| that time would heal all, and that, like the Huguenots and more recently the Irish, those new immigrants who did not go home would, being full citizens in a decent, just and rational society with a welfare state organisation to care for their troubles, become, in the long run, indistinguishable from the natives. The best action was no action. Total integration was assumed to be the goal on both sides, and not mentioning differences the best means to achieve this. No one talked of a conscious policy of supplying the essential labour demands of an expanding economy. By contrast, Germany organised immigration deliberately to provide labour, and defined the immigrants as guest workers,—strangers allowed in temporarily and with no plans for their integration into the German population. As temporary and alien guests they had special needs, especially housing, and these were to some extent deliberately met outside the normal housing market. Neither policy is in the long run realistic. Apart from the fact that Germany can no longer control the movement of nationals of EEC countries, the need for a labour force is likely to be long-term, and the Germans have to adjust to large and relatively permanent colonies of people sharply different in culture, and perhaps, in time, in physical appearance also. Children born to long stay immigrants will have no home but Germany. In Britain, it has become obvious that even West Indians are culturally very different from natives, and that their dialect of English does create difficulties. Many later immigrants from India and Pakistan do not speak English at all, and are deeply committed to religious practices and values which keep most of them very sharply distinct. Most of them have no thought of integration. More painful, it has also become clear that, for the present, for most native, white British, a coloured skin means an outsider, even an inferior. Both the obvious and the subtle implications of this indelible symbol of difference are still something of an open question, but a simple policy of total integration is clearly not feasible. I have already quoted Jenkins' restatement of policy. But as Deakin argues at length, (if we ignore the Jews), tolerant and peaceable pluralism is something new for British society. Bohning implies much the same for Germany. The co-existence of ethnically or culturally distinct groups within a single territory or political unit is nothing new in the world. It has been the normal characteristic of political arrangements ever since humans, (a mere 200 generations or so ago), in the course of inventing civilisation, invented the State as an institution. A most superficial reflection on history suggests three — oversimple— generalisations. Firstly, that in a very large number of instances, the |
| existence of people defined by themselves and others as distinct leads to political and usually violent conflict; the list is long,—Ireland, Wales, Belgium, Pakistan and India, Kurds in Iraq, Negroes in the U.S.A., Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Ibos in Nigeria, the Soga in Uganda, the Karim in Burma to name but a few. Secondly, that in cases where stable government has contained the situation over long periods, the distinct ethnic groups have been clearly ranked in prestige, with power firmly in the hands of one group; the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the European colonial empires, the American South, South Africa, Northern Ireland, the U.S.S.R. and so on. Thirdly, that apart from very small scale and mostly primitive politics, states which have lacked internal ethnic divisions have been exceptional, and most of them occurred in modern times in Europe or under the influence of the European political conception of the homogeneous nationalist state. From these observations, the prognosis for peaceable plural societies seems to be pessimistic. Some contemporary countries are widely believed to manage better than others,—Hawaii, New Zealand and South America are often quoted, though clearly in these countries, too, minorities are not by any means equal. One point does seem clear. It would be impossible (and undesirable) in the contemporary world to re-establish doctrines which legitimate hard lines between ethnic groups, and the permanent subordination of one to another, as in South Africa. Peaceful and stable states with ethnic minorities must aim to make readily possible individual mobility between groups, especially from minorities into the majority. In many European countries, for white Christians and the non-religious, this is already fairly easy; especially if the immigrants possess, or are prepared to adopt, an appropriately local sounding surname. We may speculate that even for white Pakistanis or Hindus, it would on cultural grounds alone be very much more difficult. But reflection on this problem forces us to recognise that skin colour is, as I have said, in itself a badge of differentiation. I know of no conclusive empirical evidence, but almost all white natives of Britain, even anti- apartheid demonstrators, would, I suggest, interpret a brown or black skin as meaning non-native; to put it the other way round, few consciously accept the notion of coloured Englishmen, or Scotsmen or Welshmen. We have then two ways of defining a minority. First, by culture,— that is, by speech, customs, religion and loyalties. These are all things which people can change, or at least which a new generation can change. Second, by indelible appearance, with no difference of culture. The obvious example here are the American negroes, some of whom have consciously tried to invent cultural distinctions to go with the separateness imposed on them by the white majority. |
| If people in countries with physically distinct immigrants are to achieve ready mobility from minority to majority, then we need to change this meaning which people give to skin colour. Such meanings are entailed by discrimination and by prejudice, but even people who do not display measurable prejudice may share them. Raveau has set out to test whether such meanings are in some sense biologically determined; but we need to know much more before we can say whether they can be socially eliminated, and if so, how. The problem of minority culture is different but also complex, interesting, and shrouded in general ignorance. At least in a modern industrial society, no minority can fail to share a large part of the majority's set of meanings. As subjects, legal persons, employees, pupils, parents, rate-payers, electors, patients, clients of social workers, they must be able to interpret institutions, customs, roles and actions and, to some extent, be able to grasp the values implicit in them. Their home culture, which worked in a very different social environment, must change to make life in the host society possible at all. Even, therefore, if they retain their language domestically, live near each other, maintain their religious practices, and impose traditionally strict codes of behaviour on the courting and marriage of their children, British Pakistanis are no longer culturally the same as Pakistan Pakistanis. Even the customs and values they fiercely retain will have different meanings in a English context, where they define the minority as a minority, than at home where they are universally understood symbols in the society. Obvious as this point is, we know virtually nothing about these processes of change in social meanings, nor about the degree to which a minority can preserve its distinct values and remain viable in a modern industrial state. To put it another way, what is the cost in lost advantages to the minority of preserving different degrees of separateness? This point,—the degree of "integration",—can be made structurally through the use of network analysis suggested by Garbett and Kapferer. If we could collect a sample of minority networks, and look at the number and quality of relationships which lead outside the minority, we would certainly achieve illumination and perhaps be able to construct a measure of intergroups’ relationships which would serve in a wide range of sociological problems. The study of "meanings" and "networks" can not be tackled by short, coded questionnaires. Intensive research by immersion must accompany quantification. Such research is expensive and relatively slow, but current opportunities, not to mention the urgent practical needs, are vast. Could we not pioneer, perhaps internationally, a series of carefully prepared, |
| comparative studies of minorities in European cities, making full use of existing economic and statistical data, but also insisting on first-hand knowledge by the research workers of both ends of the migrants' journeys — studies that are of their whole social field ? A series of studies of different minorities in one country, and of minorities from the same background in different countries might enable us to control at least some of the vast number of variables which have come up in this discussion; and hopefully make the prospect of containing conflict and building peaceable and humane plural societies rather less gloomy. |