Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[Gramsci]

There’s some great posts on this thread and I’d like to endorse them. However, what’s missing is any kind of acknowledgement that immigration also contains an encounter between cultures. And that includes the potential for a conflict between ideologies, values, beliefs, customs and all the other things that cultures contain. 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. This is the element of immigration that tends to most fuel the fires of racism, and it’s the bit that well-meaning progressives tend to shoot themselves in the foot over, by insisting that such encounters are only ever a happy and positive thing.

I've been reading your thoughtful posts.

As someone who came from a largely white English town to London the culture change was big.

However thinking on your post an anecdote of mine

I sometimes work with a Pakistani ( now with dual citizenship lived here for years). When I work with him he asks me some quite bizarre questions about this country. Like he had just come here. I helped him move house a while back. And his new bigger house he is proud of looks like little Pakistan. In corner is the large TV with Pakistani channels on it from his satellite dish. I realised he watches that all the time. When I ask him what's happening in Pakistan he's know it all. Quite interesting in fact. This country not a clue. He was asking me what the riots were about. He clearly not been following it.

I get on with him fine. He is "integrated"? Not really. Do I care? No.

We both have our lives which occasionally rub together. Apart from that we live separate lives. I don't bother him and he does not bother me.

As long as people have access to work / housing etc and are not in competition for social resources then imo it might be better not to bang on about cultural differences. And talking them through

This imo could make things worse.

What I'm saying is that perhaps an option is a form of Civic Nationalism with some basic ground rules- agreeing to democracy / rule of law and not trying to make other people live in certain way. Basically a mind owns business tolerance.

 

[ska invita]

I've been reading your thoughtful posts.

As someone who came from a largely white English town to London the culture change was big.

However thinking on your post an anecdote of mine

I sometimes work with a Pakistani ( now with dual citizenship lived here for years). When I work with him he asks me some quite bizarre questions about this country. Like he had just come here. I helped him move house a while back. And his new bigger house he is proud of looks like little Pakistan. In corner is the large TV with Pakistani channels on it from his satellite dish. I realised he watches that all the time. When I ask him what's happening in Pakistan he's know it all. Quite interesting in fact. This country not a clue. He was asking me what the riots were about. He clearly not been following it.

I get on with him fine. He is "integrated"? Not really. Do I care? No.

We both have our lives which occasionally rub together. Apart from that we live separate lives. I don't bother him and he does not bother me.

As long as people have access to work / housing etc and are not in competition for social resources then imo it might be better not to bang on about cultural differences. And talking them through

This imo could make things worse.

What I'm saying is that perhaps an option is a form of Civic Nationalism with some basic ground rules- agreeing to democracy / rule of law and not trying to make other people live in certain way. Basically a mind owns business tolerance.

theres a massive difference between first, second and third generation migrant experiences. most british first gen migrants on the costas also dont speak the language, dont follow spanish news, keep themselves to non-spanish selves etc, whereas their kids as second generation will go to school, learn local language possibly as first language etc but have parents who are a bridge to a different cultural world. third gen the complexity is much gone.

None of this should be an issue to anyone

 

[Gramsci]

theres a massive difference between first, second and third generation migrant experiences. most british first gen migrants on the costas also dont speak the language, dont follow spanish news, keep themselves to non-spanish selves etc, whereas their kids as second generation will go to school, learn local language possibly as first language etc but have parents who are a bridge to a different cultural world. third gen the complexity is much gone.

None of this should be an issue to anyone

Yes I know.

What I'm positing is that having discussions about cultural differences as though this might help could exacerbate them. I see this in my local area over service provision.

People being encouraged to talk about their feelings about cultural differences can imo actually make it worse.

Most of the issues in my area are around bread and butter class issues/ inequality not cultural differences in reality imo.

 

[xenon]

It’s not about highlighting cultural differences as a point of discussion though. But recognising how people come to fear the influx of or resent the other. This place is a bit of a bubble in that respect. I mean we’re all articulate many us living in cities. I will write a better post tomorrow. Went on my computer as it’s not working for me Phone wise.

 

[Gramsci]

I don't think of myself as living off line in a bubble.

 

[Gramsci]

I notice on this thread that largely those who wanted to discuss legitimate concerns about immigration on the Far Right Response to Southport thread are largely absent.

This thread was started to allow that. And its been silence from posters who were quite vocal its an issue to be discussed.

 

[Edie]

I notice on this thread that largely those who wanted to discuss legitimate concerns about immigration on the Far Right Response to Southport thread are largely absent.

This thread was started to allow that.

I’m reading and listening. I think kabbes contributions by far the most important.

 

[Gramsci]

I’m reading and listening. I think kabbes contributions by far the most important.

OK I assume the others are as well in that case.

 

[xenon]

I don't think of myself as living off line in a bubble.

Of course not, you live in a very diverse area of London. Your neighbours aren’t likely to be people expressing concerns about immigration.

 

[Humberto]

Well there can't be any justification for pogroms, nor can there be any justification for those stoking them and making a good living out of it. Trying to understand the broader picture, how people are enticed by these far right populists, influencers and grifters is it would seem to me important. People are definitely pissed off. There's a desperation and dysfunctional situation where the establishment causes the problem and limits the reaction in terms of truthful solutions. The riots showed how far and close (not condoning it from any 'side') that police can be overwhelmed. What then? Protect property? Shoot to kill?

People say there is polarisation, and there certainly is, but there's also parallel communities. There's parts of the country even, and socioeconomic circumstances deemed more or less worthy. That's from state orthodoxies and class antagonism. Targets are drummed out every day by the likes of the right wing press and successive government home secretaries.

People (not so much on here) say the left bang on about neoliberalism. But the economic and state poltical orthodoxy bleeds through into communities and yes culture. So it's a materialistic, sod the community, get ahead by any means neccessary orthodoxy. A lot of people therefore aren't given a great deal. Concentrate that in certain towns, stoked up by actual government ministers and a receptive media landscape and we end up here (lots of other factors too forgive my glibness). That doesn't change what is true or right, but it does shroud the reality. And that has consequences.

That said, those who haven't been taken in by that absolutely should assert themselves. The more they act on it, however small the effort or effect, the results are often worthwhile. So I'm on the side that genuine engagement is neccessary, and if the left aren't capable of that (I'm not saying they aren't, just following the discussion), well that's where we are. Whether that can change we will see. Inauthenticity, perceived hypocrisy, being seen to be out of touch will kill those efforts. Maybe simple but solid messages will have more traction.

Don't get me wrong, the leaders of the riots and pogroms themselves are total cynical, greedy scum. And many that jumped in when they made their 'call to arms' are too. But I think many potential sympathisers can have their minds changed.

 

[smokedout]

You're willfully not actually adressing what Spy said.
Do you believe anyone that has concerns about how immigration impacts there own sense of a cultural history are racists?

But wtf does sense of cultural history even mean? I think if people are freaking out because a Polish shop has opened on the High Street or a new Mosque is being built then they need to get a sense of proportion and are probably, in part, motivated by (possibly unconscious) prejudice. And if people are making wild claims that Sharia law is imminent or that parts of the UK are no go areas for white people, they are parroting racist nonsense.

I'm not really persuaded by this clash of cultures stuff tbh. As much as it is a small part of the problem it's based more on scare mongering, myth making and rose tinted visions of the past then anything that is actually happening or likely to affect anyone's lives.

 

[smokedout]

What may be being challenged is the national myth of Englishness, which a lot of people's identity is wrapped up with. But that's not happening because of competing cultures but the gradual decline of a colonial global power into an odd and slightly archaic nation that no-one gives much of a shit about anymore.

 

[Humberto]

What may be being challenged is the national myth of Englishness, which a lot of people's identity is wrapped up with. But that's not happening because of competing cultures but the gradual decline of a colonial global power into an odd and slightly archaic nation that no-one gives much of a shit about anymore.

I think that's a load of rubbish.

It's a combination of extreme selfcentredness as an economic and material reality and many people's lives within that system..

You are punching down, or buying into it whatever your credentials.

 

[Spymaster]

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.

There’s been a lot of stuff on this thread about “legitimate” concerns, which I don’t think anyone has actually mentioned. It’s just been “concerns”. When I used to get the shit kicked out of me by racists, the legitimacy of their concerns was a matter of supreme indifference.

I’m reticent to post this but I’ve been thinking about it all day. I’ve posted about my own experiences before and I don’t want anyone to think that I feel my views are shared by all people of colour. We DON'T all see it the same way and my thoughts should carry no more weight than those of any other black people.

However …

I was born in London, but grew up in the 70s and 80s in a provincial shit-hole called Bracknell.

Mine was one of half a dozen non-white families in a town of about 30,000 people, many of whom seemed to have NF posters in their windows whenever elections were on, even on the “posh” council estates. Dad was a first generation immigrant Indian, and my plight wasn’t aided by the fact that mum was a very vocal, bi-polar, Irish Republican, whose idea of challenging racism was to stop taking her meds, strip naked in pubs, and get sectioned. I was used to getting regularly “paki-bashed” and mum’s antics, whilst the IRA was blowing the shit out of London, really didn’t help. I became the “Paddy Paki” through my teens with a massive target on my arse.

I got through that with the help of a handful of white mates who today would be considered by many on this thread to be racists themselves.

I’ve known my best mate “Dave” for 52 years and we do an annual holiday together. This year we were In Malta, in June, when the Reform shit was in the news and Dave said “I reckon that Nigel Farage might be worth a vote”. This is a bloke who physically got involved with protecting me from racist violence and stood shoulder to shoulder with me, in proper hard-core punch-ups, many times over the years. I told him that I was surprised that he’d ever vote for a racist, and Dave said to me, genuinely, “do you think he’s a racist then?”

Dave is a project manager (site agent) on building sites. He’s currently got a downer on Latvians and Lithuanians, who he says he has to employ because there’s a mafia thing going on, they’re shit at onsite safety and speak “foreign” to each other. He voted for Brexit, in the hope that more Brits would get jobs instead of non-Brits.

He was my Indian dad’s second son, and carried the old man’s coffin into the crem with me.

Dave and his ilk are the people we need to be talking to. Not the likes of John Honey et al. Fuck them. They’re always going to be racist cunts who should be battered to death by the police/lefties/anyone else.

Others are worth engaging with.

Putting those “fringe players” into the same group as violent scum racists, is hugely counterproductive. Telling them, or anyone else, that their concerns are worthless and that they’re just racists, just drives them further right.

THESE are the people we should be engaging. Not the handful of silly wankers who kick-off once every ten years. They’re just arseholes who can be dealt with by the wonderful communal actions we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks (as well as some robust policing ).

The UK is NOT a racist country. By comparison to what it was 40 or 50 years ago we have made significant forward strides but there are many miles to cross still.

Don't get too down on this, Pilch.

We're going forwards, not backwards

 

[smokedout]

I think that's a load of rubbish.

It's a combination of extreme selfcentredness as an economic and material reality and many people's lives within that system..

You are punching down, or buying into it whatever your credentials.

Tbh I thought twice about posting it because I'm a bit pissed and want to think about it some more. But I'm not engaging with you at this time of night and you know why.

 

[Humberto]

Tbh I thought twice about posting it because I'm a bit pissed and want to think about it some more. But I'm not engaging with you at this time of night and you know why.

Sure, it was a cunty tone from me, and you've posted some great stuff recently with all respect. In fact the thread has been a good read.

 

[nightowl]

I am concerned how the whole thing will play out politically. Whether we like it or not a significant portion of the electorate voted for a party whose campaigning was overwhelmingly about immigration. It's difficult to see how that can be ignored and I don't think an 'ignore it and it will go away' approach to the subject is going to work for the government. Reform now has a presence in Parliament and the usual right-wing media suspects are going to carry on banging on about small boats etc. Add that to the likelihood that we have some tough years ahead economically and it's highly likely that it will still be a major issue at the next election - maybe even more so than this time. At some point you would imagine that the government will have to discuss the issue because it's not going to disappear.

 

[Humberto]

Would the government and could the government do that for you and us though?

 

[krtek a houby]

Another worry is that the increase in racism, and the willingness on the politicians to make it mainstream, has impacted on Ireland.

Have mentioned before, the influence of far right English influencers and links with Irish fash, and we have plenty of homegrown eejits as well. Who will be looking very closely at what's happening next door.

It's a far cry from only 20 something years or so, ago when it seemed to be on the fringes. But maybe it was just dormant and 9/11 was the catalyst for what came after.

 

[kabbes]

I'm not really persuaded by this clash of cultures stuff tbh.

It’s not about a “clash of cultures”. Certainly, if you’re referring to what I’ve been talking about, it’s definitely not a “clash of cultures”. I’ve very specifically mentioned an encounter of cultures. The conflict I am referring to is a psychic one, not some kind of interactional antagonism.

I think if people are freaking out because a Polish shop has opened on the High Street or a new Mosque is being built then they need to get a sense of proportion and are probably, in part, motivated by (possibly unconscious) prejudice.

If people are freaking out because there is a spider on the wall then they need to get a sense of proportion. I mean, that’s the nature of fears in the modern world, generally speaking, isn’t it? Some fears can be materially grounded in existential danger, of course, but most generally aren’t. Do you find that people who are scared are good at snapping out of it after being lectured on the irrationality of their fear?

The way this may well link with the also-true things being said about material circumstances is the way that the future is represented by different groups of people, as a result of those circumstances. Research indicates that working-class kids understand the notion of “the future” mediated through ideas of threat. (By comparison, middle-class kids construct it in terms of opportunity.) When your circumstances are precarious, you learn that change can bring disaster, and this becomes the way that you make sense of possible future pathways. So I would not be surprised to find that communities more threatened by material circumstances are more resistant to seeing evidence of change in their environment. More fear, in other words.

 

[kabbes]

If you’re interested in a more technical account of the above post, there has been some good work done with Sibley and Duckitt’s “Dual process model of prejudice” — you might like to look it up. It conceives of systematic generalised prejudice of being formed of two intersecting processes, one that derives from a view of the world as a “competitive place” and one that views it as a “dangerous place”

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

There’s been a lot of stuff on this thread about “legitimate” concerns, which I don’t think anyone has actually mentioned. It’s just been “concerns”. When I used to get the shit kicked out of me by racists, the legitimacy of their concerns was a matter of supreme indifference.

I’m reticent to post this but I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I’ve posted about my own experiences before and I don’t want anyone to think that I feel my views are shared by other people of colour. We DON'T all see it the same way and my views have no more weight than anyone else’s. However …

I was born in London, but grew up in the 70s and 80s in a provincial shit-hole called Bracknell.

Mine was one of half a dozen non-white families in a town of about 30,000 people, many of whom seemed to have NF posters in their windows whenever elections were on, even on the “posh” council estates. Dad was a first generation immigrant Indian, and my plight wasn’t aided by the fact that mum was a very vocal, bi-polar, Irish Republican, whose idea of challenging racism was to stop taking her meds, strip naked in pubs, and get sectioned. I was used to getting regularly “paki-bashed” but mum’s antics, whilst the IRA was blowing the shit out of London, really didn’t help. I became the “Paddy Paki” through my teens with a massive target on my arse!

I got through that with the help of a handful of white mates who today would be considered by many on this thread to be racists themselves.

I’ve known my best mate “Dave” (not his real name) for 52 years and we do an annual holiday together. This year we were In Malta, in June, when the Reform shit was in the news and Dave said “I reckon that Nigel Farage might be worth a vote”. This is a bloke who physically got involved with protecting me from racist violence and stood shoulder to shoulder with me, in proper hard-core punch-ups, many times over the years. I told him that I was surprised that he’d ever vote for a racist, and Dave said to me, genuinely, “do you think he’s a racist then?”

Dave is a project manager (site agent) on building sites. He’s currently got a downer on Latvians and Lithuanians, who he says he had to employ because there’s a mafia thing going on, and they are shit at onsite safety. He voted for Brexit, in the hope that more Brits would get jobs instead of non-Brits.

He was my Indian dad’s second son, and carried the old man’s coffin into the crem with me.

Dave and his ilk are the people we need to be talking to. Not the likes of John Honey et al. Fuck them. They’re always going to be racist cunts who should be battered to death by the police/lefties/anyone else.

Others are worth engaging with.

Putting those “fringe players” into the same group as violent scum racists, is hugely counterproductive. Telling them, or anyone else, that their concerns are worthless and that they’re racist cunts, just drives them further right.

THESE are the people we should be engaging. Not the handful of silly wankers who kick-off once every ten years. They’re just cunts who can be dealt with by the wonderful communal actions we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks (as well as some robust policing ).

The UK is NOT a racist country. By comparison to what it was 40 or 50 years ago we have made significant forward strides but there are many miles to cross still.

Don't get too down on this, Pilch.

We're going forwards, not backwards

People can be very confusing. I can never figure out people like your mate 'Dave', and I've met a few, with completely conflicting views. I mean, you've known him forever and I'm sure had many conversations with him, yet he still has racist opinions about some minorities in this country. I suspect, tell me if I'm wrong, that he would make individual exceptions to these generalisations. I still talk to some local out-and-out racists. It doesn't change their outlook, but it can make them just that bit uncertain and it can make them seem bonkers in front of their friends.

 

[Agrippa57]

"Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?"​

No.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

For those who do seem value in engaging and intervening, this is a useful contribution by Kenan Malik:

Defending working-class interests requires more than simply opposing immigration | Kenan Malik

Trade union rights, the welfare state, austerity… these are the issues that really affect lives

www.theguardian.com

He quite rightly identifies the limits of the professed pro working class politics of the right populists.

Pro work class but opposed to collective organisation.

Pro working class but supportive of austerity and poverty pay,

Pro working class but supportive of a war against the working poor..

Once you get beyond the right populist rhetoric on immigration all they have to offer is reheated Thatcherism. As people see that Reform and others are merely more rich politicians who seek to make their lives worse a better conversation space can open up.

 

[mojo pixy]

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.

But doesn't need to be a frightening thing, given that this fear appears to be a very minority concern - albeit one that has definitely been amplified by repetition in mainstream and social media. So how have we reached a place where this fear of having british culture (which we still need to define) marginalised, has become such a widespread meme? I don't know anyone in real life who expresses this fear in any way that was not promoted in the meme, ie. it's obviously something they've acquired through consumption of media, rather than developed through personal experience of being marginalised.

Is it simply that people don't like feeling they have to accept the presence of foreigners, rather than just feeling free to accept the presence of foreigners if they want? I mean, is it as much an aversion to being told what to think, as as aversion to the actual idea of accepting foreigners?

Is it from resentment that 'we' used to be an important world power and we as members of that had a special status where we got to dictate things to others, but now we don't have that? Is that why it rears its head so freely among the working class? Because during the empire days a british working class man (or woman) might have been at the bottom of the pile here, but on a global scale they were on top - nowadays that international status has gone, if you're at the bottom of the pile here there's no mitigation against that any more except for being white. Has the exceptionalism decayed into simple racism?

I think so.

And then, speaking of fear, what specifically is this fear? What's it actually fear of? Nobody really 'fears their culture will be marginalised', if there are fears (which I don't deny) I think they must be more visceral and specific than this largely idealistic construct of 'my culture' which is a conflation so many things - history, language, food, clothing, social attitudes etc - and which in fact nearly everyone feels slightly differently about ('british culture' isn’t really as homogenous as the term would suggest, cultures (plural) might be more accurate).

I think, as I've outlined above, it's a 'fear' grown out of loss of status we once held by virtue of simply being british. I think this is a huge part of the rise of the far-right in all ex-imperial european countries; now we have to act as equals in the world, not masters of it. I think this idea doesn't provoke fear as such, but rather a sense of grievance which is dressed up as 'concerns' by past-fetishists, nationalists and racists.

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?

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.

So how have we come to a point where these largely irrational and misdirected fears (or rather, this sense of grievance presented as fear) are being repeated and spread to people who don't really share them, but can be persuaded to?

Where's the counter-narrative, and why is it failing to make headway?

 

[Boo Radley75]

Interesting point about the "cultural integration" angle. A couple of years ago, my wife had to do her "life in the UK" test, for her right to remain, which seems to pretty much mainly be about making sure immigrants are culturally integrated. We had the study book for it which includes mock tests. We were at a big family Christmas do and got talking about this so ended up getting everyone to do a mock test. Out of over a dozen of us there, the only ones who got enough for a pass was my wife, myself and my cousin's husband. It would seem, according to our government, that many natives of the UK aren't culturally integrated enough.

 

[nino_savatte]

Blair's failure (or reluctance) to challenge this dog-whistle narrative has led us to where we are today. Two years after the 2005 General Election, Farage became leader of UKIP. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[mojo pixy]

Interesting point about the "cultural integration" angle. A couple of years ago, my wife had to do her "life in the UK" test, for her right to remain, which seems to pretty much mainly be about making sure immigrants are culturally integrated. We had the study book for it which includes mock tests. We were at a big family Christmas do and got talking about this so ended up getting everyone to do a mock test. Out of over a dozen of us there, the only ones who got enough for a pass was my wife, myself and my cousin's husband. It would seem, according to our government, that many natives of the UK aren't culturally integrated enough.

When my ex from Thailand did a citizenship test I answered the questions and passed, but not as well as she did - and the couple of friends I showed the questions to who tried themselves, got less than 50%

You might almost say that an important element of 'being british' is not giving a fuck what 'being british' really means. Like cool, you can only really get it by rejecting it

 

[Pickman's model]

Interesting point about the "cultural integration" angle. A couple of years ago, my wife had to do her "life in the UK" test, for her right to remain, which seems to pretty much mainly be about making sure immigrants are culturally integrated. We had the study book for it which includes mock tests. We were at a big family Christmas do and got talking about this so ended up getting everyone to do a mock test. Out of over a dozen of us there, the only ones who got enough for a pass was my wife, myself and my cousin's husband. It would seem, according to our government, that many natives of the UK aren't culturally integrated enough.

Yeh this has been the subject of regular newspaper articles, it seems to pop up every few months in the dm for example. If it really was about cultural integration I think rather different questions would be asked. But what isn't so often talked about is the vast sum of money it takes to get British nationality

 

[maomao]

Interesting point about the "cultural integration" angle. A couple of years ago, my wife had to do her "life in the UK" test, for her right to remain, which seems to pretty much mainly be about making sure immigrants are culturally integrated. We had the study book for it which includes mock tests. We were at a big family Christmas do and got talking about this so ended up getting everyone to do a mock test. Out of over a dozen of us there, the only ones who got enough for a pass was my wife, myself and my cousin's husband. It would seem, according to our government, that many natives of the UK aren't culturally integrated enough

If my wife's experience is anything to go by, after a few months she'll forget enough for her knowledge to drop back to genuine 'native' levels.