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An Open City: The Role of Migration in Cardiff

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Title: Beyond 2005: New Steps Author: Cardiff Council Last modified by: Cardiff Council Created Date: 7/20/2005 3:32:42 PM Document presentation format – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: An Open City: The Role of Migration in Cardiff


1
An Open City The Role of Migration in Cardiff
  • Terry Threadgold
  • Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies,
    Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural
    Studies
  • Pro Vice Chancellor Staff, Cardiff University.

2
The City of Cardiff
  • Capital City for Wales
  • Driver of the Welsh economy
  • Population of 320,000 people
  • Modern and vibrant European city

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1950s Economic Boom
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1970s Major Economic Decline
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Tradition of Openness
  • New City 200 years of growth
  • Netherlands
  • Ireland
  • England
  • Somalia
  • Norway
  • Yemen

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Tradition of Openness
  • New City 200 years of growth
  • Italy
  • Spain
  • China

12
Tradition of Openness
  • New City 200 years of growth
  • Indian sub-continent
  • Caribbean
  • Japan
  • Korea

13
Tradition of Openness
  • New City 200 years of growth
  • Africa
  • Middle East
  • Phillipines
  • Kerelan
  • Eastern Europe

14
Cardiffs Migrant Population Today
  • 30,000 born outside the UK
  • Around 10 of the Cardiff population
  • 111 different nationalities registered for
    National Insurance purposes
  • Growing migrant population
  • The absence of statistics
  • for planning
  • e.g., migrant workers,
  • Somalis.

15
Cardiffs Migrant Population Today
16
  • There are over 3,000 international students
    currently studying at Cardiff University,
    representing over 100 countries.
  • Cardiff University also runs an International
    Foundation Programme, a one-year academic
    programme designed to provide the academic and
    English language skills needed to start a degree
    at Cardiff University.
  • Cardiff University has a large International
    Division of more than fifty staff and employs
    6000 staff, including 820 international staff
    from 78 different countries.
  • The University of Wales Institute Cardiff has
    over 800 international students from 120
    different countries. The International Office has
    two English Language and Study Skills Support
    Tutors who help with additional language or study
    skills support for international students.
  • The International Student Welfare Office provide
    advice on visas, accommodation and other
    practices or procedures in the UK.

17
Migration and Social Cohesion in South-East Wales
(funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation)
  • This research was carried out in seven
    communities, or areas, In Cardiff in 2005-6
  • the long established Somali and Chinese
    communities
  • the cross-ethnic groupings of Arabic speaking
    communities (including Yemeni, Iraqi and Sudanese
    groups but here excluding the Somalis)
  • a socio-economically deprived valleys community
    with a recent intake of migrant workers (Merthyr
    Tydfil)

18
Migration and Social Cohesion in South-East Wales
  • the increasingly diverse but originally white
    working class Cathays community located around
    Cardiff University
  • the multi-ethnic and again originally white
    working and now often partly middle-class STAR
    (Splott, Tremorfa, Adamsdown and Roath) area of
    Cardiff
  • the predominantly middle-class and partially
    Welsh speaking area of Llandaff which has been
    the site of considerable English and white
    immigration

19
Migration and Social Cohesion in South-East Wales
  • and a group of people we came to call
    administrators because they construct or
    implement policy, or deliver services in areas
    regarded as central to integration (language
    support, housing, education, health, employment).
  • Included in this group were four media
    professionals. This was because of the recognized
    role of the media in fuelling anxieties about
    migration.
  • The majority of these people also belonged to the
    middle-class white host community in Cardiff
    and Merthyr Tydfil.

20
Research Questions
  • To explore the responses of different host
    communities to new migration both historically
    and in the past ten years.
  • To focus as much on majority white as on ethnic
    minority communities.
  • To compare policy concerns with evidence based on
    lived realities.

21
Methodology
  • 108 interviews, and 52 focus groups across seven
    communities/sites.
  • Began January 2005 and completed August 2006.
  • Participant observations.
  • Interviews with community leaders
  • Focus groups with community members.
  • The research was carried out by a team of 8
    researchers, three speaking community languages

22
The Welsh Context
  • We explored these things in the very specific and
    complex context of devolution in Wales where
    strategies and initiatives to do with
    immigration and asylum operate within the context
    of international, European and UK immigration,
    asylum and integration policies and legislation
    as well as
  • the Welsh Assembly Governments wider strategic
    all party agenda for Equality and Diversity

23
The Research Context
  • There is in fact surprisingly little knowledge
    about the social and economic disadvantage
    experienced by new migrants
  • Even less is known about the ways in which
    immigration can affect local areas or what the
    challenges are for new migrants and existing
    populations.

24
Challenging the Policy Myths
  • There is no evidence that community tensions are
    an inevitable consequence of new immigration. Our
    evidence indicates that the nature of relations
    varies according to
  • the local socio-economic context
  • the social class background and gender of both
    new immigrants and receiving communities
  • the history of previous settlement and the
    ethnic, age and class profile of the area
  • the actual and perceived ethnicity and class of
    new immigrants

25
  • national and local media representations of
    immigration, asylum and migrant workers
  • the legal status of new immigrants
  • the success of local agencies and groups in
    mediating between established and incoming
    populations. This is true in both deprived and
    middle class areas.

26
Findings Work and Acceptance
  • There is a strong connection between community
    acceptance of new migrants and the ability of
    those migrants to work.
  • E.g., the way diverse groups live and work side
    by side in relatively deprived areas.
  • In the more deprived areas of Cardiff all new
    migrants tend to be identified as asylum
    seekers but are accepted once known to be
    migrant workers.
  • The acceptance of Chinese restaurant staff in
    middle class Llandaff because they work.

27
Super Diversity not Community
  • Diasporic or transnational communities with
    global links are not limited to the ethnic
    context
  • These links do not necessarily have any impact on
    the capacity or willingness to integrate or on
    community cohesion
  • Diaspora must be regarded as one normal way of
    living and being in the current global context.
  • Close knit communities of the traditional kind
    are in fact only found in the valleys context of
    Merthyr Tydfil in our research.
  • What is much more common is a very complex kind
    of super diversity.

28
Who is Segregated?
  • There is is no evidence that ethnic minority
    groups are any more segregated than receiving
    middle class and working class communities and
    none that they are any less well integrated
    than some of those living in working class
    communities on council estates. Integration is
    not used in these contexts. Deprivation is.

29
Recognising the Role of Social Class
  • Middle class ethnic community leaders and members
    with a level of education and experience which
    allows them to mix and negotiate with middle
    class administrators make a huge, unrecognised,
    contribution to the local and national economy in
    their support of new migrants.
  • The same can be said of middle class
    hostadministrators and community members who
    work toward inclusion.

30
Social Class and Race
  • Living in deprived, working class environments in
    Cardiff, has unexamined consequences for both
    integration and social cohesion. New migrants are
    anxious about alcohol and drugs and the
    behaviours of the youth in the host community.
  • Middle class asylum seekers, e.g., from Sudan,
    live in the same poverty but have better
    community support and strategies of dealing with
    it than some other groups.
  • White immigration, whether middle class
    professional, student or migrant worker, appears
    to be invisible to local populations in Cardiff.
    At least it is not referred to as immigration.

31
Lack of Communication
  • There is evidence of a lack of communication
    between those who try to support incomers and the
    grassroots.
  • Examples include the perceptions and realities of
    the Communities First Agenda in STAR, or
    misunderstandings about council initiatives to
    support Portugese migrant workers in Merthyr
    Tydfil.

32
Intergenerational Issues
  • In many areas different age groups do live
    parallel lives but that this does not
    necessarily produce tensions or lack of cohesion.
  • E.g., the older white working class residents in
    Cathays and the transient student populations
    different age groups, Welsh speakers or the
    Chinese in Llandaff.
  • Where it does produce tensions, the tensions can
    be as much within communities as between them
    e.g., different age and gender dimensions within
    the Somali community interacting with different
    migration and settlement histories.
  • Inter-familial differences across all migrant
    groups produced by migration and the need to
    integrate.

33
Factors which Inhibit Integration
  • Fear of the outside
  • In Llandaff people defined their communities in
    terms of the dangerous others outside it.
  • In Butetown and among the Somalis all over
    Cardiff it was whiteness and what lay outside
    the community that could be alarming - especially
    after 7/7 - the way people look at you or move
    away from you.
  • With the Chinese it was often inadequate English
    which made them feel more comfortable among
    Chinese or means that the elderly do not access
    services to which they are entitled.
  • Undocumented workers (the Fujianese) often had no
    choice but to stay where they worked.
  • Myths about others in both directions.

34
Versions of Social Cohesion
  • In many areas of Cardiff (e.g., STAR, Cathays,
    the Somalis), and among many groups (the Chinese,
    the Arab groups, Llandaff), huge diversity (and
    poverty and discrimination) is simply
    accommodated and lived with.
  • The Merthyr situation with the influx of
    Portugese migrant workers is very different
    attitudes are strong but community cohesion not
    greatly affected despite parallel lives.
  • It is dealing with the issues of integration
    which ultimately produces community and social
    cohesion. As one Somali focus group told us
    having white friends alone does not solve the
    issues of poverty, ill health and unemployment
    with which they are faced.

35
Economic Realities
  • That has to mean acknowledging poverty and
    class difference
  • Dealing with the racism and discrimination which
    is evident in our research in every single area
    where integration is at risk (e.g.,language,
    housing, education, employment, health, community
    safety etc.)
  • Communicating more effectively
  • Planning to work with the reality of super
    diversity rather than imagined communities.

36
Approach to Governance and Diversity
Community Strategy Vision To ensure that
Cardiff is a world class European capital city
with an exceptional quality of life and at the
heart of a competitive city region.
  • Sets a long term vision and highlights the
    arrangements that enable the Strategy to be
    delivered
  • Prepared in consultation with key strategic
    partners
  • Developed using extensive consultation with
    local communities.

37
Key Initiatives
  • Generic Activities
  • Impact Assessment
  • Involvement
  • Monitoring
  • Training
  • Specific Activities
  • Equality Policy Team
  • BME involvement
  • EMAS
  • ESOL
  • Leisure Outreach
  • Asylum and Refugee team Health and Social Care
  • BME Housing Strategy

38
Contemporary Migration Issues
  • Engagement
  • Council Focus Groups and consultation
  • REF activity
  • Planned communication activity
  • REF activity
  • Information from Migrants
  • Promotion of benefits Migration
  • Service Delivery
  • ESOL
  • Schools
  • Health and Social Care
  • Housing

39
Contemporary Migration Issues
  • Community Safety
  • Combating racist harassment
  • Community cohesion
  • Combating economic exploitation
  • Work practices
  • Accommodation
  • Department of Work and Pensions
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