Contested Spaces in Multiethnic Britain

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Social Spaces in the City Community, Identity
and Difference

• Contested Spaces in Multi-ethnic Britain

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Contested spaces

• Cities are spaces where we see struggles
• between groups over space and territory
• over minority group recognition and the right to
  have a voice
• over power and access to resources
• Todays lecture
• struggles that erupt into overt conflict - the
  northern urban disturbances in 2001

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Contested spaces contested citizenship

• Citizenship rights (cf. Marshall (1950))
• Civil or legal e.g. equality under law
• Political e.g. right to vote
• Social rights e.g. access to welfare
• But do all groups feel like full citizens or
  that they belong, even when they have these
  rights?
• cf. concepts of social exclusion and otherness

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Bradford, Burnley and Oldham - common factors
underlying the urban unrest

• formerly prosperous mill towns
• de-industrialisation leading to economic
  restructuring and decline
• riots were preceded by extreme right-wing
  agitation

Burnley
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Racial tensions in Bradford

• Competition over welfare resources e.g. urban
  regeneration funds
• Fights between Asian and white gangs over
  territory
• Tensions between Asians and the police
• Riots in the Manningham area

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Explanations?
frustration and deprivation?
criminality?
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The reasons for rioting

• Scarmans key conclusions (1981)
• high levels of multiple deprivation, leading to
  social and economic stress
• a sense of disillusionment, especially amongst
  young people who feel excluded
• triggering factors (e.g. insensitive policing
  racist behaviour)
• Cantles key conclusions (2001)
• social polarisation and ethnic segregation,
  reflecting parallel lives
• fear and misunderstandings between groups

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Media headlines following the Cantle report, 2001
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Tackling parallel lives - the community
cohesion agenda

• Reflects inter-related worries about
• geographical segregation of ethnic minority
  groups - a sign of non-belonging?
• social isolationism and self-segregation
• community breakdown
• the potential for new conflict at the
  neighbourhood level

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Community cohesion the critique

• minority ethnic communities blamed for their own
  exclusion from mainstream society.
• emphasis on cultural differences
• constraints down-played
• the voluntary clustering of households need not
  necessarily be problematic in itself
• social integration does not necessarily depend on
  residential integration
• community is a contested concept (cf. Young
  1990)
• source of social capital and support , or
• intolerant of difference and exclusionary

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Conclusions

• Urban unrest has a clear geography, reflecting
  the importance of social and geographical context
• Latent social conflicts can become manifest when
  triggered by certain events
• Social problems are socially constructed. They
  arise when communities with different values and
  allegiances are at odds with the dominant moral
  order.
• Difference and otherness challenge the idea
  of community as inclusive