The conversation on multiculturalism and its merits has waxed and waned, decade after decade. Despite being the big exporter of people for centuries, the UK struggles with the idea that "they are here because we were there", as it is sometimes crudely put. I don't even really like the word "multiculturalism". It creates a wedge between people before you even start the conversation and assumes a binary level of difference. It's devoid of nuance in some ways, and too specific in others. Anyway, I'll use it because it's easily interpreted.
Pretty much every day, I cycle down the Holloway road in North London. An Ethiopian restaurant, a Turkish cafe, a zero waste store, a cinema, a small hardware store, a Turkish greengrocers, and a sports direct, all flash by as I peddle down the road. There are people of every creed and colour on this small stretch of road, running businesses next door to one another, building friendships and relationships with one another, arguing with one another. I often go past the Arsenal stadium, a landmark demonstrating the success of cross-cultural collaboration. Henry and Toure, Kanu and Cole.
This is a part of the UK where multiculturalism is very much alive and kicking, and the "alien cultures" that politicians like Robert Jenrick talk about feel, well, not so alien.
I disagree with politicians from Braverman to Cameron to Merkel, and the 2/5th of Brits who think multiculturalism has failed (Herbert, 2019). Multiculturalism has not failed, at least not on the Holloway road. From where I sit, it looks like many of the UKs most successful cities are deeply multicultural, from London to Birmingham to Manchester. Many of it's best institutions are multicultural, from the NHS to the BBC to the church. Many of it's best football teams are multicultural, from Man City, to Arsenal, to Liverpool. The current leaders of the best football league in the world have an Egyptian striker, Argentinian midfielder, and Dutch defender. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks they aren't able to work together and understand one another. In many ways, multiculturalism has been a striking success and a testament to many of the best things about the UK.
The current leaders of the best football league in the world have an Egyptian striker, Argentinian midfielder, and Dutch defender. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks they aren't able to work together and understand one another.
I think people who push the idea that multiculturalism have failed are looking at it from the wrong perspective. "Why does this not work?" isn't really the right question. "Why do some people think multiculturalism has failed despite all of it's surprising success, why are these people often people who have limited exposure to people of different backgrounds, and why do they get so much airtime?" feels to me like the key question. Hidden in it lies the answer to how the debate might change.
There seem to be a few different floating ideas about the 'failure' of multiculturalism.
The bad apples: Some rely on the argument that multiculturalism has failed due to the heavily reported on sins of a few individual 'bad apples' and the subsequent misinformation that amplifies, corrupts thinking, and breeds fear. One individual or group of individuals from a certain background does something abhorrent, and the big tarnishing generalization paint brush comes out. My logical response is that everyone should read "How migration really works" by Hein de Hass. In his extensive review of migration, he demonstrates that in general immigration lowers crime, particularly violent crime (Hass, 2023, P. 196). My emotional, and maybe more honest response, is to ask "Am I the same as Prince Andrew because we're both white and British? Do I take responsibility for the actions of everyone in UK prisons with whom I share a passport?" This form of reductio ad absurdum lays bare the hypocrisy in the notion that my Pakistani neighbour is the same as grooming gangs in Rotheram. An extreme way of putting it, I appreciate, but sometimes that's what's required to make a point.
The numbers are just too high: Others think immigration is okay, but the numbers are just too high and it's the volume that is breaking the multicultural model. You might find Rory Stewart in this camp, along with many other centrists. Again, my logical response would be to refer to Hein, who explores the fact that migration has sat between 3 and 4% of world population since the 1960s (Hass, 2023, 17-19). What's more, the UK needs working age people to support our ageing population, particularly in health and social care. I don't know about you, but at least 50% of the time I go to the doctors or a hospital I'm treated by a person from a different culture. When I sliced my hand chopping an avocado over Christmas, it was a Jordanian women. When I saw a specialist consultant in the autumn, it was an Indian man. This time, D. S. Massey provides my more emotional response. Between 1846 and 1924, about 12% of the European population emigrated out of the continent, including a staggering 41% of Britain's population (D. S. Massey, 1988, 383-413). It strikes me as again being hypocritical to suggest that because we are done with empire, now migration really needs to come under control.
Between 1846 and 1924, about 12% of the European population emigrated out of the continent, including a staggering 41% of Britain's population.
An inward orientation of our desire for justice: This is less a 'common' opinion and more my personal take. I feel that some of these logical retorts don't really address what is going on under the surface. They point to symptoms, not cause. A lapse in logic or a susceptibility to misinformation is not what causes attacks on asylum hotels, or the harboring of anger and hatred of the other in human hearts. "Sin" is an uncomfortable word for most, with connotations of shame and condemnation, but the reformation theologian Martin Luther spoke of sin being "cor incurvatus in se" or "the heart curved in on oneself". It strikes me that the belief in monoculturalism is a societal version of that, it's a "a peoples curved in on themselves". Monoculturalism takes some of our best attributes as people like our hatred of injustice, and distorts it towards innocent "outsiders" who are not actually perpetuating injustice. I don't claim to understand the mechanics by which this happens, I'm just always struck by the language of injustice and unfairness that is often used by the most extreme anti-immigration figures. Some of it is language I might use, but in a very different context with very different aims. These fundamentally positive, God-given feelings of injustice have been distorted, with exclusionary borders created, and turned in on themselves. The feelings then search for justifications in numbers or economics or case studies, but the feelings drive the logic, not the other way round. As David Hume, the famous Scottish philosopher put it, "Reason is, and only ought to be the slave of the passions". There's a double sadness in this in that it creates new victims of injustice, and leaves actual perpetrators unpunished, as the well known image below demonstrates.
So how does this conversation change? How might it be transformed? My basic belief is that perceptions of multiculturalism are intrinsically shaped by proximity. The places where people vote for anti-immigration parties are often places where the level of immigration has not been that high for that long, and in places where immigration is part of everyday life (like London) people often hold more positive views. It's much harder to see multiculturalism as a failure when you have cross-cultural friendships, live in cross-cultural communities, and eat at restaurants from different cultures. It's much harder to fear people when you know their names and their stories. This is certainly my experience from living in India and moving to London. The proximity I've had to different people and cultures has made it increasingly hard for me to see multiculturalism and immigration as a negative or detracting thing.
It's much harder to see multiculturalism as a failure when you have cross-cultural friendships, live in cross-cultural communities, and eat at restaurants from different cultures.
We therefore need to foster more opportunities for proximity. The decline of civic society needs to be reversed, and churches to football clubs to art classes to local charities need to strive to provide this proximity. Religious leaders of all faiths need to break bread together and invite their communities to do the same. Local and national politicians should push for community events that bring people together from different parts of town. We as individuals should bring people together, in our own homes and around our own tables, who may not find each other in the same rooms that often.
And to be honest, I feel challenged by my own hypocrisy and incongruence as I write that last paragraph. I share almost no friendships with the type of people who do think that multiculturalism has failed, and who find great appeal in "go home" politics. Like them, I've also fallen for assuming that every reform or right wing conservative voter see's these issues in black and white and is inclined towards anti-immigrant anger, and I have treated their concerns as purely the product of misinformation. The compulsion to misunderstand and generalize is seductive, whatever a persons political stripes, and I'm sure that's the same for me. I also feel challenged by my privilege. Net migration of approximately 750,000 (The Net migration observatory, 2024) may look very different if you are being squeezed in the housing market and acutely feel the impact of public services being burdened. I personally think there are more systemic causes of our nations challenges, with answers unsatisfyingly complicated as many of these immigrants prop up public services, universities, the tax base, hospitality and construction industries. However, I can't claim to understand the hopelessness, and anger that creates, that some feel in particularly challenged and left behind areas of the country.
Logic and facts don't lead to transformation, stories and relationships do.
I'm reminded again of the need to first remove the plank in my own eye before trying to remove the speck in others, and feel the desire to build new relationships with people who think about these issues differently to see where we might find common ground and understanding. Logic and facts don't lead to transformation, stories and relationships do. As Hume might say, it's the passions that matter, not reason.
Herbert, T. (2019, December 12). Two in five Brits believe multiculturalism has failed. Retrieved January 18, 2025, from https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/14/two-five-brits-believe-multiculturalism-failed-7467856/#:~:text=More%20than%20two%20in%20five%20Brits%20believe%20multiculturalism,immigration%20is%20putting%20pressure%20on%20schools%20and%20hospitals.
Hass, H. D. (2023). How Migration Really Works: A Factful Guide to the Most Divisive Issue in Politics (pp. 17-19, 196). Penguin Books Ltd.
D. S. Massey, 1988, 'Economic development and international migration in comparative perspective', Population and Development Review, 14 pp. 383-413
Unknown, 2020, Retrieved January 20, 2025, from Shares of the week
The Net Migration Observatory (2024, December 2). Net migration to the UK. The Net Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. Retrieved January 18, 2025, from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/
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