RedDave2 wrote:

... and not mingle. That not what a multi cultural society is about

I get your point re: making an effort to get along with folk where you’ve emigrated to, but multicultural surely is “multiple cultures”?

If the wider world started mingling here I'd be fucking livid.

A couple of things, without going too heavy.

To the best of my knowledge a multi-cultural society involves different cultures existing alongside and with each other. But they combine to become a society. Simply practicing your culture in another society doesn't make that society multicultural.

I know some people will point to migrants paying taxes and that should be enough and I sort of agree and I sort of don't. For a single person, that's probably fine. But if you've brought kids with you, plan to have kids or are establishing a business - I think you owe it to the community you're in and owe it to yourself to get a bit more involved. As I've gotten older and started a family I am much more heavily involved in what goes on around me and I see that as a responsibility to both my family and the community we are part of. 

There is also the issue of where Blair was coming from.. If you take a single migrant who comes over and takes a job, pays their tax etc. its not a problem. But Blair is addressing the far-rights issues over communities of Migrants who come over and settle but do so while not integrating at all. They become an easy target for the far-right leaders to point out and say "look, they come over to earn their money but they don't want to be part of us. " Maybe if they did a bit of integration on their side, it might make them harder to become targets.

Quite. It's much more useful to examine why some nationals feel they need to target a minority at all. You don't placate fuckheads, they'll never actually be satisfied because the root of their anxiety is elsewhere and probably boringly material.

It's just a wild power imbalance. Asking new people with slim to no structural agency to defuse a white majority's worst excesses doesn't make any sense.

Again, it's not up to them to not be such an 'easy target', it's up to the hosts to fucking behave themselves.

The Chinese here are very insular but their kids play with the other kids just like anyone else.

The concerns of the far-right should not need addressing or appeasing, making concessions to them is only going to strengthen the belief they have that they are in the right.

I think you (not you Live, one) might have a different perspective on this if you’re town is dying, there’s no money there, people are leaving, you’re stuck there and the only people that seem to be doing ok are a large influx of others that take over whole sections of the town. They talk a language you don’t understand, don’t make any effort to talk to you, and fill up your dilapidated public services.

This is a legitimate grievance about the management of the economy and migration. Either mainstream politicians are doing something about it or the far right will come in and fill that gap. The problem is mainstream politicians have no clue how to address these concerns. It involves a level of government involvement that none of them believe should be happening.

I am just talking from pure cursory knowledge of this shit, but can't everything about that be traced back to Capitalism favouring corporationsover people, those who earn money getting rich and avoiding tax, siphoning money away from those that need it, rather than immigrants? It's just classic misdirection, same with the whole "dole scrounge" rhetoric. Communities aren't dying because Muslims refuse to integrate, they're dying because for decades the wedge driven between people has been widened by a political class that understand how to prey on jealousy and fear, using tabloids to make everyone simuletaneosuly fear and envy their neighbours. Now that they're immigrants and non-white it's even easier to point out the people to hate, and the internet allows people to get involved in their own little bubbles and never see the light of day. Having joined some local community facebook pages over the years they're embarassingly petty little places that undermine the very idea of community. If community needs to be created again to make people band together, it can't just be placed at the feet of immigrants to sort it out, it needs to be a collective effort by everyone in a local area.

Also, the whole 'migrants refuse to integrate' is bollocks.

You might get individual cases, but on the whole they do. Moving to an area where there are people they know isn't refusing to integrate, it's common fucking sense.

Maybe to put it from another perspective, quite a few people on hear are migrants. I'll assume most are jobs related. So I'd ask when you went to these other countries did you make yourself aware of the customs, try and pick up a few key phrases if there was a foreign language? Did you look to partake in the customs and social opportunities of the native culture or did you by choice or otherwise find yourself look to create home from home.

Theres some good points raised here and it's made me rethink my position a little. I do think there is an odd generalisation among some that migrants are poorer and must be victims of Britain's control in the wider world and I don't agree.

The issue of colour has been raised been brought up as if rejection of immigration is a white man issue. I don't think it is, not just because Brexit was as much aimed at sending eastern Europeans home as any coloured person but because I know a Sri Lanka gentleman who lives in Ireland and has a huge fear of the Muslim invaders coming into his country (his words not mine) he is generally a gentle, loving man and I find some of his comments quite jarring but such is life.

I'm not and never have been a patriotic type, the foreign influx into Dublin in the last 20 years has been great for me in near all aspects of my life. But while I don't agree with them, I do understand how people feel when their home is changed due to outside influence. Bad enough when the outside influence is the rich Irishman buying up all the apartments in your area forcing your friends and family away. It can feel worse when it's someone who has just moved to the country. For them the change is negative.

I'd agree it shouldn't and isn't the sole responsibility of those coming to a country to integrate and I haven't a clue how you really can manage it with policy. But I do believe multi cultural society is better when everyone brings something to it and we don't just live side by side. In this I still think Blair was correct when he said that multiculturalism shouldn't be seen as justification for a refusal to integrate

@dave - I brought up colour because you were speaking about something Blair had said with regards to the far right, and the far right seem quite concerned with colour. I know Muslims and Poles and all sorts of folk who have issues with immigration too, so if we want to get very specific I guess we can.

LivDiv wrote:

I agree Monkey.
It's no good telling people multiculturalism is a good thing while their lives are getting worse, it might not be the cause but it is the most visible change for many.

And again agreed. If our current politicians wont listen to these concerns then the people holding them will find a politician who will.

At this point I am 100% confident that people who back multiculturalism are hypocritical nimbys.

I'm not sure I understand that comment (@armitage). I would think dante's description is pretty closer to the actual (unless you mean those who are pushing multiculturalism as a policy?)

Successful integration is a two-way process, meaning some effort is required by the hosts also. An analogy would be inviting guests round to your house, as a host you would normally offer them their preference in tea, meals, take an interest and ask about their lives and get to know and understand them better. If you just expect them to eat/drink/listen/watch/talk about everything you like and get annoyed if they seem a bit disinterested then you are probably bit of a cunt IMO.

Someone's home is a bit different to a large stretch of land obviously, but my strong belief is that every patch of land, every grain of sand belongs to everyone. It's a heritage that is shared by all the human race. Fuck this territorial shit. If you feel like your culture is being threatened just by the proximity of people with other beliefs or ways of life then perhaps there isn't so much substance to yours..