Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[Yossarian]

When I hear racist statements, they don’t really tend to be about jobs or benefits, they tend to be about the fear of the other.

Who do you hear these racist statements from, and what cultures do they fear?

Of course culture clash is a thing but I don't think we're not talking about uncontacted Amazonian tribes or North Sentinel Islanders moving to the UK here, people from all kinds of cultures generally get along OK in countries like Canada with much higher levels of immigration.

I can't think of many cultures I would be more likely to clash with than some of the cultures within the UK, I think I might get along better with the previously uncontacted Amazonians if they moved in next door than I would with fundamentalist Protestants from the north of Ireland or entitled English aristocrats

 

[Cid]

This is a massive understatement of what culture is, as you would soon discover if we dropped you into a remote Amazonian tribe. Cultures are massively complex things that define your “second nature”, as Hegel put it. In the same way that the nature of your physical environment makes you automatically brace against gravity, for example, your social environment also builds a model in your head for what constitutes your interaction with others. It comprises all your daily common-sense practices and rituals, the way you use language, what your priorities are and even how you draw the boundaries of your selfhood. An encounter between cultures brings these things into conflict. People are confronted with the fact that their way of living — a way of living that they so took for granted that even the existence of the assumptions underlying it were transparent to them — is alien to others. And this can be a frightening thing, particularly if you’re worried that your own culture might become marginalised and that you might therefore have to acculturate to the other, rather than vice versa.

Most people aren't coming from 'remote Amazon tribes' though are they? Cultural divides do not exist exclusively across national boundaries, and cultural norms don't exist purely on those lines either.

ahem, what yos said

 

[maomao]

Who do you hear these racist statements from, and what cultures do they fear?

Of course culture clash is a thing but I don't think we're not talking about uncontacted Amazonian tribes or North Sentinel Islanders moving to the UK here, people from all kinds of cultures generally get along OK in countries like Canada with much higher levels of immigration.

I can't think of many cultures I would be more likely to clash with than some of the cultures within the UK, I think I might get along better with the previously uncontacted Amazonians if they moved in next door than I would with fundamentalist Protestants from the north of Ireland or entitled English aristocrats

Those wouldn't be 'culture clashes', that would be down to established grudges and differences of opinion.

I generally agree though, most people are interested in other cultures. The thing that makes people feel protective and scared is the feeling that they're under attack and that their culture isn't valued.

 

[kabbes]

My point wasn’t that remote Amazonian tribes are coming to Britain. My point was that cultures are complex and cannot be reduced to “your attitude to other people”. (For a start, the use of the concept of “attitude” already begs the question that such a thing as “attitude” is separable and meaningful outside the cultural context that produces the concept).

To make it more concrete, take immigration from any culturally identifiable group you care to name that has moved in measurable numbers to the UK. Have the practices, assumptions, rituals etc of the UK really not altered as a result of this movement?

Who do you hear these racist statements from, and what cultures do they fear?

There are very well-to-do people who live lives of luxury in Surrey villages, for example, who talk about violence on the streets of London being introduced by the arrival of Black Caribbean immigrants, and putting this down to it being just part of that imported culture. Now, the point isn’t whether this fear is justified or not (and of course it isn’t). The point is that the origin of the racism in that case is not economic, it’s a fear of change precipitated by the other.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

How does this discussion change in the future, as climate change worsens? The changes may be sudden, in which case all bets are off, or slow but unpredictable. If the latter I suspect everything will probably get nasty. We've had a human population far too high for the health of the planet for a long time, imo, but if climate change makes large parts of the earth uninhabitable and unusable for agriculture then we will, at some time, be living in a world where it is no longer easy or feasible to accept refugees.

 

[Spymaster]

My point wasn’t that remote Amazonian tribes are coming to Britain. My point was that cultures are complex and cannot be reduced to “your attitude to other people”. (For a start, the use of the concept of “attitude” already begs the question that such a thing as “attitude” is separable and meaningful outside the cultural context that produces the concept).

To make it more concrete, take immigration from any culturally identifiable group you care to make that has moved in measurable numbers to the UK. Have the practices, assumptions, rituals etc of the UK really not altered as a result of this movement?


There are very well-to-do people who live lives of luxury in Surrey villages, for example, who talk about violence on the streets of London being introduced by the arrival of Black Caribbean immigrants, and putting this down to it being just part of that imported culture. Now, the point isn’t whether this fear is justified or not (and of course it isn’t). The point is that the origin of the racism in that case is not economic, it’s a fear of change precipitated by the other.

This is a large part of why open borders is nonsense. It ignores the cultural aspects/fears. It's all very well decrying these fears as unfounded and their holders as gammons or racists, but that doesn't make them less real.

 

[kabbes]

This is a large part of why open borders is nonsense. It ignores the cultural aspects/fears. It's all very well decrying these fears as unfounded and their holders as gammons or racists, but that doesn't make them less real.

And although I hate it, I think this is probably right.

 

[Yossarian]

There are very well-to-do people who live lives of luxury in Surrey villages, for example, who talk about violence on the streets of London being introduced by the arrival of Black Caribbean immigrants

That's some very retro 1950-style racism right there, I hope you mention that to these people before you slap them across the head with a book on the history of London violence going back to Roman times

 

[kabbes]

That's some very retro 1950-style racism right there, I hope you mention that to these people before you slap them across the head with a book on the history of London violence going back to Roman times

To be honest, I’ve just ended up withdrawing and not really interacting that much beyond surface encounters. I used to combat each and every social aggression but it’s exhausting when you live surrounded by it.

Anyway, enough woe-is-me. If I’m going to extract something useful out of that, it would be this: for people like SpookyFrank and, indeed, me, who feel out of place in our own cultural backdrop, it’s easy to welcome encounters with different cultures, because we would welcome change. But that’s really just the other side of the same coin that others are displaying when they express a fear of cultural encounter. Either way, there’s an acknowledgement that immigration can bring cultural change. So arguing about the merits or demerits of the effect is a question of valence, not of fact.

 

[Yossarian]

To make it more concrete, take immigration from any culturally identifiable group you care to name that has moved in measurable numbers to the UK. Have the practices, assumptions, rituals etc of the UK really not altered as a result of this movement?

If you define "measurable numbers" at 100,000 or more of the foreign-born population, that includes people from India, Poland, Pakistan, Ireland, Germany, Bangladesh, South Africa, Nigeria, the US, Jamaica, Italy, Kenya, France, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Australia, Zimbabwe, Hong Kong, Italy, Lithuania, Turkey, Somalia, and Ghana - no doubt "practices, assumptions, rituals" have changed over the years, but I don't know if you can link that to any of those groups in particular

 

[Yossarian]

The consensus among racist idiots I've had the misfortune to speak to over the years is that immigration from countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand should be encouraged while immigration from elsewhere should be stopped, that's because they think these very diverse countries are only inhabited by white people

 

[SpookyFrank]

The consensus among racist idiots I've had the misfortune to speak to over the years is that immigration from countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand should be encouraged while immigration from elsewhere should be stopped, that's because they think these very diverse countries are only inhabited by white people

See also Ukrainian or Hong Kong refugees good, Syrian or Sudanese refugees bad.

 

[chilango]

Interesting as all the stuff about our reaction to the Other is - and it is, genuinely - most of me doesn't really give a fuck if racist impulses can be rationalised or not. Right here, right now, if you're racist you can fuck off as far as I'm concerned. My tolerance for "legitimate concerns" has run out.

 

[danny la rouge]

Interesting as all the stuff about our reaction to the Other is - and it is, genuinely - most of me doesn't really give a fuck if racist impulses can be rationalised or not. Right here, right now, if you're racist you can fuck off as far as I'm concerned. My tolerance for "legitimate concerns" has run out.

Yup. This is about where I am now.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Interesting as all the stuff about our reaction to the Other is - and it is, genuinely - most of me doesn't really give a fuck if racist impulses can be rationalised or not. Right here, right now, if you're racist you can fuck off as far as I'm concerned. My tolerance for "legitimate concerns" has run out.

I’m completely the opposite. My view is that we need more listening and more dialogue. Not with the fash, but with the much larger periphery who give them a hearing/agree with them.

Our role has to be to offer different ideas, engage in their ideas/concerns and respectfully and honestly debate them to dispel them. We do need to start from the economic and cultural starting points of many people and which have been discussed on this thread

The death of the organised working class, strong unions, social solidarity, community spaces etc has left a massive social and political hole where these ideas could be challenged and better ideas could take hold. What is there now? Social media identity shite. Where can people actually see, hear and read about other ideas in 2024?

People may argue it’s pointless. But acting locally, influencing those around you that you can seems to me one of the best things we can be doing practically at the moment.

I’d add that physical force anti fascism - to show it’s not only the fash who can act on the streets - might also be important depending on where things go next. Not only to stop them but show the periphery that we aren’t all pro cop/‘woke’ middle class students.

But, I also know that I’m in my 50’s now and that tapping it out on a message board isn’t the same as actually doing it. So, I’m going to keep on talking to people, keep having honest and respectful discussions and keep challenging shit ideas and arguing for better ones.

 

[chilango]

I’m completely the opposite. My view is that we need more listening and more dialogue. Not with the fash, but with the much larger periphery who give them a hearing/agree with them.

Our role has to be to offer different ideas, engage in their ideas/concerns and respectfully and honestly debate them to dispel them. We do need to start from the economic and cultural starting points of many people and which have been discussed on this thread

The death of the organised working class, strong unions, social solidarity, community spaces etc has left a massive social and political hole where these ideas could be challenged and better ideas could take hold. What is there now? Social media identity shite. Where can people actually see, hear and read about other ideas in 2024?

People may argue it’s pointless. But acting locally, influencing those around you that you can seems to me one of the best things we can be doing practically at the moment.

I’d add that physical force anti fascism - to show it’s not only the fash who can act on the streets - might also be important depending on where things go next. Not only to stop them but show the periphery that we aren’t all pro cop/‘woke’ middle class students.

But, I also know that I’m in my 50’s now and that tapping it out on a message board isn’t the same as actually doing it. So, I’m going to keep on talking to people, keep having honest and respectful discussions and keep challenging shit ideas and arguing for better ones.

Not that long ago I would have agreed.

...maybe I'm just tired, but I fear all our listening and dialogue has done is legitimise and empower the arguments of the far-right.

I think it's long past time we made such positions socially taboo (again?).

 

[SpookyFrank]

Interesting as all the stuff about our reaction to the Other is - and it is, genuinely - most of me doesn't really give a fuck if racist impulses can be rationalised or not. Right here, right now, if you're racist you can fuck off as far as I'm concerned. My tolerance for "legitimate concerns" has run out.

Yeah if they were legitimate concerns it wouldn't only be nasty cunts who had them.

If they were legitimate concerns they wouldn't be quoted verbatim from manifestly illegitimate sources.

There are legitimate concerns about housing, about jobs, about education and healthcare. It is not legitimate to pin those problems on immigrants. Yeah maybe the people who come out with this shit are misguided, led astray or whatever but I don't give a shit quite frankly. You're responsible for the consequences of what you say and do, nobody is being held at gunpoint and forced to do and say racist shit.

 

[danny la rouge]

Not that long ago I would have agreed.

...maybe I'm just tired, but I fear all our listening and dialogue has done is legitimise and empower the arguments of the far-right.

I think it's long past time we made such positions socially taboo (again?).

I think what happened with me is that I looked at the pogroms and the people not actually on the pogroms but saying in response to them, “but being concerned about immigration doesn’t make me racist”, and I thought: “Tough. You’ve made your bed”.

 

[Spymaster]

I’m completely the opposite. My view is that we need more listening and more dialogue. Not with the fash, but with the much larger periphery who give them a hearing/agree with them.

Our role has to be to offer different ideas, engage in their ideas/concerns and respectfully and honestly debate them to dispel them. We do need to start from the economic and cultural starting points of many people and which have been discussed on this thread

The death of the organised working class, strong unions, social solidarity, community spaces etc has left a massive social and political hole where these ideas could be challenged and better ideas could take hold. What is there now? Social media identity shite. Where can people actually see, hear and read about other ideas in 2024?

People may argue it’s pointless. But acting locally, influencing those around you that you can seems to me one of the best things we can be doing practically at the moment.

I’d add that physical force anti fascism - to show it’s not only the fash who can act on the streets - might also be important depending on where things go next. Not only to stop them but show the periphery that we aren’t all pro cop/‘woke’ middle class students.

But, I also know that I’m in my 50’s now and that tapping it out on a message board isn’t the same as actually doing it. So, I’m going to keep on talking to people, keep having honest and respectful discussions and keep challenging shit ideas and arguing for better ones.

Good post.

You're not going to improve racism by telling people who have concerns about the cultural aspects of immigration to get fucked.

 

[xenon]

This is a large part of why open borders is nonsense. It ignores the cultural aspects/fears. It's all very well decrying these fears as unfounded and their holders as gammons or racists, but that doesn't make them less real.

Yep. Just an anicdote from a few years ago to underline the point. A black colleague of Carribien background, told me about the problems with some Somali people that had moved into the flats she lived in. By problems I mean, many hanging around, not speaking much English, trying to sell random stuff in the street and one genius started an open fire in their flat to cook on.

Now of course most Somali people are just getting on with it, trying to settle in like anyone else. But the point is they were a visible new and different group of people that moved in. A few of whom were causing problems, did not speak much English at all and was felt were dumped in this area simply because there was already a sizeable British black population.

 

[chilango]

Good post.

You're not going to improve racism by telling people who have concerns about the cultural aspects of immigration to get fucked.

Dunno about that.

I think telling racists to get fucked is exactly what we need to be doing right now.

 

[danny la rouge]

Good post.

You're not going to improve racism by telling people who have concerns about the cultural aspects of immigration to get fucked.

I mean, intellectually I know this. I know you don’t win people over by telling them they’re the enemy. That’s self fulfilling.

But, we’ve watched this debate worsen over the last three decades. I date it from when Jack Straw was Home Secretary. That’s when government language started to swing back towards xenophobia. That’s the embryo of the Hostile Environment.

It then kicked up a gear when the Tory opposition decided that it was good PR to be “concerned” and to say the Labour government wasn’t “concerned” enough.

Then they got into power, and it culminated with Patel and Braverman deciding that they have to “out concern” the Concerned. Which Farage was always outflanking and building a constituency out of.

Well, now Farage has a foothold in Westminster, his party is polling higher as a result of the pogroms, and the Tories are in turmoil. They’d already gone harder right. And now I fear a real possibility of a realignment between Farage and the Tory right. Will Starmer last more than one term with the press already painting him as a lefty despite him being further right than most Tory governments of the last 100 years?

Where is this going? At what point do we stop “listening” and start marking our line in the sand?

This is probably an over emotional reaction. I may be overreacting. But I’m scared, and I’m allowed an emotional reaction. Maybe I’ll process it in time. I don’t know. But right now, I’m thinking “at what point in the 1920s or 1930s did good people in Germany leave it too late?” Hyperbole? I hope so. But that’s where I am. Please tell me I’m wrong.

 

[Spymaster]

Dunno about that.

I think telling racists to get fucked is exactly what we need to be doing right now.

It's absolutely what we should be doing as a short term solution to the current problems but it's worse than useless in the longer term.

 

[xenon]

Dunno about that.

I think telling racists to get fucked is exactly what we need to be doing right now.

We're not talking about the hotel burning ilks and their instigators. But is everyone who has a concern about immigration racist? Many are, no question but it's worse than useless to label all of them as such.

 

[Spymaster]

Where is this going? At what point do we stop “listening” and start marking our line in the sand?

What is that line in the sand though?

What are you suggesting telling people to do, and what would be the sanction if they don't comply?

 

[LakieLady]

Social care vacancies, especially today in residential homes, go unfilled because the pay is terrible and the staff are treated like shit. A year ago I saw a job for the manager of a large care home - shift work including overnights, managing and recruiting staff, administering medication, etc - in inner London for £18,500. The lack of applicants had nothing to do with snobbery.

Are you sure that was full-time? I thought NMW was around £22k now for a 37 hour week. Disgustingly low for a management job though.

A friend works in a care home in Suffolk. She gets a few pence an hour more than most, because she was a senior healthcare assistant and can do some medical stuff that other staff can't, and she's still only on £12.20 an hour. She works a zero hours contract by choice, as it means she can turn down any shifts she doesn't want to do and they can't make her work over never works Christmas.

The place where she works really struggles to get staff, as do all the others in the area. To keep the staffing up to the minimum required, they use a lot of agency staff from South Asia, and the agency charges the home £16+ an hour. If they were prepared to pay £16 an hour to everyone, they might not need the agency staff.

It's a really challenging job, the residents all have dementia and frequently become violent, and most of them are doubly incontinent. A lot of new staff can't hack it and leave after a few shifts, which isn't surprising when they can earn more in Macdonalds or Aldi without doing night shifts or being bitten and punched fairly regularly.

I wouldn't do it for £50 an hour, frankly.

 

[danny la rouge]

What is that line in the sand though?

What are you suggesting telling people to do, and what would be the sanction if they don't comply?

What I mean is I’m done listening. I’m done trying to get pieces of paper from the “German chancellor”. I’m at the point of saying, OK, we know what we’re up against and it’s gone past the point of trying to win over those on the margins.

Here are the barricades. Which side do you pick? Which side do I pick?

That’s how I’m feeling.

 

[SpookyFrank]

We're not talking about the hotel burning ilks and their instigators. But is everyone who has a concern about immigration racist? Many are, no question but it's worse than useless to label all of them as such.

If I'd ever met anyone with 'concerns about immigration' who wasn't just using them as a fig leaf for a pre-existing emotional reaction to the idea of people a bit different from them moving in down the street, I might agree with you.

The same information is available to everyone. Immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take out. With the UK's demographics as they are, society would soon grind to a halt without immigrants propping up the birth rate and boosting the numbers of working-age people. There are many unsafe places in the world and we have an obligation under international law and basic moral decency to provide a safe home and a chance at a new life for some of the people who have no safe choice but to leave their home countries. None of that is a secret. Some people don't hear it because they don't want to, they just want an excuse to be a hateful cunt and they prefer bad information from bad faith actors because it gives them that excuse.

 

[danny la rouge]

Oh, and the line in the sand was people trying to burn down refugee hostels.

 

[chilango]

We're not talking about the hotel burning ilks and their instigators. But is everyone who has a concern about immigration racist? Many are, no question but it's worse than useless to label all of them as such.

Are they all racists? I'm genuinely not sure anymore. On a personal level I don't think I got any more "benefit of the doubt" left to give.

...but even if many of those with "concerns about immigration" weren't racist, they are absolutely increasing the legitimacy and social reach of those who are.