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Immigration & Integration

Chris Clarke: For levelling up to succeed, so must one-nation conservatism

By Centre Write, Immigration & Integration

Back in 2014 Nigel Farage stated that, even with the economic arguments for immigration proven, he was against it on cultural grounds. Being “slightly richer” as a country was not worth it if the price to be paid was the sound of foreign languages on public transport. The then Ukip leader added: “I would rather have a situation where young unemployed British people had a realistic chance of getting a job.”

Farage always sat at odds with many Conservative traditions, especially with the economic pragmatism and sense of fairness which one-nation Tories tend to pride themselves on. And he made it clear that many of the right’s preferred policy methods – trade, commerce and efforts to ‘grow the pie’ – were not Ukip’s levers of choice.

But today’s ‘levelling up’ agenda can only succeed with 21st century ‘one-nationism’. The desire to fix regional inequality represents an acknowledgement from the government that economics matters. Whilst the agenda is yet to be fleshed out, levelling up can’t happen without the promotion of growth and enterprise – it is the only way to reshape the economic gravity in poorer towns.

Our new report Level Best attempted to understand how places and communities change as they level up by analysing all the local authorities in England and Wales outside of the big cities to see how they fared after the economic crash of 2008.

Across 285 local authorities, we analysed five economic metrics (growth, house prices, employment, deprivation and pay), and seven measures of demographic change (ranging from ethnic diversity to the number of births to non-UK mothers).

The findings were stark. Across all seven demographic measures, as places that got more diverse, growth increased. Likewise with house prices. And there is a similar picture – although slightly less pronounced – when it comes to deprivation reduction, employment rises and salary increases.

For instance, where there was an increase of 5+ percentage points in births to non-UK mothers, the growth per head between 2011 and 2019 was £6,727. By contrast, it was £3,985 per head in areas where this figure fell.

Authorities where employment rose by over 6 points in the 2010s also saw their non-British populations rise by 2.3 percentage points, on average. In council areas where employment rose by less than 2 points, by contrast, the average non-British increase was just 0.24 percentage points.

These findings are a rebuff to the idea that immigration brings an area down or that metropoleis like London have been the chief beneficiaries of diversity and migration.

Corby in Northamptonshire, for instance – population 66,000 – saw growth per head rise by £11,371 between 2011 and 2019. This was a period when the town’s non-UK born population increased by 7 percentage points.

The truth is that people tend to move to areas where there are jobs and opportunities. The places that recovered best post-2011 attracted individuals from across the country and around the world. They found that migration and population change were part and parcel of growth; that being networked meant newcomers arriving. 

The Nigel Farage idea that every migrant means one more unemployed Brit is fundamentally at odds with economic sense – as our report shows. So too is the idea that cultural diversity is automatically harmful to a place. Inflows of people are an inevitable aspect of any community prospering – including ensuring poorer places level up.

One-nation conservatives who accept this must argue against the Farageist rhetoric and the controversial policies of the ‘hostile environment’ era, and think about how investing in cohesion can play a bigger role in the drive to level up.

Chris Clarke is a Policy Researcher at Hope not Hate and the author of Level Best. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Chmee2]

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Nina Oljelund: The high price of British citizenship

By Centre Write, Immigration & Integration

Citizenship is about belonging to a state and being included in the greater society. It involves receiving benefits, but also having duties. While citizenship is about inclusion, the flipside is that it actively excludes others. In Britain today, the price tag of citizenship is a problem. The policies of the Home Office have turned citizenship into an expensive luxury.

To become a citizen in the UK, like in many other countries, there is a fee to pay. The fee for adults to register as a citizen is £1206 and for a child it’s £1012. These costs are extremely high compared to other countries. In Sweden, for example, the registration fee is £120 for adults and £14 for a child below the age of 15.

The high price of a British passport actively excludes poorer people from citizenship. Non-citizens have limited opportunities to work, to travel, and thus to live their lives to the full. Such people have every right to apply for citizenship, but aside from the long process, it is the high cost of gaining a British passport that prevents them from attaining the status of a citizen. 

One group of people who are especially unfairly targeted by the citizenship fee are children. These are children who came here with their parents as toddlers, or children born here to non-British parents. They are legally entitled to become citizens, but the high price of citizenship prevents their parents from giving this to them. It is estimated that around 65,000 children are left without citizenship. Sixty-five thousand children stuck in a citizenship limbo with uncertainties of what their future will hold. 

As these children grow up and become adults, there are many things they will not be able to do due to their status as non-citizens. They will not qualify for government student loans and, without a passport, it will be difficult for them to leave the UK, even for a holiday. This creates a cohort of so-called second-class citizens formed of those who are not legally citizens, but who have spent all their living memory living in the UK.

The High Court has ruled the Home Office’s fee for children to be “unlawful” and the Home Office has been ordered by the Court to review the fee. The judgment was handed down over four months ago, and the fee remains unchanged. There is no sign of a reduced fee being introduced anytime soon, or ever. The Home Office makes a huge profit from citizenships fees – last year the Home Office made £500 million in pure profit from citizenship applications. This comes out to £641 profit from each of the applications, which the judge in the High Court case called “shameless profiteering”.

This fee is prohibitive for low-income families with children and deprives those children of the chance to better integrate into the UK. It restricts their access to a university education and reduces their opportunities on the job market. If the fee prevails, there will continue to be a gap between citizens and those who cannot afford to become citizens.

It is unlawful to keep this citizenship fee and children who have grown up in Britain and identify as British, cannot fully live their lives unless the access to citizenship widens. The British passport is one of the costliest passports there is which is creating a less integrated society by keeping a part of the population actively excluded. Citizenship fees in the UK need to become cheaper, if not for adults, at least for children, who deserve the chance of a brighter future. We need to push the Home Office and politicians to replace the policies on children’s fee by either lowering them significantly or scrapping them entirely.

Nina is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Chris Fleming]

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March 12, 2020

Phoebe Arslanagic-Wakefield: A place for faith schools? 

By Centre Write, Human Rights & Discrimination, Immigration & Integration, Phoebe Arslanagic-Wakefield

The British Social Attitudes Survey has found that 52% of Brits are atheist or do not belong to any religion. In this era of plummeting religious belief, it is worth examining whether there is a place for state-funded faith schools in British society.

The majority of UK state faith schools, 68%, are Church of England. The leadership of the Church of England insists that faith schools are inclusive. However, research conducted by the Humanists last year in their report, Non-religious need not apply, strikes at the heart of this defence. The report found that 40% of all state faith secondary schools in England discriminate against non-religious families, by giving priority to families of any religion, regardless of whether or not that religion corresponds to that of the school.

Catholic schools are the worst offenders for this kind of discrimination with 60% of Catholic schools discriminating against non-religious families in this manner. Twenty-five percent of Church of England schools do so also, as do 20% of Islamic schools. These figures mean that non-religious families have their access restricted to 240,000 more state secondary places in England than they would if this discrimination did not exist. This unacceptable state of affairs has the legal character of a human rights violation and severely handicaps the ability of religious leaders to claim that faith schools serve the entire community.

Another defence mounted by proponents of faith schools is that they offer a very high standard of education, and should be preserved on this basis. It is true that the quality of schooling provided at state faith schools is good; 81% of all Church of England primary and middle schools are rated good or outstanding, in comparison with 77% of all non-faith schools. Is this exceptional standard due to the faith-based nature of the schooling or attributable to the fact that these schools are selective, and selective schools perform better than comprehensives? Proponents of faith schools argue the former, highlighting the impact of the religious ethos that such schools instil in their students. However, disadvantaged children are underrepresented at faith schools. According to the Education Policy Institute, at an average faith secondary school, the odds of a child being eligible for free school meals is at around two-thirds of that for all children living in the local area. Indeed, when characteristics such as deprivation and prior attainment are controlled for, the attainment gap between faith and non-faith state schools significantly decreases. In short, faith schools have no special character, they are simply selective and ultimately as good as any other good school.

Finally, state faith school defenders argue that the existence of these schools is vital in upholding Article 2(1) of the ECHR, which protects the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions. Though Article 2(1) grants parents this right, it does not correspondingly give the State a positive obligation to create or subsidise any particular education system or school. For example, religious schools exist in France, but they are private institutions that operate without state funding.

In 2019, ONS figures showed that the number of irreligious people in Britain has increased by 46% since 2012. Of those aged 18-24, a mere 1% identify as Church of England. In 2018, Church of England service attendance reached a record low of 722,000, compared to 1.2 million 30 years ago.

These figures point to the conclusion that there is no longer a place for state faith schools. However, the UK is not a secular state. Indeed, we are far from it with a monarch who doubles as religious leader, and twelve archbishops and bishops sitting in the House of Lords in the quaintly named ‘Lords Spiritual’ conclave.

Yet alongside our flourishing atheism, there are no popular calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to be ejected from the House of Lords or for the Queen to reject Anglicanism. Religious institutions still form an important part of the fabric of British life. Church of England volunteers contribute over 23 million hours of community work per month and the number of parcels given out by church-run food banks has increased by 20% since last year. In this context, the existence of a place for state faith schools in modern Britain appears more certain.  After all, 60% of all state faith schools are not discriminating against non-religious families, but are serving their communities well and inclusively, at a generally high education standard. If this increasingly irreligious nation can tolerate a non-secular State and its accompanying accoutrements, then why not well functioning, inclusive state faith schools? The principle behind state faith schools is easily attacked, but ultimately, the de-funding of good schools is unnecessary.

Indeed, in this pragmatic country, there will perhaps always be a place for state-funded faith schools that serve the whole community and deliver good education. There will not, however, be a place for schools of the ilk that reject children from non-religious families. If this practice is stamped out, the future of state-funded faith schooling in the UK is bright, and to remove or de-fund them, counterproductive.

Phoebe Arslanagić-Wakefield is a Research Assistant at Bright Blue.

October 21, 2019

Bethany Morris: Football: the bridge between asylum seekers and integration

By Centre Write, Human Rights & Discrimination, Immigration & Integration

The life of an asylum seeker can often feel like a vacuum.. The memories of traumas such as physical, emotional and sexual abuse, torture and the deaths of loved ones can be consuming.  Building life in a new country all alone only exacerbates their plight. As unlikely as it may seem, football has the power to change all of this. To engage in an activity which promotes social integration, a sense of competition, belonging and the familiarity of routine, can make all the difference to the lives of these vulnerable people.

After successfully helping to integrate asylum seekers and refugees into local football teams, Football Unites, Racism Divides (FURD) conducted a three-year research project with the aim of examining the extent to which football helped these people integrate successfully into their new lives. Ultimately, they discovered that football helps foster a sense of belonging by promoting routine, catharsis, sociality, empowerment and plurality whilst providing a safe space and improving mental health. The game itself can help realign players with their sense of identity, particularly if they regularly partook in the game in their home country. 

Routine and regularity “builds relationships with other participants” and interestingly, the sociality of football provides players with an alternative means of communication that “avoids the reduction of identity to that of ethnicity or political status”. This is of particular importance to asylum seekers and refugees who often report feeling out of place or unwelcome when settling into new countries. The inclusive nature of football allows them to engage and communicate with others from all walks of life; a feeling of belonging is fostered through working together to achieve a shared target, eliminating the sense of marginalisation that these groups often feel. The study describes mental-wellbeing and a sense of belonging as “mutually interdependent”; therefore, the benefits of social integration via sporting activities such as football can drastically alleviate the symptoms of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Lamentably, such issues are commonplace amongst asylum seekers, with around 61% experiencing mental distress. 

Whilst asylum claims are being processed, applicants are not permitted to work. The majority must depend on support from Section 95, which provides less generous support than  that received by UK citizens who are also unable to work. Links between poverty and ill-health have been well documented over the years. Processed foods are often cheaper than fresh, meaning eating unhealthily becomes an “economic, not a moral choice”. This is an issue for refugees and asylum seekers who receive little financial aid and often live in poor-quality accommodation too, which has been proven to be linked to the onset of health issues particularly in children, such as meningitis, asthma and tuberculosis. 

Not only does football facilitate social integration, but for those living in poverty and substandard accommodation, it can provide a means of escape that promotes exercise and a healthy lifestyle, ultimately increasing the effectiveness of the immune system in battling illness and disease.  Many football initiatives intended for refugees and asylum seekers such as those run by FURD also provide a free hot meal, showers, toiletries and funding to cover travel costs. This helps to break down the economic barrier between poverty and general well-being, which can be a lifeline for those isolated from society and living in poverty due to their immigration status. 

Initiatives such as those run by FURD have been incredibly successful for refugees and asylum seekers by promoting social integration, reducing the prevalence of mental and physical health issues and breaking down barriers between poverty, sociality and health and wellbeing. Sports such as football are universal: by providing vulnerable people with opportunities and a sense of identity, we are giving them the best possible chances to succeed in life, make friends and stay healthy – all whilst having fun and not fearing further judgement or marginalization due to their immigration status. 

Bethany Morris is a content writer for the Immigration Advice Service, an organisation of immigration solicitors that help undocumented migrants to regulate their status. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

October 4, 2019
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