Plural Identities

Icons or values

The Economist looks at a survey conducted by Alan Manning and Sanchari Roy of the London School of Economics where they reworked data from the Labour Force Survey to show that immigrants from "problem" countries are more likely to describe themselves as British than those from Western European and North American countries.  Partly this is because they may have to take on British citizenship in order to remain in the UK.  But a more profound point brought out by YouGov interviews is that most ethnic minorities see Britishness as identified by values (fair play, rule of law etc) than by the icons that white Britons choose to define Britishness (fish and chips, Winston Churchill etc).

 
I have noticed a tendency for white Britons, particularly from the intellectual classes, to reject defining Britishness by values, because they say that these values are not particular to the UK.  If you come from a mature democracy, this may be true, but those immigrants who don't, have experienced the fact that such values are not universal.  Actually, this can be the case even with immigrants from mature democracy - many years ago I had a German neighbour when I lived in the East End of London who said he felt the British were much more tolerant of diversity than the Germans.

Hostile in general, hospitable in particular

The Financial Times is running a Muslims in Europe series at the moment and have commissioned a poll across Germany, Spain, France, Italy, US and the UK which shows further evidence for the British tendency to be hostile in general to (in this case Muslim) immigrants but actually quite tolerant or friendly in particular.  The British were most likely to predict a major terrorist attack in their country in the next 12 months, consider Muslims a threat to national security and believe Muslims have too much political power.  However on more personal measures of integration - having Muslim friends or accepting the marriage of their child to a Muslim, Britons were more enthusiastic than some other countries (well actually only Germany and the US as far as I can work out from the article). 

France was most at ease with its Muslim population.  Patrick Weil, a political scientist at the Sorbonne summed it up nicely: "In France we are very good at cultural integration.  We are very bad in fighting discrimination, especially in high-level jobs. In the UK it is the opposite."

In France and to a lesser extent Britain, religion is seen as a private affair, with less than 25% supporting the idea of faith schools and also many having misgivings about religious attire at work or in public places.  Spain is more enthusiastic about faith schools and Italy more accepting of religious attire.

Where religion intersects with tribalism

Someone left a copy of Matthew Parris's autobiography at the cottage in St Ives we were staying in last week.  I only read the first few chapters, about his childhood in South Africa, Rhodesia, Swaziland, Cyprus and Jamaica (another Third Culture Kid and presumably why he calls himself an outsider in his autobiography subtitle).  He, like me, is not a religious believer, but he makes the point that monotheistic religions like Christianity provided a constructive escape from tribalism for many of the Africans he knew. 

I've become more and more concerned by the intersection between tribalism and religious fundamentalism, since I started (but haven't finished) reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and hearing the horror stories around "honour killing" where women are killed for wanting to marry someone in a different tribe.

Shiv Malik's article in Prospect about how Mohammad Siddique Khan became a suicide bomber describes convincingly how Islamic fundamentalism provided a way of rebelling against tribalism (the Mullah Boys of Beeston marrying anyone, so long as they were good Muslims), but in a way that is hard for 'proper' Muslim parents to contest.

So the critical moment is not just when isolated young people try to find a group to belong to, but when they are also looking for a credo that gives them a cast iron, supposedly morally superior way to rebel against the traditions of their parents.