Youth Multiculturalism And Community Cohesion

This book discusses the meaning and practice of British community cohesion policies, youth identities in racially-tense areas and the British government's attempts to 'prevent violent extremism' amongst young Muslims.

Unlike as with previous generations, diversity and multiculturalism are engrained in the lives of today’s urban youth. Within their culturally diverse urban environments, young people from different backgrounds now routinely encounter one another in their everyday lives and negotiate and contest ways of living together and sharing civic space. What are their strategies for producing, disrupting and living well with difference, how do they create inclusive forms of belonging, and what are the conditions that militate against social cohesion amongst youth? This unique ethnography from education and cultural studies expert Anita Harris explores the ways young people manage conditions of cultural diversity in multicultural cities and suburbs, focusing particularly on how young people in the multicultural cities of Australia experience, define and produce mix, conflict, community and citizenship. This book illuminates rich, local approaches to living with difference from the perspective of a generation uniquely positioned to address this global challenge.

Does multiculturalism ‘work’? Does multiculturalism policy create social cohesion, or undermine it? Multiculturalism was introduced in Canada in the 1970s and widely adopted internationally, but more recently has been hotly debated, amid new concerns about social, cultural, and political impacts of immigration. Advocates praise multiculturalism for its emphasis on special recognition for cultural minorities as facilitating their social integration, while opponents charge that multiculturalism threatens social cohesion by encouraging social isolation. Multiculturalism is thus rooted in a theory of human behaviour, and this book examines the empirical validity of some of its basic propositions, focusing on Canada as the country for which the most enthusiastic claims for multiculturalism have been made. The analysis draws on the massive national Ethnic Diversity Survey of over 41,000 Canadians in 2002, the most extensive survey yet conducted on this question. The analysis provides a new and more nuanced understanding of the complex relation between multiculturalism and social cohesion, challenging uncritically optimistic or pessimistic views. Ethnic community ties facilitate some aspects of social integration, while discouraging others. For racial minorities, relations within and outside minority communities are greatly complicated by more frequent experiences of discrimination and inequality, slowing processes of social integration. Implications for multicultural policies emphasize that race relations present important challenges across Quebec and the rest of Canada, including for the new religious minorities, and that ethnic community development requires more explicit support for social integration.

This book explores disrupted youth cohesion in France within the context of multiple ongoing global economic, migratory, social, political, and security-related crises. While these trends can be observed in numerous Western societies, France provides a unique case study of various anti-cosmopolitan and anti-Enlightenment movements shaping youth conditions and reconfiguring relationships between the individual, the group, and society. The authors undertook in-depth interviews with French young people between the ages of 18 to 30 years old to inquire into how they experience "vivre ensemble" (living together) in a time of rising economic inequalities and multicultural tensions. Through these findings, they invite decision-makers, politicians, educators, and parents to propose a renewed narrative of social cohesion for youth who are not disillusioned, but deeply on edge.

This timely study examines the historical approach to race and diversity and suggests that equality strategies have been a vital, but limited, means of addressing discrimination and community tensions. Community Cohesion, it argues, offers a new framework to break down the barriers between different communities and understand the more fundamental causes of racism and the "fear of difference".

This book challenges the narrative of Northern England as a failed space of multiculturalism, drawing on a historically-contextualised discussion of ethnic relations to argue that multiculturalism has been more successful and locally situated than these assumptions allow. The authors examine the interplay between ‘race’, space and place to analyse how profound economic change, the evolving nature of the state, individual racism, and the local creation and enactment of multiculturalist policies have all contributed to shaping the trajectory of ethnic/faith identities and inter-community relations at a local level. In doing so, the book analyses both change and continuity in discussion of, and national/local state policy towards, ethnic relations, particularly around the supposed segregation/integration dichotomy, and the ways in which racialised ‘events’ are perceived and ‘identities’ are created and reflected in state policy operations. Drawing on the authors’ long involvement in empirical research, policy and practice around ethnicity, ‘race’ and racism in the Northern England, they effectively support critical and situated analysis of controversial, racialised issues, and set these geographically specific findings in the context of wider international experiences of and tensions around growing ethnic diversity in the context of profound economic and social changes.

Unlike as with previous generations, diversity and multiculturalism are engrained in the lives of today’s urban youth. Within their culturally diverse urban environments, young people from different backgrounds now routinely encounter one another in their everyday lives and negotiate and contest ways of living together and sharing civic space. What are their strategies for producing, disrupting and living well with difference, how do they create inclusive forms of belonging, and what are the conditions that militate against social cohesion amongst youth? This unique ethnography from education and cultural studies expert Anita Harris explores the ways young people manage conditions of cultural diversity in multicultural cities and suburbs, focusing particularly on how young people in the multicultural cities of Australia experience, define and produce mix, conflict, community and citizenship. This book illuminates rich, local approaches to living with difference from the perspective of a generation uniquely positioned to address this global challenge.

Across Europe the protection of 'social cohesion' has become an important political objective. This book draws attention to the connection between the cohesive society and the active society. It explores France, Germany and the United Kingdom and challenges the claim that the active conduct of problematic populations can save society from collapse.