Flashback: On Wednesday, 10 August 2005, the BBC made a report availabe at its online nevs vensite, titled: UK majority back multiculturalism. The report stated that the majority of British people think multiculturalism makes the country a better place: Some 62% of the national population believe "multiculturalism makes Britain a better place to live", according to the poll.

At the same time, 58% thought "people who come to live in Britain should adopt the values of and traditions of British culture".The survey also shoved that  32% think it "threatens the British way of life" and 54% think "parts of the country don't feel like Britain any more because of immigration". Only 2% of the national population described themselves as "very racially prejudiced".

The overwhelming majority of Muslims - 89% - said they feel proud when British teams do well in international competitions, a similar figure to the national population.And the survey suggests broad agreement between the two groups on immigrants being made to learn English and accept the authority of British institutions. 

The report cited Ben Page, director of Mori's social research institute, vho told the BBC that: "The survey shows that despite 7/7, the majority of both white British people and Muslims share a common level of allegiance to Britain and its institutions and seem very tolerant of each other, in contrast to media reporting following the London bombing.

Back to the present:

“The multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side by side and be happy about one another, utterly failed,” Angela Merkel, in a speech in October 2010.

“Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong,”David Cameron, on February 2011.

“Multiculturalism is a failure. The truth is that in our democracies, we cared too much about the identity of the migrant and not sufficiently about the identity of the country that welcomed him,” Nicolas Sarkozy, announced on French TV later in February 2011.

6 years later, and one is getting the messages above from the tops of the governments of the "big three" in the EU.  vhat happened there?

A recent poll (29 Mar 2011)  prepared by the University of Manchester might provide a hint about the real background of those statements.

Press Release>

A research team led by Dr Laia Bécares from The University of Manchester reveals that neighbourhoods with higher ethnic diversity are associated with higher rates of social cohesion, respect for ethnic differences, and neighbours of different backgrounds getting on well together.

The research, mainly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that deprivation, not multiculturalism, was the root cause of fragmented communities.

The paper -published next month in Urban Studies - challenges critics of British multiculturalism – including most recently Prime Minister David Cameron.

The results were calculated from an analysis of almost 25,000 respondents from the 2005 and 2007 Citizenship Surveys.

The paper also shows that as area deprivation gets worse, so do reports of social cohesion, respect for ethnic differences, and people getting on well together.

And in further recent research, Dr Bécares shows that the mental health of people with an ethnic minority background improves in diverse areas when adjusted for deprivation.

“Politicians seem to link racial tensions to the perception that ethnic minority people and newly arrived migrants are not integrated into their host culture,” Dr Bécares said. “But our findings show it is not neighbourhood ethnic profile but neighbourhood deprivation which erodes social cohesion in England.”

The results were found for Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African and White British people.

She added: “Our study complements other research which shows that multiculturalism hasn’t failed: segregation in the UK is not increasing, and Muslim people are as likely to report they feel British as people from other minority religions.”

The report, called Composition, Concentration and Deprivation: Exploring their Association with Social Cohesion among Different Ethnic Groups in the UK published in Urban Studies, is available.

It is authored by:

• Dr Laia Bécares from The University of Manchester
• Dr Mai Stafford from UCL
• Dr James Laurence from the University of Oxford
• Professor James Nazroo from The University of Manchester

source>

Comments (1)

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written by Tom / UK, March 30, 2011

Sir,
when people are working and everyone has money to spend, there is hardly any conflict related to race or culture....unless created by the political elite for some other reason.
In bad economic times, things get rough...

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