Written evidence by Dr Aneta-Piekut - Senior Lecturer at The University of Sheffield, and Dr Zanib Rasool - Director at Steel City Community Consultancy (SCI0470)
2. Does the UK have an ‘integration problem’?
Introduction
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Aneta Piekut is a Senior Lecturer (PhD, Sociology) at the University of Sheffield (since 2012), and an interdisciplinary scholar of migration studies. Zanib Rasool (Doctor of Education) is Co-Founding Director of Steel City Community Consultancy. Zanib has worked 35 years in the community in Rotherham. Since 2020 we have collaborated on several interlinked projects on socio-spatial boundaries in Rotherham [1], which were termed ‘social frontiers’, and their role for migrant ‘integration’ and broader community life (‘social cohesion’).
Rotherham is an excellent case study to consider the question of ‘integration problem’ as a town perceived through the prism of declining manufacturing and industry and increasing multiculturalism, where both are viewed as a place-specific problem. There are many similar places in the UK where deprivation overlaps with ethnic diversity, while people who are migrants or racialised minorities are unjustly positioned as a ‘problem’.
Our research in Rotherham
Our research in Rotherham has demonstrated that migrant integration into local life and community cohesion are negatively affected by urban planning barriers, systematic resources removal and exercising short-term political solutions which disempower local minority leaders.
(i) Urban planning barriers. There are many physical infrastructure barriers which make everyday life, feeling safe, cross-community socialising, everyday mobility, and grass-root community-building harder. These barriers include empty post-industrial sides and current industrial workshops or scrap sites, and transport infrastructure, like dual carriage ways or railways. The location of these physical barriers overlaps with the proportion of migrant population or residents with migration background, with substantially more migrant population more likely to live on one side. They divide the community and undermine local social cohesion, and the process has coincided with the post-war Commonwealth migration, especially Pakistan, and industrialisation in Rotherham:
● “[New Wortley Road built in late 1960s] created a barrier. Because a hell of a lot of the shops, the services, got knocked down, got demolished. So it really did affect the whole makeup of the community (...) It’s really divided up those communities” (Resident, Kimberworth, E3)
These socio-spatial boundaries continue to affect everyday mobility as residents feel discouraged to cross these boundaries and walk through other neighbourhoods, and as a consequence they contribute to limiting socialising outside the immediate area:
● “There’s no pavement from …Kimberworth Road all the way down to the other roundabout (...) You have to cross two sets of traffic lights to go into Bradgate Park entrance at the top here if you’re going up (...) There’s literally physically not a lot of space [between], but I think mentally, the way they’ve made the design of the road and everything, it’s like yeah, don’t cross over”. (Resident, Ferham, E2)
(ii) Systematic resources removal. We found a stark association between the location of ‘social frontiers’ and social infrastructure, with a lack of community spaces on the ‘migrant side’ of the frontiers (e.g., library, a community centre), and less funding being directed there due to lack of spaces to invest into:
● “One area has a high number of immigrants or people of diverse ethnicities – nothing available to them; and then, just over the border, [it] is predominantly White British, and there’s a clear contrast how the park has been maintained. And then that raises questions. That raises insecurities.” (Resident, Ferham, E2)
Such social spaces are detrimental for building stronger communities, civic engagement, building relationships and shared identities (‘integration’), youth socialisation, cross-cultural learning, overcoming prejudice, so many aspects of ‘social cohesion’.
● “It’s a shame that these basic facilities are all being taken away, especially when crime is on the rise, the vulnerability is on the rise. Ferham has been identified as one of the most deprived areas of Rotherham, and the most deprived area of Rotherham doesn’t have a youth centre. …[It] doesn’t have a police station or police hub. It doesn’t have a library, …not even a single place for the elderly to sit or congregate around.” (Resident, Ferham, E2)
(iii) Short term political solutions. Despite the above challenges and long-term structural issues, the research revealed a number of dedicated community leaders, both formally working for larger organisations and running smaller grass-root initiatives (they are presented in our short film ‘Blurring the edges’, E1).
The areas with the higher proportion of migrants, like Ferham and Masbrough, have been systematically disinvested, negatively affecting the continuity of social cohesion and youth outreach programmes. This disinvestment, especially after being cut off from certain funding since leaving the EU, has overall disempowered residents in undertaking community-sustaining initiatives. While some initiatives have started, the overall feeling among racially minorities and migrant community was that they have not brought tangible outcomes:
● “I’ve been promised enough by the council, I’ve been to enough meetings, I’ve sat down with the chairs of the local council, the police, youth workers. This is all documented. (...) We as a community have been promised things. The youth centre got took away from us. That was a big hit for the youth. (...) Masbrough area has nothing for the kids [in the] local area. This has been documented as well.” (Resident, Masbrough, E3)
Additionally, the high turnover of experts leading cross-community initiatives illustrates the difficulty of building cohesive communities when the political infrastructure is unstable:
● “[That person] really did change the face of Masbrough and then, I think, [they] left, and then obviously it’s always very person centric, isn’t it, and I think that’s the thing. (...) Somebody else came in, did quite a lot of damage, and then no-one has been able to recover any engagement in that community.” (Local expert, E2)
Summary
Our evidence demonstrates that the question “Does the UK have an ‘integration problem’?” can be answered ‘Yes’, but not for the often assumed reasons of migrant communities not ‘integrating’. The process of building cohesive societies is bidirectional and goes beyond the individualised notion of migrant integration. Structural inequalities, underpinned by decades of systematic racism and exclusion of racially minorities residents, should be blamed for the lack of community cohesion. In Rotherham, and other places that were affected by long-term resource removal affecting social infrastructure and shrinking space for civic expression, we see the rise of far-right activity and sharpening of social divisions.
[1] Underpinning research projects:
● 2024, “Crossing the Frontier: Exploring the potential of the Collective Mobile Method as a participatory research tool in Rotherham”, UKRI Research England.
● 2023, “Blurring the edges: social frontiers as places of encounter”, Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF).
● 2020-2023, “Life at the Frontier: The Impact of Social Frontiers on the Social Mobility and Integration of Migrants”, Nordforsk/ESRC.
[2] Related published evidence:
E1: ‘Blurring the Edges in Rotherham’ video published at the University of Sheffield Player: https://player.sheffield.ac.uk/events/blurring-edges-rotherham.
E2: Piekut, Aneta; Pryce, Gwilym; Rasool, Zanib; Staples, Henry; (2024). Building bridges across social frontiers in Rotherham. RMBC, Town Hall, 11 March 2024. Presentation slides: https://tinyurl.com/RMBC-Frontiers.
E3: Piekut, Aneta; Staples, Henry; Pryce, Gwilym; Rasool, Zanib (2024). Social Frontiers and Community Life in Rotherham West. 'Life at the Frontier' Research Briefing 1. The University of Sheffield. Report. https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.25027763.
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