Integration into what? Immigration and multiculturalism

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Throughout Europe, the issue of historically high levels of immigration has become a lightning rod for political polarisation. While some sing the praises of multiculturalism, there are growing concerns about the impact of mass migration on national social cohesion. With a more ethnically diverse UK emerging in the past two decades, and the ‘white British’ population falling to 74 per cent in 2021, surveys suggest two thirds of people now believe immigration is too high.

The issue is not confined to numbers, but a sense that newcomers are resistant to integrating into British social norms. Today, many seem sympathetic to the view that naïve mass-migration policies can foster values antithetical to British democracy, such as Islamist extremism. The summer riots in English towns and cities, and the simmering tensions they revealed, pose uncomfortable questions: what, if anything, binds society together?

But are critics of mass migration too eager to blame foreign migrants while overlooking problems closer to home? There seems little agreement about what constitutes the core British values that migrants should integrate into. Some jokingly note that, aside from an appreciation of fish and chips or warm beer, few have come up with a satisfying answer. Back in 2016, the government-commissioned Casey Review damningly described UK integration policy as ‘little more than saris, samosas and steel drums for the already well-intentioned’. In response, the then communities secretary, Sajid Javid, promised an ‘oath of allegiance to British values’ for those in public office – but failed to outline what those values might be.

Yet historically, the UK successfully integrated swathes of new migrants who were happy to see themselves as British citizens, while the US successfully promoted the ideal of assimilating generations of immigrants into the American dream, promising lives of liberty and happiness for all. Whether myth or reality, that aspiration inspired a positive orientation to immigration per se.

Some argue that the culprit is multiculturalism, a policy which emphasises diversity and group identity over association with a common nation. Twenty years ago, David Goodhart’s seminal essay, Too Diverse?, caused uproar with its warning that mass migration threatened a healthy society of common values. Now evident in all walks of life – school curricula, corporate DEI policies and the funding criteria of public institutions – perhaps a multiculturalist ethos is indeed anathema to a conception of national values and a common citizenship.

What pulls a nation together? Is it time to consider whether celebrating diversity amounts to embracing the self-separation of communities? Has a hyper-individualistic online culture or narcissistic age hampered the creation of collective identity? Can Labour politicians rise to the challenge of integration in what can often feel like a disunited Britain? Or will their remaining allegiance to identity politics, and the current disdain for British history and traditions, pose problems? And is there a way of discussing the problem of mass migration without scapegoating migrants themselves, or resorting to racist antagonism to migrants per se?

SPEAKERS
William Clouston
party leader, Social Democratic Party

Paul Embery
firefighter; trade unionist; author, Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class; broadcaster

Inaya Folarin Iman
broadcaster and columnist; founder and director, The Equiano Project

John McGuirk
editor, Gript Media

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
director, Don't Divide Us; author, What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth

CHAIR
Alastair Donald
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; convenor, Living Freedom; author, Letter on Liberty: The Scottish Question