2011). It is also widely held that civic and language knowledge
requirements do not improve integration of the already settled migrants; on the contrary, they contribute to creating social division by accentuating the imagined homogeneity of the native populace (Schmidt 2011).
By way of a more recent central policy related to integration, published in 2012 under the title ‘Creating the Conditions for Integration’ (DCLG), the Government purports to create a ‘more integrated society’ (APPG Report 2017: 8). Integration in this document equals ‘creating the conditions for everyone to play a full part in national and local life.’ Integration is considered a ‘local issue’ (p. 9), coming ‘from everyday life’, ‘through day-to-day
activities’ (p. 10). By accentuating such sites, development of specific integration policies is once more delegated to the level of municipalities. In doing so, there is not only no
commitment to centrally develop a national integration policy for all immigrants, but the approach also absolves the Government from responsibility in the issue of integration (APPG Report 2017).
Following that, no specific, non-mainstream integration policy could be identified. Nevertheless, integration as an issue of ever growing importance keeps appearing on the political agenda, albeit in a limited manner. In 2016, the widely publicised ‘Casey Review –
Huffington Post 2016) about ‘failed’ integration of some ethnic migrant communities,