An Open City: The Role of Migration in Cardiff

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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.

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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

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Tradition of Openness

• New City 200 years of growth

• Indian sub-continent
• Caribbean
• Japan
• Korea

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Tradition of Openness

• New City 200 years of growth

• Africa
• Middle East
• Phillipines
• Kerelan
• Eastern Europe

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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.

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Cardiffs Migrant Population Today
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• 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.

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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)

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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• 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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Contemporary Migration Issues

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