Integration has become both a key policy objective related to the resettlement of refugees and other migrants, and a matter of significant public discussion. Coherent policy development and productive public debate are, however, both threatened by the fact that the concept of integration is used with widely differing meanings. Based on review of attempted definitions of the term, related literature and primary fieldwork in settings of refugee settlement in the UK, the paper identifies elements central to perceptions of what constitutes ‘successful’ integration. Key domains of integration are proposed related to four overall themes: achievement and access across the sectors of employment, housing, education and health; assumptions and practice regarding citizenship and rights; processes of social connection within and between groups within the community; and structural barriers to such connection related to language, culture and the local environment. A framework linking these domains is presented as a tool to foster debate and definition regarding normative conceptions of integration in resettlement settings.

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Understanding Integration: A Conceptual Framework

The debate on causes and consequences of social capital has recently been complemented by an investigation into factors that erode it. Various scholars concluded that diversity, and racial heterogeneity in particular, is damaging for the sense of community, interpersonal trust and formal and informal interactions. However, most of this research does not adequately account for the negative effect of a community's low socio-economic status on neighbourhood interactions and attitudes. This article is to date the first empirical examination of the impact of racial context on various dimensions of social capital in British neighbourhoods. Findings show that low neighbourhood status is the key element undermining all dimensions of social capital, while the eroding effect of racial diversity is limited.

Does Diversity Erode Social Cohesion? Social Capital and Race in British Neighbourhoods

While most current research documents a negative relation between ethnic diversity and generalized trust, it has to be acknowledged that these results often originate from one-country analyses in North America. In this article, attitudinal measurements from the European Social Survey are combined with Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development data on migration patterns, thus examining the relationship between diversity and trust in a comparative manner across 20 European countries. More fine-grained measurements of diversity (including type and rise of diversity over time and legal status of immigrants) are included in a multilevel model. At the individual level, most of the familiar relations were confirmed. At the country level, hardly any indicators for migration or diversity proved to be strongly and consistently related to generalized trust. Results suggest that the pessimistic conclusions about the negative effects of ethnic diversity on generalized trust cannot be confirmed at the aggregate level across European countries.

Ethnic Diversity and Generalized Trust in Europe : a Cross-National Multilevel Study

While plenty has been written about the reinvention of the social by the Third Way as a new governmentality of control, consensus, and social integration, less has been said about its subtle elision of social and the local, and the implications of this elision for urban and regional regeneration. This is the theme taken up by this paper, beginning with a critical appraisal of the recent turn by New Labour to community cohesion and social capital as a means of overcoming local poverty and disadvantage. It shows how the social has come to be redefined as community, localized, and thrown back at hard-pressed areas as both cause and solution in the area of social, political, and economic regeneration. The second half of the paper develops an alternative designation of the local-social that is less instrumentalist, decidedly a-moral (though equally ethical), agonistically political, and geographically unconstrained. It argues for a return to ideas of agonistic democracy and the society of commitments ...

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Local community on trial

A number of studies have found a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social capital and assumed from this a harmful effect of diversity on social cohesion. This article suggests that social cohesion must be treated as a multifaceted concept and any analysis into the relationship between diversity and social capital needs to be complemented by an analysis of diversity?s effect on ?relations between ethnic groups?. Our results show that while increasing diversity does have a negative impact on social capital, it simultaneously improves perceptions of, and relations between, ethnic groups. Furthermore, we find that forming ?bridging? ties in diverse environments plays a significant role in the positive relationship between diversity and tolerance, and that the presence of ?bridging? ties can also reduce the negative impact of diversity on social capital. However, while our results show that diversity has both positive and negative effects on social cohesion, we find that it is disadvantage which has the most detrimental impact, undermining both social capital and interethnic relations. We also find evidence that using a more sensitive measure of diversity (creating an area typology based on the proportional size, number, and type of ethnic groups in an area) reveals that living in different structures of diversity may lead to different social cohesion outcomes.

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The Effect of Ethnic Diversity and Community Disadvantage on Social Cohesion: A Multi-Level Analysis of Social Capital and Interethnic Relations in UK Communities

In recent years, there has been an intense public and policy debate about ethnic diversity, community cohesion, and immigration in Britain and other societies worldwide. In addition, there has been a growing preoccupation with the possible dangers to social cohesion represented by growing immigration flows and ethnic diversity. This paper proposes a critical framework for assessing the links between immigration, social cohesion, and social capital. It argues that the concept of social capital is episodic, socially constructed and value-based, depending on the prevailing ideological climate. Considerations of social capital as a public policy tool to achieve social cohesion need to incorporate an appreciation of alternative conceptions of social capital rooted in a textured under-standing of immigrant processes and migration contexts.

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Immigration, social cohesion and social capital: A critical review

1.Theorising Transnational Families 2.Social Capital Joins the Trinity: Families, Ethnicities, Communities 3.Methodological Issues and Challenges 4.Migration, Transnational Families and Communities 5.Migrants, Offspring, and Settlement 6.Families, Needs and Caring Practices 7.Continuity and Invention Of Identities Within Families and Communities 8.Problems of Belonging and 'Return' 9.Alienation and Escape from the Family and Community 10.Crossing Boundaries: Problems and Opportunities in 'Mixed' Families 11.Conclusion: Transnational Families, Policy, and Research Challenges

Transnational Families: Ethnicities, Identities and Social Capital

In this paper we outline some key aspects of the relationship between ethnicity and social capital in contemporary British society. This is a question that has begun to attract a good deal of attention in recent times, particularly in the context of public debate about the changing position of ethnic minority groups and migrant communities within an increasingly multicultural society. We begin by looking at the ways in which the relationship between ethnicity and social capital has been conceptualised. We then explore the ways that the notion of social capital has begun to shape policy debates about ethnicity and families. In doing so we seek to highlight the limitations of existing accounts and the kinds of questions that need to be addressed in conceptual and empirical research.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1474746403001362

Families, Ethnicity and Social Capital

This paper is concerned with the process of return migration from Britain to the Commonwealth Caribbean in the 1990s. The volume of return shows that the desire of Caribbean immigrants eventually to re‐settle in the lands of their births is being partly realised. But the notion of ‘return’ must be widely understood, because the process includes offspring and spouses who were not bom in the region and are, therefore, first‐time migrants. Moreover, both the migration and return experience have made and are continuing to make a significant contribution to Caribbean integration because the British destination and the different points of return provide opportunities for the people of the region to meet and establish new family relationships and identities. Financial contributions made by returnees, particularly pensioners and early retirees, are of particular relevance to island economies such as that of Jamaica. This paper suggests that the problems and opportunities generated by this dynamic cross‐A...

Exodus?: Some social and policy implications of return migration from the UK to the commonwealth Caribbean in the 1990s

The Caribbean remains an important point of reference in contemporary debates about diaspora, postcolonialism, and much else. In this introductory essay to this Special Issue we argue that the Caribbean is more than any other part of the contemporary world – both at its core and in its outward dimensions – a precursor of several themes in the energetic pursuit of modernity: capitalism/industrialism, de-tribalization/individualization, plural identities, transnationality, the disruption and transformation of cultural and political domains and boundaries. We situate key aspects of the changing meanings of diaspora in the Caribbean context and we explore the main themes that formed the core concerns of contemporary debates about this phenomenon as well as some issues that need further exploration in future research.

Harry Goulbourne

Papers

Immigration, social cohesion and social capital: A critical review

Transnational Families: Ethnicities, Identities and Social Capital

Families, Ethnicity and Social Capital

Exodus?: Some social and policy implications of return migration from the UK to the commonwealth Caribbean in the 1990s

The Caribbean Diaspora: Some introductory remarks