‘Shadows on the Landscape’ Disapora, Cohesion and Conflict in North East England

1. ‘Shadows on the Landscape’Disapora, Cohesion and Conflict in North East England Anoop Nayak anoop.nayak@ncl.ac.uk School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

2. Changing Patterns in British Migration • Since 1990s more people entering Britain than emigrating from it • Globalization of migration: acceleration of migration, new flows of culture, new technologies and movements towards interconnected worlds • In-migration no longer restricted to Commonwealth countries and post-colonial routes, ‘super-diversity’ (S. Vertovec) • Development of a modern ‘ethnoscape’ (Appadurai, 1990) and enhanced transnationalism • Witnessing new patterns of inequality and new racisms • New millennium nation at a cross-roads: ‘will it try to turn the clock back, digging in, defending old values and ancient hierarchies, relying on a narrow English-dominated, backward looking definition of the nation? Or will it seize the opportunity to create a more flexible, inclusive, cosmopolitan image of itself?’ (Parekh, 2000: 14-15)

3. Intersectionality and Shifting Configurations of Race • 1980s African-Caribbean youth as the key locus of ‘moral panics’ in the nation state (Hall, et al 1978; Gilroy, 1987), today Asian and particularly Islamic youth form the ‘ultimate Other’ (Alexander, 2000; Archer, 2005 etc) • Complex intersections of race, gender and sexuality • Material cultures: 67% of people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities live in the 88 most deprived districts in England, compared to 37% of the white population (Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, 2004) • July 7th 2005 London bombings: connecting the local and the global, geo-political conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan • Asian youth and Islam become registers for a scattering of fear, affect and emotion (Ahmed, 2004)

4. The Changing North East Landscape • Post-industrial landscape and the contours of class • Mainly white area. 2.4% of the NE region’s total population are from minority ethnic backgrounds, compared to 9.1% of England as a whole; 0.2% asylum seekers • Tyne and Wear: Gateshead (1.6%), Newcastle (6.9%), N. Tyneside (1.9%), S. Tyneside (2.7%), Sunderland (1.9%) (Census, 2001) • New communities: 2004 A8(+2) migration; National Asylum Support Services (NASS) Newcastle has fifth highest no. of asylum seekers

5. BME Sample Characteristics N=187 BME residents interviewed

6. BME Sample Characteristics • Newcastle 55%, Sunderland 20%, Gateshead 16%, N, Tyneside 6%, S. Tyneside 3% • 57% female, 43% male • 32% full time employed, 25% education, 18% part time employed, 18% unemployed, 9% seeking asylum

7. Some emerging patterns… • Full-time workers are most likely to feel people get on well with one another in their area • Asylum-seekers are least likely to feel people get on well with one another in their area • Overall asylum-seekers, refugees and unemployed BME residents exhibited the highest levels of fear and vulnerability • To a slightly lesser extent young people 25 years and younger, and those of Islamic faith are also feel particularly vulnerable

8. Estimated around 5,170 asylum-seekers in NE from over 100 different nationalities. Around 4, 500 live in Tyne and Wear with the majority housed in Newcastle (1, 565), accounting for around 2% of total no. in Britain Parekh Report confirms that asylum-seekers are caught ‘in the eye of the immigration storm’ (Runneymede Trust, 2000, p.211) Subject to myth and misrepresentation Can appear as shadows on the landscape, rather than fully embodied citizens Neighbourhood, class and dispersal Asylum-Seekers and Refugees

9. Racist Incidents • ‘Much street racism is perpetuated by white people who are themselves economically disadvantaged in relation to wider society. Therefore, long-term action to tackle it depends to an extent on greater social justice generally’ (Runneymede Trust, 2000:58, 5.3). • 67% of respondents had experienced a racist incident in their neighbourhood including verbal abuse, damage to property, physical violence, racist graffiti, malicious telephone calls and arson • N=175: Gateshead 62.1%; Newcastle 68.1%; North Tyneside 54.5%; South Tyneside 60%; Sunderland 75% • N=119: 55.5% did not report incident

10. Racist Incidents • ‘Verbal abuse happens everywhere. I have been attacked twice in Byker. Once I was making a phone call with an international calling card and four white girls were wanting to use the phone. I avoided looking at them but they seized the opportunity and grabbed the phone then hit me on the head and face with it then ran away. I called for an ambulance and spent the night in hospital.’ (Iranian Male, employed part-time as a doctor) • ‘A drunk passed me on the Zebra Crossing near the Bigg Market (Newcastle) … I was out with my dad … who was visiting me at University, and wearing a headscarf because I’m Muslim. He said[the drunk] to his friend, ‘Let this terrorist sister pass!’. His friend (who was not drunk tried to apologise to my father), I was upset because my father will worry about me living in this place’ (Muslim Female PhD student) • ‘I was having a drink in a pub when a young man threw an empty glass at me, there was verbal abuse. The whole pub went silent, I think they were afraid as well. Only one man came to talk to me after that. I still have the particles of glass that I kept as an exhibit, though I haven’t reported it to the police. I’ve lived here for 6 years and I know nothing gets done.’ (African Male, aged 40-49 years)

11. Conflict and Conviviality Between the Lines • Gilroy (2006) identifies a new urban ecology of ‘conviviality’; Neighbourhoods as sites of conviviality and conflict where ‘new’ and ‘old’ racisms preside; Universities simultaneously constructed as ‘safe spaces’ for international students, and breeding grounds for Islamic extremism • New cartographies of race ‘Othering’ (Said, 1978) to produce distinct ‘Imagined communities’ (Benedict Anderson, 1992) in a global age • ‘Parallel Lives’ as a polarised representation, need to look between the lines • ‘We’ve been told by other officers and Councils that there are issues affecting certain areas of Newcastle, maybe where there’s a concentration of the BME population living in one area, on one side of the road and the white community living on the other side of the road […] So maybe not the city as a whole, but very local community issues’ (Equalities Officer, Newcastle) • ‘I think there’s almost a tension between [established BME groups and new communities]. For example, you’ve got some very established Pakistani, Bangladeshi communities, and I think they are quite contained within their own communities […] I think for some of the new, emerging communities I think their agenda’s firmly integrationist - they’ve got interests in issues, they want to get involved in all sorts of things and I think there’s a just a little bit of tension there’ (Equalities Officer, Sunderland)’

12. Issues for the Future... • Post-race theory and the end of race? (Gilroy, 2001): ‘Is it possible to reimagine Britain as a nation - or post-nation - in a multicultural way?’ (The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report, Runneymede Trust, 2000, p.36) • Race may not be ‘real’, but its effects are. It is experienced through emotional and affective registers (‘community’, ‘belonging’, ‘nationalism’ etc) (Fortier, 2005; Ahmed, 2004). Any policies on citizenship, ‘community cohesion’ etc must connect with people and place in a meaningful way • Opening out the term BME to include faith groups, white minorities, asylum seekers and other newcomers – religious difference and whiteness key issues for the future • Importance of bringing together new ethnicities research (Back, Cohen, Hewitt, Alexander) with geographically-situated, material accounts of the ‘power-geometries’ of race • Theories of intersectionality offer useful ways of engaging with difference but important not to reify these categories … community as in the making • The spaces in-between … Different symbolic ‘openings’ and ‘closures’ through which ‘community’ is enacted (Anderson, 1991; Keith, 1993; Byrne 2006) suggest a need to challenge monochrome geographies of race