Plural Identities

Culture not incentives creates successful economies

Almost by way of an answer to Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday, which wondered why Portuguese immigrants to the UK were less successful in getting jobs and staying off benefit than other immigrant groups, this article by Gregory Clark, of the University of California concludes that it is the people, not the incentives or institutions, which make a successful economy.  He proposes further encouragement for schemes which enable people from less successful economies to move temporarily to more successful economies and then bring their new "cultural" attitudes to wealth creation back with them on their return. 

He doesn't mention it, but I think this phenomenon may explain Ireland's recent economic growth, stimulated by Irish returning from the US.  It was noticeable that the Portuguese immigrants in the UK who were interviewed for the Dispatches programme had no intention to move back to Portugal, didn't want to do the kind of low paid jobs that Polish immigrants were happy to take on, and had perhaps imbibed the slacker/sponger aspects of British culture rather than our Protestant work ethic.  Mind you, judging by this slightly Pollyfilla-ish article by Sarah Sands in the Financial Times, it may only be a question of time before the legendary Polish builders start slacking off too.

It is similar to the kind of recommendations made by Philippe Legrain for temporary immigration schemes.

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.

Return of the Ninja

A much more welcome girl band reunion than the Spice Chickens - I saw the Frank Chickens live in 1984 and I think I had their record (or maybe I just taped them off John Peel) - here's their "We Are Ninja" from that time, now on YouTube.  Looking at it with older eyes, I realise they were making even more of a political statement about Japanese identity, especially female identity, than I had quite grasped at the time.  They are back on tour, and will be in Brighton soon, alas when I am not.

Digging for America

From the American novelist Anne Tyler (nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as the greatest novelist writing in English - and I think I agree)'s most recent novel, Digging to America:

Sami, born in America, of Iranian parents rants to his Iranian extended family and friends, all living the in the US, regarding:

The American craze for logic - "Logic's why they're always suing each other.  They believe that for every event there has to be a cause.  Surely somebody is to blame! they say...They feel personally outraged by bad luck"
American so-called openness - "So instantaneously chummy they are, so 'Hello, I love you,' so "how do you do, let me tell you my marital problems,' and yet, have any of them ever really truly let you into their lives?"

Modern, liberal America is embodied in Bitsy, who adopts a Korean and then a Chinese child, and tries to keep them connected to their 'ethnicity' by dressing them in native costume, whilst agonising about  organic food and excoriating Sami's wife, who has also adopted a Korean child, for going out to work two days a week.  Bitsy says, towards the end of this wonderful novel, about the Iranian woman's elegant, also Iranian mother-in-law - "what I really have against her is, she's elusive.  Oh I hate it that world finds elusiveness so attractive!  Elusive people are maddening!  Why doesn't anyone realise?"

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Mary Douglas

I remember reading Purity and Danger when I was a teenager and thinking it was fascinating.  Reading the obituary of the author of it, the anthropologist Mary Douglas, by Geoff Mulgan on Prospect's web exclusive section has made me feel I should re-read it, and other books of hers besides.  Going by Mulgan's summary of her cultural framework and its use by Michael Thompson and Marco Verweij in their book on public policy, I am struck by how much of an 'Individualist' ( as opposed to being egalitarian, hierarchical or fatalist) I am in terms of my views on climate change and immigration.  But I believe in a spot of hierarchical  intervention to tame individualists like me, a mix of policy approaches, which is also what Mulgan, Thompson and Verweij conclude.

I am also intrigued by her theory on enclaves and how this could affect strategies for dealing with terrorist cells.  It sounds very plausible that these enclaves are fragile, prone to splits and sectarianism, and strengthened by feeding off the hostility of outsiders to the enclave. So defeating terrorism may involve being less hostile to and not attacking enclaves head on with declarations of war, as this only strengthens their 'wall of virtue'.

I need you to pin me down

I've not been posting these past two weeks due to preparing for and then being in the US, first Research Triangle Park, Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (my fourth visit) and then Deerfield, Illinois (both as glamorous as they sound). Yes, I did have my laptop (and free wireless, European hotels take note) but frankly what with jetlag, the time difference and training all day I was only just able to stay awake long enough to check e-mails most evenings, or else having an ice cold beer seemed more important than blogging.

One thing I finally pinpointed on the way out, thanks to an American Airlines stewardess, was a speech pattern which is prevalent in the US, but is likely to have a fingernails scraping on the blackboard effect in the UK.  The air stewardess announced that they were about to start selling duty free on board, and if anyone wanted pay by credit card then "we need you to show another form of ID".  I don't think I am speaking just for myself if I say that when I hear that someone "needs me to" do something, without a please or a conditional tense attached, I immediately want to do the opposite.  A British air stewardess would have said "please could you show another form of ID." 

I asked the various American participants in the training sessions why this speech pattern is so prevalent, and they came to the conclusion that it is because in the US, if you want someone to do something, you have to make sure they understand it is a requirement, otherwise they won't do it.

I tried Googling to see if anyone else has commented on this speech pattern and found that apparently in the film "You, Me and Dupree" there is a line "I need you to do a solid".  I shall remember this each time I hear this kind of request again, and I will no doubt be looking suitably British and constipated in response.

Our House

The Panorama documentary on Blackburn last Monday on BBC1 was, as John Lloyd said in the Financial Times yesterday "vastly skilful and unrelievedly bleak" in showing Blackburn as a town divided by fear and distrust between the white population and the 'Asian' population.  It gave voice to the worries of both populations and demonstrated how rarely they integrate, by, for example, showing the entirely different (apart from central shopping areas) runs that two local taxi firms, one all white drivers and one all Asian drivers, mapped in the course of a day.

For a bit of light relief I then watched BBC4's Music Hall Meltdown, but with my mindset still influenced by the Panorama programme, was immediately struck by how 'white' it was, and wondered whether anyone who wasn't born and bred, several generations British, would get the point of it.  First up was Madness, who are an 'English' band par excellence, and yet of course influenced by Jamaican ska.  They sang 'House of Fun', about a boy trying to buy condoms.  I had my beer goggles on by this stage as well, so started to think, maybe that is the root of this 'lack of integration' - Brits with their social dis-ease (as Kate Fox puts it) can only socialise and integrate with outsiders through giving riotous expression to the basest or most fundamental human drives, of sex, drugs/alcohol and rock and roll.  And of course for hardline Muslims, none of these routes is acceptable.  The extraordinary Channel 4 programme the next night, Seven Sins of England, made the point even more clearly.  I remember when I was canvassing ten years ago, talking with one angry white East Ender, lifelong Labour supporter threatening to vote BNP.  "They don't even come to the pub" he said.  "Well Muslims can't drink alcohol", I said. "Yeah but they could have an orange juice" he retorted.

Maybe there is some scope for integrative activities such as sport or music without the sex, booze and rock n roll. I'm not convinced though.  I am always recommending to the Europeans in Japanese companies that I do training for that they find more ways of socialising, with beer, with their Japanese colleagues if they really want to become trusted insiders in a Japanese company, because the Japanese are similar to the British in this need to have the excuse of a few beers before revealing their true selves and thoughts.

In case I am coming across as a total telly moron, I am also reading a lot at the moment, incuding Julian Baggini's Welcome to Everytown, and he makes the point that in fact even white Brits are not integrating with each other; "England is a patchwork of almost hermetically sealed sub-worlds, in which class as much as race is a crucial factor."  He then goes on to say how his friends joked that they would have to send food parcels to him when he moved to Rotherham, with balsamic vinegar and buffalo mozzarella in them.  I winced, as we had some friends round for dinner last Friday, and although we were all able to join in a minor version of 'more working class roots than thou', balsamic vinegar featured on the menu, albeit with halloumi cheese, not mozzarella.

I'm intrigued by Baggini's assertion that "all sorts of social groups don't mix very much, yet we don't chastise them for it. The trouble is not caused by not mixing, but refusing to do so in ways which seem to threaten other groups."  Baggini thinks that the extent to which Muslims dissent from the fundamentals of British democracy is overstated.  He may be right, but of course the probem is that we are dealing with perceptions.  Wearing a face covering veil may be simply an act of religious observance to the woman who chose to do it, but it is perceived as being an assertion about not wanting to communicate fully, and accusing men of being unable to control their primitive urges if a woman were to show any flesh.  Not joining in with drinking also is perceived as a criticism of those who do drink, and an unwillingness to even enter a place where people socialise and mix.

Baggini says mutual tolerance is the best we can hope for, rather than respect or acknowledgement.  He acknowledges we need shared values to glue society together, but these shared values are in his view pretty minimal and civic.  Above all, and I most definitely agree with him here, as it is a fundamental British value, "we have to promote a sense that everyone is being treated equally under the same rules".  This was certainly at the root of East End anger 15 years' ago and I would suspect to this day.  There was a perception that the Bengalis were being treated favourably when it came to housing.  Of course mostly this came about due to the fair application of rules that large families got priority.  So the Liberals took over the council on the promise of introducing a new rule, of priority for "sons and daughters" of East Enders.  So the problem is not just equal treatment, but how the rules are viewed in the first place.

Sunny Hundal at Pickled Politics also has a post on perceived threats to white culture, and in particular the class angle, pointing the finger at the middle classes for failing to support or understand white working class culture. He's a bit vague on what exactly supporting white working class culture might be, other than better funded sports facilities...

Elephants and debates

I missed this debate on Britishness (the perils of having given up reading the Guardian) but Martin Kettle has summed it up nicely.  Sunny Hundal went to the debate and also was invited to one on European identity and values, sponsored by Demos and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and funded by the Ford Foundation (you can almost hear the rustle of tinfoil hats being donned by Europe's Stoppers & fellow travellers when they hear about that one).  The news releases about this from the two organisations show an inadvertent clue to one British value, modesty (sometimes false) - JPR describes Demos as "the UK's most influential thinktank" whereas Demos' version of the press release says "influential UK thinktank".  JPR reports on the debate here. 

As Sunny Hundal says, the elephant in the room is the reason these debates are happening now; because of worries about how to deal with home grown terrorists amongst a minority of young Muslim males.  Which means that, as Martin Kettle points out, other parts of the debate about British identity, such as class, tend to be ignored.

If you're in the mood for more debate on the subject, without the need to be physically present, an e-congress on Negotiating Identities is taking place in ten days, hosted by the Open University.

Reith's wreath

I ended up watching a little bit of "Victoria's Empire", where Victoria Wood visits various parts of the former British Empire, on BBC1 last night, mainly because our Virgin ntl-aswas cable TV service has gone phut so we only have terrestrial and that was the least unappealing programme available.  It wasn't very good, telling me nothing I didn't already more or less know, in contrast to the programme I am half watching now, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Dispatches, Channel 4, on India. 

"Victoria's Empire" reminded me of a riff on Lee and Herrings' BBC1 series "This Morning with Richard Not Judy" where they invited programme ideas based on 'famous' people's names. My favourite was "Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Huge Furry Wishing Stall", where Hugh F-W tours the country on a big furry throne granting wishes.  It passed into family folklore, since which Hugh F-W has been known in our house as "a bit of Huge Furry" - cue for a nice glass of wine and watching someone else muck out pigs, salt a fish or chase chickens.

I suppose we should be grateful it was not "Victoria's Wood", where Victoria Wood tours the country interviewing charcoal burners, wood turners, foresters etc, or indeed "Victoria Gets Wood" where Victoria Wood tours the country interviewing male porn stars.

Nonetheless, being without cable has made me more sympathetic, even nostalgic for Reithian TV;  the culture of a nation formed by a small number of publicly funded channels, which try to inform as well as entertain.

Even our son has been quite docile about being deprived of 'Ben 10' and 'Scooby Doo' for a few days, watching lots of 'Thunderbirds' and 'Night at the Museum' instead.  But if I have to hear the 'Mr Men' theme tune once more, I will have to chuck a brick through the screen.