by Sharon Norris
Ethnic minorities and the issue of racial segregation topped the news agenda last week.
Since the London bombings on 7 July, the Government has been considering how best to tackle alienation among young people from minority ethnic backgrounds. On Thursday the Muslim Task Force set up by the Government in the wake of 7/7 held its final meeting. Although Home Secretary Charles Clarke gave no commitment to holding a public enquiry - one of the Task Force's main recommendations - the Government did announce the setting up of a new Commission on Integration and Cohesion. The Commission, which is expected to report back in July next year, has been asked to come up with proposals to encourage integration in ethnic minority communities, and to promote a shared sense of 'Britishness'.
Also on Thursday, the Chairman of the Campaign for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, gave a speech to the Manchester Community Relations Forum in which he argued that Britain is 'sleepwalking' to a New Orleans-style 'semi-voluntary segregation' of different racial groups. Phillips referred to data compiled by ESRC-funded researchers to back up his assertion that both 'hard' and 'soft' segregation is on the increase. However, the growing "ghettoisation" in some of our cities is not simply due to class factors, he argued, quoting research by Professor Ceri Peach from Oxford University which estimates that less than 10 per cent of the segregation that exists is due to economic factors.
Many people are choosing to mix only with people of their own race, Phillips claimed, adding that certain ethnic minority communities are becoming "marooned outside the mainstream". Phillips also cited data from another ESRC-funded researcher, Professor Simon Burgess of Bristol University, which shows that even in schools, voluntary ethnic segregation is becoming more common, and said it was particular worrying that young people now are more likely than their parents to have friends drawn only from their own communities.
...the picture is more complex than Phillips' account would suggest, says Ceri Peach...
However, the picture is more complex than Phillips' account would suggest, says Ceri Peach, and across the country as a whole, segregation is actually declining as people from ethnic minority backgrounds become wealthier and move out of city centre areas. While there are individual wards where the minority population, especially those from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds, is especially concentrated, these are the exception, Professor Peach argues. Among the Afro-Caribbean population in London, for example, segregation has actually decreased at every Census since 1961. Of more significance, claims Professor Peach, is the fact that a disproportionate number of people in areas of multiple deprivation are from poor Muslim backgrounds. Within the top ten per cent of these areas, 30 per cent of the population falls into this category.
Another ESRC-funded researcher, Professor Danny Dorling, from the University of Sheffield, also challenged Phillips' account of racial segregation in an article in Sunday's Observer. In particular he called into question the research Phillips' quoted, which, according to Dorling, was "neither new or authoritative". The most persuasive recent research, he argued, was by Dr Ludi Simpson, from the University of Manchester, who is also involved with the ESRC's Research Methods Programme. According to Dr Simpson's latest study, the idea that racial segregation is on the increase in Britain is "a myth", and more significant than any racial segregation, Professor Dorling argued, was the "ever increasing segregation by wealth and poverty".
Given the various calls for more social cohesion last week, a roundtable event on "Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion”, run jointly by the ESRC's Identities and Social Action Programme and the Runnymede Trust was especially timely. The aim of Wednesday's event, which involved politicians, policy-makers, researchers and community workers, was to explore the thinking behind community cohesion, civic renewal policies, and the various definitions of identity and diversity on which both of these rest. The Identities Programme, which is directed by Professor Margie Wetherell from the Open University, draws together research projects on issues relating both to individual and to group and community identities.