The Spectre of Multiculturalism
“GO HOME OR FACE ARREST.” This is the slogan that was bandied about six boroughs of London in July this year. The UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) pilot scheme agreed to by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, sent two vans with the slogan written across them to drive around the selected areas in the hope that the government could crack down on illegal immigration in “the most cost-effective” and ‘humane’ way. As the UK’s Immigration Minister put it: “There is an alternative to being led away in handcuffs. Help and advice can be provided to those who cooperate and return home voluntarily.”
For residents in Brent - one of the boroughs affected by the pilot - the UKBA’s tactics are perceived as hostile and dangerous to the community’s wellbeing. The vans are the latest addition to an on-going program to rid the country of illegal immigrants - spot checks involving UKBA immigration officers ‘randomly’ stopping and checking peoples’ immigration statuses have been going on for months. One such spot is Kensal Green tube station in Brent, where the UKBA’s checks were described as being “heavy handed” and targeting solely “non-white people”. At a recent anti-UKBA protest by the tube station in question I was told by one resident that she “doesn’t even feel safe talking about this issue in public” due to the colour of her skin.
Whereas Boris Johnson and Downing Street have defended the need for the "harsh" slogans, MPs from all parties have denounced the pilot scheme as nasty, stupid, racist and pathetic. Most recently, Conservative Cabinet Minister Eric Pickles questioned the scheme and stated that, should it be rolled out across the country, "I need to see some very persuasive evidence that this should be passed out nationally."
Yet what residents are concerned about is not so much the scheme’s effectiveness in sending illegal immigrants home, but its incitement towards division along racial lines. Indeed, the Advertising Standards Authority has launched an investigation into the pilot, in response to a number of complaints expressing concern “that the ad, in particular the phrase ‘Go Home’, is offensive and irresponsible because it is reminiscent of slogans used by racist groups to attack immigrants in the past and could incite or exacerbate racial hatred and tensions in multicultural communities.” Similarly, the Equality and Human Rights Commission is now enquiring whether the spot checks at tube stations did not involve racial profiling.
The UK has long been championed as the multicultural capital of Europe, heralded for its openness to immigrants and ability to define British identity in cosmopolitan terms (Brent is in fact London’s most ethnically-diverse borough). Ever since the 1960s which saw waves of immigration to the UK and elsewhere in Europe, multiculturalism has been a firm policy of Britain’s. Despite this, the last decade has seen a backlash against it: the perceived threat of globalization, 9/11 and the War on Terror have all served to unsettle British identity.
Over the past couple of years anti-multiculturalism rhetoric has become the norm in Europe, with France’s Nikolas Sarkozy, Britain’s David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel all claiming that multiculturalism had “utterly failed”. The danger is that while it is all too easy to fall back on anti-immigration rhetoric in times of economic difficulty, this has detrimental effects on anyone who isn’t white. If the girl I spoke to at Kensal Green tube station was afraid to speak about immigration issues in public, it’s probably because the majority sees immigration as an issue that needs addressing and its easier to identify a Bangladeshi migrant than identify a Lithuanian migrant. Racial stereotypes remain significant.
Indeed, the debate surrounding what to do with illegal immigrants tends to lump illegal immigrants’ identities and immigrants’ identities together. In a recent article in the Metro, - a daily newspaper read by around three million Londoners - statistics about illegalimmigration are juxtaposed to things such as “Britons think immigration is the 2nd most important issue facing the country, behind the economy” and “64% say: Immigration has had a bad effect on Britain.” Such conflation is by no means exclusive to the Metro and simply goes to show how sensitivities towards immigrants - whether legal or not - are sure to be aroused should campaigns such as the UKBA’s vans be spread nationally. Offhand remarks in the street suggest this may well be the direction Britain takes (the first time I personally saw the UKBA van, the person I was with commented “the wording should be even stronger”), and a recent poll suggests that the majority of the public agrees with the ‘Go Home Or Face Arrest’ slogan, although it thinks it isn’t effective in enticing illegal immigrants to voluntarily leave.
The British public’s two main concerns - the economy and immigration - have become so confounded that 77% believe that “a dramatic reduction in immigration would reduce pressure on public services and welfare, making it easier for British people to find jobs” according to the aforementioned poll. On the other hand, experts believe migrants are in fact less likely to claim benefits or use public healthcare, and economists actually argue that migrants are a benefit to Britain’s economy rather than a hindrance - a position consistently defended by Britain’s leading weekly current affairs newspaper The Economist.
The net result of all these erroneous beliefs makes for a chimera-like scapegoat combining illegal immigrants, immigrants, non-whites, and anti-Muslim attitudes which are conveniently veiled under the banner of ‘multiculturalism’. All of which are bad for ‘British’ jobs. On the face of it, multiculturalism is defunct. Yet not only is multiculturalism a growing demographical fact all across Europe - it is also growing in practice: “Policies and programs once deemed ‘multicultural’ continue everywhere” claim Prof. Dr. Steven Vertovec and Dr. Susanne Wessendorf of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in their book The Multiculturalism Backlash, something that has been corroborated by other studies.
Rather than pay lip service to contorted notions of immigrants and the economy, governments across Europe (the problem is by no means unique to Britain) would do well to line their rhetoric with policy and educate their citizens about the benefits of immigration while abating ungrounded fears of a ‘loss of national identity’ as the more extreme nationalistic parties would have it.
Historically, immigration has always been a concern for both host nations and migrants. As a Brent-born rapper reminds us in a song about his neighborhood: “[Today] the streets are full of Aussies and Kiwis, but back in the seventies, it wasn’t that easy. Whites didn’t care what the black man stand for. Irish were the only ones happy to play landlord, because they were the blacks before us.” Today’s stigmatization of a largely Muslim demographic is but the latest manifestation of fear regarding the unknown. If history has shown that fears over political (Irish immigrants) and racial (Caribbean immigrants) differences were unfounded, why now fret over religious differences? A more realistic danger stems from pigeonholing people into one-dimensional identities, something Amartya Sen poignantly exposed in his book Identity and Violence.
The demographic fact of multiculturalism in Europe today should be ever-more acknowledged in both public discourse and the media. Moreover, Europe is uniquely placed to deal with the foreseen growth of immigration insofar as its very foundations lie on a panoply of cultures. That Europe has never convinced its constituents to reach beyond the narrow-mindedness of national sovereignty; that different groups have yet to successfully settle in some places as much as others have elsewhere; both issues present formidable challenges to be taken up with an equal amount of enthusiasm, open-mindedness and intelligence endemic to European culture. Immigrant-bashing isn’t the answer.
Benedict Anderson famously defined the nation as an ‘imagined community’ because although all citizens will never meet face to face, “in the minds of each lives the image of their community.” Is it too hard to imagine a multicultural European community that can have a sophisticated discussion about immigration and economics? Looking at the UKBA van parading its ‘Go Home’ slogan around Brent, one wonders if the Brits have any imagination left.
To be sure, these are all vital questions Europeans must ask themselves. What is needed is a real public debate surrounding them, not a retreat to identity politics in the confines of national borders. The bottom line is that multiculturalism is here to stay. Attempts to veil it not only result in the UKBA’s half-baked van project which make a mockery of reality (London is after all one of the most multicultural cities in the world) - they also perpetuate the fanciful idea that nation and race are the most important identities individuals possess.
This article was written as part of a EC journalism training programme lead by Media4Change.
