Britain in Transition: Diversity, Therapy Culture and the Legacy of New Labour (original) (raw)
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Reflections on British Multiculturalism, 1967-2014
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The Ghost in the Machine: An Overview and Analysis of British Multiculturalism
2017
As multiculturalism in the United Kingdom passes to a ‘post’ phase of existence, at least in academic and political discourse, it is important to consider the lingering impact of over fifty years of its presence in the form of Race Relations and integration measures. This article aims at a critical reassessment of the overarching strategies that have developed over the last half-century in relation to the integration of immigrants by putting the legacy of British multiculturalism into a firm historical and socio-political context; by marrying immigration and integration policies with normative models of integration in the hope of drawing a certain causality between them; and finally by highlighting the changes that have taken shape amidst the continuity of certain shared principles or frames of reference.
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The community of South-Asians has been the largest sub-group of the migrant British population in recent history and has had a large influence on contemporary British culture due to the fusion of ethnic and adopted identities. Multiple attempts have been made by British society to homogenize the ethnicity of these immigrants and bring them into the system, resulting in the creation of the 'British Asian'. This paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind the creation of the term and its failure to be adopted by the communities themselves as an identity.
MULTICULTURALISM: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BRITISH POLITICAL PARTIES
Britain has always been a land of several ethno-national groups. As an imperial power, it ruled over several nations in Asia and Africa. The British Empire unraveled after the Second World War ended in 1945, and Britain was left with an economy and infrastructure in shambles. To revive the British economy, immigrants were taken in from diverse backgrounds, mostly from Britain's former colonies. To accommodate these migrants and to avoid racial tensions, the policy of multiculturalism was designed and adopted. Over the decades, British multiculturalism has been confronted with several challenges and the prominent British political parties have responded to them in different ways. The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the respective policies of major political parties on multiculturalism. The focus of the study is on the period 1997-2016, for during this particular period, debate began on multiculturalism. The debate became more contentious in the aftermath of the catastrophic events of 9/11and the 7/7 London bombings. The ideology of Multiculturalism "The idea of multiculturalism in contemporary political philosophy is about how to understand and respond to the challenges associated with cultural and religious diversity". 1 "Multiculturalism is the coexistence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behaviors, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles". 2
Inclusive Britishness: A Multiculturalist Advancep ost_979 23..41
Scholars argue that policies of multiculturalism in different countries are in retreat or in question. Britain is often used as an example of this, and leading British politicians and commentators often criticise such a policy. Yet a long-held multiculturalist goal has been to make Britishness more inclusive and this is something leading politicians were until recently uncommitted to. We use interviews with politicians who have served in this government and the last, the measures they have introduced, their media contributions, speeches and policy documents, to show that they are now committed to this goal. At a time when a British policy of multiculturalism is said to be in retreat or in question we identify a multiculturalist advance and show that this raises a range of difficult questions about government approaches to 'Britishness'.
Our current glut of crises, one following hot on the heels of last, presents us with both opportunities and problems of interpretation. How and where are we to begin unpicking the mesh of social, economic and political issues confronting? To what extent are the critical paradigms to which we were used prior to 2008, the beginning of the global financial crisis, still applicable or useful? Specifically as Europeans, how does the project of integration and federalisation implicate and alter these other factors? This essay is a contribution towards a critical response to this glut, specifically towards the issues of immigration and multiculturalism which confront Europe. Our chosen route in is a speech given by British premier David Cameron to the Munich Security Conference in February 2011. Though it may seem like an arbitrary decision, I believe that this speech provides us with a way of structuring our thoughts on the subject, and a way of coming understand Europe's resurgent hard-Right. We begin with a brief sketch of the political context, tracing Cameron's move from his earlier social liberalism to the present hard-line populism, driven by both the ascendency of UKIP and the need to deflect blame away from those responsible for the financial crisis. We then move to a close analysis of the speech, before seeing how the ideological formulation it constructs can be used to understand the European hard-Right.