Why an inf lux of foreigners makes locals feel less happy
AN INFLUX of foreigners into an area makes existing white residents unhappier and more socially isolated, a long-term study has found.
Researchers looked at socalled ‘movers’ and ‘stayers’ in areas which had become more ethnically diverse – examining how positive or negative they felt about their community.
The study found that ‘movers’ – who left their area to live among people of the same racial background – were more content.
Researchers found ‘stayers’ – who remained in traditionally white neighbourhoods experiencing a high level of incomers – reported a decrease in levels of attachment to their community.
However, the happiness level of white Britons moving into multiethnic areas was not affected.
The Manchester University study looked at 10,265 adults in 5,505 households between 1991 and 2009 across England and Wales. Sociologist Dr James Laurence said: ‘There has long been an assumption that increasing ethnic diversity in an area undermines residents’ social cohesion.
‘On one hand our study supports this, for example where people report feeling happier when they move out of diverse areas and into neighbourhoods where they are surrounded by more people like them.
‘However, we find there are people happily moving into diverse areas who are unaffected by the presence of different ethnicities and social groups.
‘Also, diversity actually has a relatively weaker effect on people who stay in a community in which diversity is increasing around them.’
The research, published in the European Sociology Review and funded by the Economic And Social Research Council, is the first to examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and local cohesion over time. It identified a more complex link between the way neighbourhoods change and how residents feel than had previously been found.
The proportion of minority groups living in Britain will rise from 10 per cent in 2006 to 40 per cent by 2050, the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said three years ago. The Observatory’s Professor David Coleman said if current trends continue, the majority-ethnic group in the UK – white British – will become a minority before 2070.
Before the last election, Labour’s then leader Ed Miliband admitted that Tony Blair’s government had made serious errors in 2004 when people from across Eastern Europe were given free entry to the UK.
Mr Miliband admitted that ‘working people’ had been left facing ‘dramatic changes in their communities that were not planned or properly prepared for’. While Ukip leader Nigel Farage accused the former Labour government of being ‘wilfully deceitful’.
He said last year: ‘They wanted to change our communities for political gain. They simply do not understand the impact that mass migration has had on people’s lives. In doing what they did, they betrayed their core voters – keeping wages down, making it harder to see a GP, and creating a shortage of school places.’
Sociologist Dr Laurence and colleagues set out to test the idea that ethnic diversity has a harmful effect on communities by examining the way those who stay in neighbourhoods react to it compared to those who move.
Dr Laurence said: ‘Rapid social changes in people’s environments can make people feel less sure of the area around them and anxious about what the change might mean for the future.
‘Or people tend, in general, to spend time with others they perceive to be more like them.
‘Increasing diversity may reduce cohesion as people simply see their neighbours as being more different to them; that they may have different values, different interests and different norms, which can hold up contact.
‘However, these effects of diversity are likely [to be] quite short term. Getting to know neighbours from different groups can go a long way to replenishing short-term dips in cohesion.’
Dr Laurence added: ‘An important point to note is just because ethnic diversity can undermine neighbourhood cohesion it doesn’t mean people are necessarily prejudiced or increasing diversity causes conflict between groups.’
‘Change our communities’