section one

This page forms part of the Transcultural Health resource, published in 2004, and is preserved as a historical document for reference purposes only. Some information contained within it may no longer refer to current practice. More information

Objectives

When you have completed your study of this section, you will be able to make an initial assessment of the ethnic diversity of your own area - and its significance for current and future health care needs - based on your learning about:

the 'push' factors that encourage people to leave their country of origin (beginning the process of emigration)
the 'pull' factors that draw people to a particular country (beginning the process of immigration)
patterns of migration
the demographic impact of migration.

You will also be able to explain, briefly, the interplay between immigration and race relations policies.

Read the Following

Immigrants and asylum seekers have become such a focus for political debate and media panics that it is all too easy for members of European countries to see contemporary ethnic diversity through a very one-sided perspective - and to see immigration as a threatening activity, undertaken by foreigners.

Immigration has become a political 'hot potato'. It figures high in the racist rhetoric of far-right extremist political movements. But, in somewhat more sophisticated terms, anti-immigrant sentiments have been recurrent elements of the political rhetoric of mainstream parties throughout Europe. We only have to consider the party political consensus in Westminster on juxtaposing economic-migrants with 'real asylum seekers' to get a sense of how "immigrant" has become synonymous with negative notions of illegality and scrounging (Beattie, 1999).

This one-sided view involves a very considerable degree of collective forgetfulness. For example:

it has been argued that there are more people of Norwegian background living in North America than there are Norwegians currently in Norway.
North America and Australia are just two of the locations which over the last two centuries have received massive movements of people from the United Kingdom
many European countries like Norway, Portugal, Greece and Britain have long experience of emigration from their shores.
It would be well if members of all countries reflected upon the reality that their emigrants were somebody else's immigrants.

Ethnic diversity arises from processes other than migration - including, for example, wars that change state boundaries, and from the more temporary movements of tourists, foreign students and business personnel. However, we will return to these later. In this section, you'll be taking a look at:

Reasons for migration
Patterns of migration
The interplay between immigration and race relations
The demographic impact of migration.

1. Reasons For Migration

It may be helpful to our understanding of both our shared past and our contemporary society to reflect briefly on motivations for migration. Although it is not entirely academically respectable, it can be helpful to think of migration as being shaped through the interaction of complementary processes - push and pull factors.

Push factors include:	Pull factors include:
Relative poverty Lack of employment Social exclusion Political oppression Love	The anticipation of a better standard of living A sense of linguistic and cultural compatibility Existing links to the new environment e.g. chain migration Formal Government policy to facilitate immigration Love

Let's take a closer look at each of these factors in turn . . .

Push Factors

Relative Poverty

This suggests that people are moving to improve themselves. Some cases - for example, the Irish famine in the nineteenth century and the Scottish clearances - might involve extreme, life-threatening, forms of poverty and starvation. However, many of the people who made use of assisted passages to Australia from the United Kingdom in the 1960's, say, were far from starving. They did, however, expect to improve their standard of living through migration.

Employment

Transitions in the economic and industrial profile of a country can lead to major movements of people, in the bid to find employment. The industrial revolution was a major form of this phenomenon. Others include:

the closure of coal mines in Scotland in the 1960's - which brought labour to the North East and Midlands. (Subsequent industrial decline, of course, led to further migrations)
the construction of the Mangla Dam in Pakistan and the radical dislocation of the rural economy, which was a major factor in the migration of people from Mirpur to Britain.

Social Exclusion

The life chances of a person and/or a community may be radically limited by social exclusion, whether on grounds of 'race', religion, gender, sexual preference, nationality or some other characteristic. Such exclusion is often sustained by informal cultural norms and can be a powerful motivation to migrate.

Political Oppression

Political oppression, in contrast, is frequently intentional, organised and brutal. Oppressive regimes in Hungary, Chile and Bosnia have, at different times, generated flows of asylum seekers to Britain. Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century are another example.

Love

Love should not be underestimated as a force in human lives. Three of the ways in which this acts as a trigger for migration include:

moving to be close to a loved one
unrequited love - which might make distancing oneself an attractive prospect
economic migration as an expression of love for others, rather than immediate economic self-interest.

Pull Factors

In many ways pull factors are the logical complements of the push factors.

Anticipation Of A Better Standard Of Living

This is a necessary complement to relative poverty. In normal circumstances, only perversity would lead someone to migrate to a country where they could expect a significant decline in their standard of living. Of course, for many asylum seekers the critical consideration is not the potential standard of living but, rather, the possibility of life itself.

Linguistic And Cultural Compatibility

The 'law of least effort', is likely to lead people to countries where their 'cultural capital' is transferable: that is to places where their existing experiences and competences are likely to be relevant and usable.

The employment prospects of the potential immigrant will be much greater if s/he has the appropriate linguistic skills
Settling into a country that is culturally similar can reduce the challenges and feelings of disorientation associated with moving to a new place.

Existing Links

Existing links to the new environment can greatly facilitate the processes of entry and settlement in a new country (another example of the 'law of least effort' in operation). Existing social networks are very useful in the processes of finding accommodation and a job. They can also act as cultural guides to the informal, as well as the formal, rules of the new environment.

Government Policy

Migrant labour may be of very significant benefit to the receiving society (leading to formal government policy to facilitate immigration). Examples include:

historical British efforts to attract nurses and other health care staff from overseas.
current anxiety over whether Britain can compete successfully in the new information technology industries without actively attracting skilled overseas expertise.

Love

This is a powerful pull factor. Where distance separates lovers, who moves to whom is often determined by the balance of the other factors. Deciding to be together is however, often the start of a series of difficulties - not least of which will be the immigration policy of the receiving country.

The Processes of Emigration are always complexly changing

Emigration from one country inevitably creates immigration in another. The push and pull factors sketched above offer a simple insight into this process - and a basis for reflecting upon the realities of migration. For example:

For any one country, person or community, these factors may not be stable over time. National economies change, immigration policies change and, eventually, some networks become stronger and others weaker. This means that patterns of migration will change
Patterns of migration, over time, can affect both the demographics of an individual country and the distribution of migrants over several countries. For example:
- The well-established migration of people from the Caribbean into the United States was dramatically disrupted by changes in the United States immigration policies in the 1950s.
- The demise of the Soviet Union - together with Finland's entry into the European Union - have both made Finland's borders more permeable to migrants than was previously the case
- The potential attractiveness of Melbourne to Greeks (it has the second largest Greek population after Athens) is affected by current Australian immigration policy, which has a highly selective skills based rationale.

As patterns of migration change, the migrant populations become widely dispersed. Many families have kin in a number of countries with family, trading and cultural networks linking the widely separated communities - a phenomenon known as Diaspora. Such diasporic communities have a distinct sense of time, space and history that gives personal meaning to their 'globalised connectedness'. This notion of diaspora has become very important in looking at how we should understand ethnic identities, because it reminds us to see how different communities negotiate their experience of their present circumstances through their understanding of their past. For very many individuals, the places where they were born and where they now live are only tentative anchor points for their sense of place and identity. Air travel, telephones and e-mail all provide the means for making their diasporic identity real. Diasporic identities are not built only on remembered shared histories but also out of contemporary shared media, family contacts and political links.

In the contemporary globalised world we need to learn to be sensitive to the emotional and territorial maps that frame our positioning of others and ourselves in the world. Before you take a closer look at the main patterns of migration, use Exercise 1 - which follows - to reinforce what you have learnt so far.

EXERCISE 1.1 (part a)
Personal Reflection
Get out an atlas or a copy of a map of the world. On this map, mark with a cross all the places where you have past or current family connections and answer the following questions:

1. How globalised is your family network?
2. How do you come to have this pattern of dispersed kin? Why did they move? What does it tell you about past processes of migration?
3. To what extent do you personally have a sense of a 'diasporic identity'?

Now undertake part (b) of the exercise.

EXERCISE 1.1 (part b)
Group Discussion Topics:

Share your mapping of your family networks. Discuss what it tells you about each other:
(a) What quick images do you have of the locations on each other's maps? (For example, is Milton Keynes really embarrassing?)
(b) How do you feel about what you are hearing?
(c) Reflect upon the ways in which others place your family locations in their worlds.

Recap and Further Reading

You will have by now begun to get a sense of how normal it has been, and is, for people to move from one country to another. Our experience of migration, both personally and through our family history, gives each of us a particular insight into this process. It also helps you to begin to be able to reflect on contemporary British ethnic diversity within an explicit awareness of your own identity and perspective.

Everyone should read:

The Parekh Report - Chapter 1
This will introduce you to some of the issues that arise when we think of multi-ethnic Britain and will prepare the way for further work.
The Parekh Report The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, London: Profile Books

Read the following text

2. Patterns of Migration

The population of Britain at the beginning of the twenty-first century is, like that of many European countries, shaped considerably by post-war patterns of emigration and immigration. Thus, in addition to Britain's long-established historical diversity, post-war immigration has done much to shape the current ethnic demography of Britain. In briefly examining this post-war phenomenon of immigration we can discern patterns of migration that have a common relevance to other European countries

(Castles and Miller, 1993)

The history of how different identities come to be present in a particular society is an important starting point for understanding the present. The different historical trajectories and processes of migration help to define the way in which communities are formed and operate. For example:

Regarding the long-established ethnic minority communities of Liverpool and Cardiff as identical to the African-Caribbean and South Asian communities of Birmingham, Leicester, Bradford or Bristol as identical to the refugee communities of Somalis in Sheffield . . . since they are all ethnic minority communities in urban contexts in Britain - is a denial of the distinctly different experiences and consciousness of their own dislocation and settlement.

(Husband, 1996:32)

There have been five main patterns of post-war migration in Europe:

Return migration of European settlers from former colonies (for example, the English from India and Africa)
Immigration of ethnically distinct members of colonies or former colonies (for example, Caribbeans and people from the Indian sub-continent migrating to Britain, and Indonesians and Surinamese migrating to the Netherlands)
Migration of manual workers (for example, from less wealthy European countries to Germany and France)
Migration of skilled employees (between highly developed countries)
The resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers (for example immediate post-war European resettlement and contemporary inter-continental asylum seeking)

You're now going to take a brief look at each category in turn - to learn about the processes shaping the development of ethnic diversity in the contemporary European context. Keep in mind, as you read, what you have already learnt about 'Who moves where - and why?' You should also be starting to think about 'With what results?'

2.1 Return Migration Of European Settlers From Former Colonies

This first category comprises individuals and families returning 'home' to a country they may 'feel part of' - but which is strange to them. With successive ex-colonies winning independence through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, ex-colonial settlers' return home was not always entirely voluntary. With 'Africanisation' in some African states and bloody independence struggles in Kenya or Algeria, for example, some of those returning to their 'motherland':

were left with a bitter sense of being expelled
found that the country they returned to did not match the nostalgic image they had of it - an image that had been sustained by distance and occasional visits
did not necessarily have an unambiguously positive welcome.

2.2 Immigration Of Ethnically Distinct Members Of Colonies Or Former Colonies

Following the Second World War, countries like the Netherlands, France and Britain - with extensive overseas colonies - actively recruited labour from their ex-colonies, to fuel their post-war economic recovery. The rapid development of this process in the 1960s was driven by the interests of the receiving societies - for example:

the workers recruited were likely to be familiar with the language and culture of their ex-colonial rulers
the receiving societies had paid nothing for the education and development of these workers.

2.3 Migration Of Manual Workers

In similar fashion, wealthy European countries recruited migrant labour from poorer European regions to staff their manufacturing and service industries. For example, Germany attracted labour from what was then Yugoslavia and also from Southern Italy, through organised programmes such as the Gastarbeiter system.

Immigrants in both this and the previous category attracted a good deal of hostility from people in their receiving societies. Given the direct and immediate economic benefit of their immigration, such hostility can't be explained in terms of their economic cost to the country. So what might be the reason? (You'll be coming back to this in the next section, but in the meantime, keep thinking about it for yourself.)

With the international oil crisis of the early 1970s and the downturn in national economies throughout Europe, an 'immigration stop' emerged. Increasingly, further migrant labour was surplus to requirements and governments began to introduce immigration legislation to drastically reduce - and by the 1980s virtually stop - the flow of migrant labour.

Although the action taken was economically expedient, the politics attached to the process were often explicitly racist and fuelled the emergence of far right groupings such as the National Front in England and the Front Nationale in France. Hostility toward members of minority ethnic communities became embodied in the politics of European mainstream political parties in the 1970's and 80's as they sought to give legitimacy to their immigration policies and fight off the electoral appeal of the far-right parties (see Solomos, 1993).

The anti-immigrant sentiments laid down at that time and the platform created for a heightened concern with national identity established at that time, continue to inform contemporary debates about ethnicity and citizenship today.

2.4 Migration Of Skilled Employees

Skilled labour of various kinds has remained at a premium. Professionals within multi-national corporations and individuals with scarce expertise have continued to be mobile between European countries: and they are one of the categories of migrants who are actively recruited from outside of the European Union.

This category of migration, then, reminds us that economic pragmatism remains an important element of post-war migration despite the increasing harshness of immigration legislation. The European Union - as a free market in labour, amongst other things - has served to facilitate this mobility among citizens of the member states. However, this has been a mechanism to promote mobility among an essentially 'European' workforce, whilst simultaneously continuing to resist the immigration of 'aliens' from non-member states. The Nordic Labour Market serves a similar purpose. You might want to pause and reflect on the past and current flow of nurses from the United Kingdom and Ireland to the United States; and current attempts to attract nurses into the UK from the European Union.

2.5 The Resettlement Of Refugees And Asylum Seekers

This category comprises individuals and their families fleeing from oppression and from risk to their life and well being (for example from natural disasters). The right to seek asylum is enshrined in international law. However, no one has an absolute right to be granted asylum. This creates three main sub-groups in this category: refugees (to whom asylum has been granted), those with leave to remain (though they are not recognised as refugees and have fewer rights) and asylum seekers (whose applications are being considered and who have no rights).

At the end of the Second World War there was a massive movement of refugees across national borders as new borders were drawn and the 'Iron Curtain' redefined the social geography of Europe. For example, in Britain the European Voluntary Worker Programme resettled, amongst others, displaced persons from Latvia, the Ukraine, Poland and other European countries under the control of the Soviet regime. This period of refugee resettlement was carried off both with efficiency and considerable good will. In more recent years, however, asylum seeking has become a transcontinental process. As Dewey observed in 1987:

The road we now face presents a situation that is neither geographically nor, at least with current perception, numerically confined. Movements of refugees and asylum seekers span the globe, in a deepening pattern, from the developing to the developed world. And because the numbers seem to be a wave of individuals knocking on our doors - and not just masses of people we could help in some distant country of asylum - then the numbers indeed become an alarming issue.

... affected European countries are certainly alarmed. In some, even panic may not be too strong a description. But with this sharp reaction stemming from the numbers, and the global sources of the problem, we are beginning to see a response that could also be alarming. We see responses starting to depart sharply from the principles of solidarity and coalition which characterised the road behind us ...

Defensive and restrictive unilateral reactions to change risk eroding the principles for the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, which have been developed multilaterally - with so much effort - over the last thirty years.

(Dewey 1987:24-25)

A critical aspect of this more recent process, again, was the 'alien' nature of the asylum seekers - they were not virtual near European neighbours but culturally unfamiliar. For example, Vilby (1987:10) commented that:

... the increase in the influx of non-European asylum seekers has occurred after a period where growing unemployment problems had already created tensions between nationals and migrant workers in many European countries. Refugees are considered a new group adding difficulties to societies already troubled by problems. Public attitudes are less positive than a few years ago, and each country justifies its restrictive policies by the fact that other European countries are doing the same.

This European response to asylum seeking has increasingly become a concerted policy of making asylum seeking as difficult and unpleasant as possible: what Weh (1987:51) called a 'policy of dissuasion'. This policy of resistance to asylum seekers has been co-ordinated within the European Union under the Dublin Agreement on asylum seeking - which some regard as violating the spirit of the 1951 Geneva Convention for Refugees (see Fernhout, 1993).

In principle, and on occasion, refugees have attracted the sympathy of the citizens of the country where they have settled. However, currently asylum seekers are frequently abused in the national press and seen as illicit scroungers by significant sections of the population (Beattie, 1999).

The creation of this 'Us' and 'Them' situation is the main topic for Section 2 of this module. First, though, a look at the impact of immigration on the demographics of the receiving country and at the interplay between immigration and race relations.

Recap and Reading:

Different patterns of migration have implications for how both the migrant and the members of the receiving country experience the process. And whilst migration is a major historical, and current source of ethnic diversity in Britain, we should remember that tourists, foreign students and businessmen, amongst others, also contribute to our daily experience of diversity. In order to understand how the United Kingdom came to respond to post-war migration it is useful to reflect upon the history of British identity. This will provide a basis for beginning to understand the British response to immigration (which we will return to again later).

Everyone should read:

The Parekh Report - Chapter 2.

This will remind you of the historical development of the United Kingdom and introduce our concern with national identity that we will develop later. It will also make you think of seven recent trends that have an impact upon British ethnic relations.

Read the following text

3. The Demographic Impact Of Migration

The demography of contemporary Britain is a reflection of the history of migration. The first people to come here - particularly those belonging to the patterns based on economic interest - may have been initially made up largely of single workers. However, as a result of their long-term settlement, partners and children came to join the initial migrant and reunify their family.

Different family relationships and cultural values within the different ethnic groups may have considerable impact on, say, the relative percentages of different age groups in the population, the number of people per household and the number of births, marriages and deaths. These statistics, in turn, have major consequences for the planning and delivery of services such as health, housing and social security.

Given the past pattern of immigration where the migrant populations were drawn into Britain in order to service specific industries such as textiles, the automobile industries, health and transport, there was not a random dispersal of minority ethnic workers throughout the country. On the contrary, they were clearly concentrated within specific urban conurbations around Britain. And a combination of economic disadvantage, racial discrimination in the housing market, and the active support of friends and relatives in helping with their initial settlement in Britain resulted in a further spatial concentration of specific minority ethnic communities within these conurbations themselves. This demographic concentration provided some benefits for the developing minority ethnic communities through allowing for the emergence of shops and organisations that met their cultural needs; and it provided for collective support. However, this spatial concentration of expanding minority ethnic communities also attracted local hostility and fed the growth of racist anti-immigrant sentiments in Britain. Thus, the history of contemporary British ethnic diversity cannot be understood only by following the changing demography of the country; it is also necessary to understand how attitudes and policies developed around British 'race relations'.

4. The Interplay Between Immigration And Race Relations

It is important for our understanding of contemporary health care provision in Britain (Nazroo, 1997) to understand how the social exclusion of minority ethnic communities in Britain developed and has been sustained. A part of this understanding is to be found in the political responses to immigration and the development of ethnic diversity in Britain in the decades after the Second World War. The reality was that, like other European countries, Britain drew in migrant labour to service the industries and services of a changing and expanding economy. Sadly, this positive inflow of labour power came to be seen by the end of the 1960's as a crisis of "coloured immigration". That we in Britain talk so easily and spontaneously about 'race relations' is regarded as strange by many of our neighbours in Europe. The fact was that following Britain's experience as an imperial power across the world, we had a long history of seeing difference in terms of race. Unfortunately, our language of race not only was used to describe difference, it also conveyed a strong judgement of relative worth. Consequently, the changing demography of Britain became a focus for a politics of race relations. As you go through this module it will be important to remain alert to how the way we think about difference has an impact upon the way we develop policies and practices for responding to ethnic diversity.

Settlement Patterns In The 1950s

The influx of labour power from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent in the 1950s - so vital to Britain's economic recovery - was not randomly distributed across the British labour market. Instead, it was disproportionately recruited into industries that the majority ethnic population found unattractive and which they were deserting in favour of the newer industries, offering cleaner, healthier working environments; and better rates of pay. As a result, the minority ethnic labour force became disproportionately associated with specific areas of employment including textiles, car manufacturing and transport.

Discrimination in the labour market and in housing combined to concentrate the minority ethnic communities in specific areas of specific conurbations. This, in turn, fed fears of a threat to the culture of the majority ethnic population - fears that were actively nurtured and popularised by right-wing politicians. The growth of anti-immigrant sentiment was fanned by both the local and national press and led to Parliamentary moves to restrict immigration.

Immigration Policies Of The 1960s

At the Conservative Party Conference of 1961

"forty of the 576 submitted resolutions featured immigration, thirty-nine of them, in varying degrees of militancy, calling for control."

(Foot, 1965:136).

The party was faced with:

a vociferous anti-immigrant cadre within the Party
strong pressure from the constituencies
Ministry of Labour predictions of a continuing shortage of labour

In 1962, the Conservative Government introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, with the aim of appeasing anti-immigrant sentiments. However, by failing to confront and challenge the explicit racism of the anti-immigrant propaganda, they only served to feed the demand for more labour controls.

One of the ironies of immigration policy throughout the 1960s was that, as the pressure to introduce more restrictive immigration legislation grew, so too did the rate of immigration - with migrants seeking to enter Britain to work and/or join their families before entry was blocked.

Africanisation In The Late 60s/Early 70s

Africanisation in some African states at the end of the 1960s, led to a panic about the possible number of people who had a legal right of entry into Britain from East Africa. In particular, the activities of Idi Amin in Uganda precipitated an exodus of Ugandan Asians to Britain. In response, the Labour Government rushed through the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, in February, 1968, which effectively nullified the rights of these British passport holders. Richard Crossman (a Cabinet Minister at the time) made explicit the unprincipled pragmatic rationale behind this legislation, as follows:

"As progressives we were opposed to capital punishment, persecution of homosexuals and racial prejudice, whereas a large section of our working-class supporters regard such ideas as poison. What they hate most is our softness on colour. It nearly cost us the election of 1964 - particularly in the West Midlands - and it was widely felt that our improved majority in 1966 was due to our new tough line on immigration control. That is why as a Government we were panicked in the Autumn of 1967 by top secret reports predicting a mass expulsion of Asians from East Africa and began to make contingency plans for legislation which we realised would have been declared unconstitutional in any country with a written constitution and a supreme court".

(cited in Humphry and Ward, 1974: 89)

The Oil Crisis Of The 70s

The oil crisis of the early 1970s and the downturn in European economics led to highly restrictive immigration legislation being enacted across a range of Western European countries. This 'Immigration Stop' has continued, with highly selective criteria being applied to would-be immigrants, who must show that they have valued skills, or wealth, which can benefit the receiving country. However, family reunification provides continued immigration, as relatives and spouses enter Britain to join communities that are now well established in Britain.

The pattern was now set in train. Both major political parties compete for electoral success by adopting strongly anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, to appease the anti-immigrant sentiments amongst the electorate.

As immigrants become settled communities, this strategy necessarily feeds racist sentiments against minority ethnic groups. Thatcherism in the 1980s and 1990s produced a potent variant of these politics as it fused a nostalgic neo-Conservative nationalism with an explicit identification of challenges to 'British culture'. This was illustrated with a typical lack of subtlety by Norman Tebbit's 1990 statement that:

"In recent years our sense of insularity and nationality has been bruised by large waves of immigrants resistant to absorption, some defiantly claiming a right to superimpose their culture, even their law, upon the host community. All this in the era when the great Euro legal and cultural magimixer of Brussels is trying to blend us into a Continental culture, abusing our linguistic heritage with crude Eurospeak such as pigmeat and sheepmeat in place of pork, lamb and mutton which had adorned our table talk for centuries past. Sterling - not just a currency but an adjective of excellent worth, having been debauched, devalued and even deformed in the politicans' money, 'Green Pounds' - looks set to be masticated by EMUs, ERMs and ECUs before becoming more fodder for that monetary successor of the Panzer, the Deutsches Bundesbank."

(Tebbit, 1990: 81).

Race Relations And Immigration

The language of anti-immigrant politics feeds on an assumed shared national identity, which (as will be examined in Section 2 of this module) tends to be highly resistant to recognising diversity within British society. This leads to a permanent tension, within multiethnic societies, between the party political exploitation of anti-immigrant sentiments and governmental attempts to promote multi-cultural coexistence. (This tension is apparent in the dual strategy of the current Labour Party in trying to sustain a robust resistance to asylum seekers, whilst simultaneously seeking to demonstrate a concern with equality and good community relations within Britain.)

This has meant that, in parallel with the increasingly stringent anti-immigrant legislation there have been the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968, 1976 and 2000 - which were progressively more determined to promote 'harmonious community relations' and to limit discrimination and racist behaviour.

This juxtaposition has led to objections that the 'positive' legislation was merely a cosmetic operation to help divert attention from the racial discrimination inherent in the immigration legislation. Indeed, the resistance to drafting race relations legislation that might have real teeth (in the first two Acts) revealed something of this conflict and these Acts had relatively little impact in countering racial discrimination

(Hill and Issacharoff, 1971; Katznelson, 1973).

The 1976 Race Relations Act was a potentially radical piece of legislation but it has failed to live up to its promised potential, in its interpretation and use within the British legal system. (Lustgarten, 1989). The current Labour Government has sought to rectify these failings of the existing legislation by passing the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 which extends the outlawing of race discrimination (direct, indirect and victimisation) to public authority function not covered by the 1976 Act; and it places a general duty on specified public authorities to promote race equality. This Act has direct implications for health and social care providers in the UK. Alongside other policy initiatives, such as The Vital Connection DoH (2000), this Act demonstrates the formal commitment of the State to equal opportunities and the outlawing of racial discrimination. (See the Module - Race Equality Management for a fuller discussion of the practical implications of this new legislation).

Whilst the legal framework of the 1976 Race Relations Act provided the government with a vehicle for asserting the liberal British commitment to justice and equality, it has also provided minority ethnic communities with a point of leverage to challenge racism and discrimination. The vulgar explicit racism and the confident unembarrassed discriminatory processes of the 1950s and 1960s are less evident today. However, through more subtle forms of rhetoric and more carefully managed discriminatory processes, racism continues to thrive in contemporary Britain - a topic to which we will return in later sections of this module.

EXERCISE 1.4
Activity
Consider the language that is used to discuss ethnic diversity in:
* the area where you live
* the place where you work
Reflect upon how this language came into use and consider how it fits with the official contemporary language used by different politicians.

How do issues of equal opportunities emerge in your work place? Consider how gender, disability, sexual preference and age are experienced in your work place. What formal policies govern behaviour in relation to these aspects of identity? Which if any of these policies do you feel protects your interests?

Recap and Further Reading

Everyone should read:

The Parekh Report - Chapter 3.

This chapter 'Identities in Transition' raises questions about the development of different minority ethnic communities and about how we must develop means to acknowledge each other as fellow citizens whilst also respecting our ethnic difference.