Radical Demography

1
Radical Demography

• A beginning

2
The need for public demography some examples

• New Orleans mayor expects only half of the citys
  population to return
• Which half?
• Trevor Phillips ghettos Black holes which
  people fear to enter and from which no-one can
  leave
• Are there such areas?
• UK census questions Colour cannot and will not
  be asked (1966) Ethnic group must be asked
  (1986).
• A focus on survey data encourages individualised
  explanations and solutions, and discourages study
  of the social and structural
• Attempts to define Britain and Britishness, also
  in US
• Concern with economic and social progress of 2nd
  generation children of immigrants

3
Structure of this session

• Jamie US academic geography, and more
• What is radical demography?
• Ludi shifting the accepted view on race and
  population change
• What is radical demography?
• Participants Migration Watch
• What is radical demography?

4
Academic Theory Spatial Assimilationand
Concentration in Space

• US academic framework has permeated public
  discussion spatial assimilation theorys
  normative concerns with concentrations of
  non-whites
• Immigrant progress marked by move into white
  neighbourhoods (of which, in immigrant cities
  there are increasingly few)
• Also demographic composition issues age
  structure means that these white neighbourhoods
  are older
• Emphasis on individuals rather than place limiting

5
A case study leaving Los Angeles

• Much academic and policy attention devoted to
  problem of immigrant Latinos clustering in
  concentrated unequal Los Angeles - and idea
  that 2nd generation will fail to assimilate if
  they continue to live there
• Yet 2nd generation Latinos are less likely than
  their parents to leave Los Angeles, especially if
  university-educated - emergence of Latino
  immigrant middle class
• Harold Meyerson neighborhood clustering has
  allowed Latinos in LA to organise political power
  (American Prospect 2003 article)

6
Configurations of Immigrant Inequality in Los
Angeles

• Decreasing immigrant Latino inequality in Los
  Angeles in last decade Living Wage movement
• Even though immigrant/native wage gap is still
  high in Los Angeles, racial wage gap
  (Latino/white) is narrower than in other
  (non-immigrant) cities
• So, dispersal from Los Angeles may not be sign of
  economic progress, and remaining may not be
  linked to a failure to assimilate/integrate - but
  a sign that LA itself is changing

7
Instrumental Geographies

• Londons East End discussion class versus race
  politics
• Who are the engineers?
• British/American values? ie former strategies
  of extended families and support networks
  lamented in East End and US midwest - but coded
  as crowding and voluntary segregation when
  immigrants perform them - especially in contested
  (integrated!) spaces
• Place and space used in anti-immigrant (and
  academic debate) to frame difference
  (segregation, invasion, non-white spaces)

8
The Nation in the Neighbourhood Popular Public
Concern

• Focus has not been about regions or
  neighbourhoods in terms of why place matters
  (jobs, housing, inequality, health, access) -
• but rather in terms of what/how bodies mark that
  space (ghettos, immigrant areas)
• Multicultural Britain/London discussion and maps
  in Guardian - where are they? How many?
• But in US, as well as in Britain, neighbourhoods
  themselves are changing in ways that make
  dispersion a problematic concept

9
Suggestions for a Radical Demography

• Focus on concentration without attention to place
  problematic (Why are people in certain places
  rather than others?)
• Radical Demography would explore, for example,
  disinvestment in East End and restrictions on
  immigrant/refugee settlement rather than
  promoting racialised citizenships
• Does not allow that assimilation and integration,
  in multicultural societies, are shifting
  referents (ie what is Britain/US? What is an
  immigrant neighbourhood?)
• Radical Demography would question spatial
  dispersion as integration, concentration as
  (self)segregation, and static notions of place

10
Radical Demography Continued

• Radical Demography would seek to challenge ideas
  of place (whether Britain or America, London or
  Los Angeles) that are
• Racialised in their definitions
• Everyone is mixed, but not everyone counts as
  mixed (Gilroy)
• Historic rather than processural
• Theoretically rather than democratically
  instrumental (or investigative)

11
Shifting the accepted view on race and population
change

• Black areas are bad for all of us
• Previously Black people are bad for all of us
• An alternative, demographic view of segregation /
  integration
• Evidence
• What is Radical Demography?
• Burawoys Public Sociology

12
Views of segregation, summer 2005

• Segregation at levels of black ghettoes in US
  cities (Guardian, 1 Sept 2005)
• Ghettos blighting Asian integration (Times, 1
  Sept 2005)
• Multiculturalism is failing to bring Britain's
  races together, says Ted Cantle (Times, 21 Sept
  2005)
• Are we sleepwalking towards apartheid? (Sunday
  Times, 18 September 2005)
• Our worry is this is fertile breeding ground for
  extremists. (Trevor Phillips radio interview
  reported in Daily Mirror, 23 September 2005)

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Academic views

• Segregation indices
• How evenly spread is a group across areas
  (schools, )
• Remarkable, stubborn segregation, not
  optimistic
• Michael Poulsen, Telegraph 1st Sept 2005
• Dr Poulsen said isolated enclaves were a feature
  of immigration "You could argue that tighter
  control on immigration was the only way to
  curtail continuous growth."
• He said that Europeans' assumption that
  immigrants would be assimilated into the wider
  culture with time had not been thought through.
• The danger is the assimilation process is so slow
  that for many it is just not possible."
• Danny Dorling, Ludi Simpson, Ceri Peach, Tariq
  Modood
• Trevor has got it wrong segregation indices
  mis-interpreted (sensitive to geog scale and
  population composition) there are no ghettos in
  Britain White flight worth investigating

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(No Transcript)
15
Founding fathers of statistics and demography

• Francis Galton It would be quite practicable to
  produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious
  marriages during several consecutive generations
  (1869) as much superior mentally and morally to
  the modern European, as the modern European is to
  the lowest of the Negro races (1892).
• Ronald Fisher To increase the birth rate in the
  professional classes and among the highly skilled
  artisans would be to solve the great eugenic
  problem of the present generation and to lay a
  broad foundation for every kind of social
  advance. (1917 206)
• PK Whelpton By means of eugenic sterilization,
  it is planned to lower the incidence of certain
  undesirable qualities in the next generation
  this plan should be watched carefully by
  populationists in all parts of the world and such
  tests of its effectiveness made as are possible.
  (1938 183)
• Also Spearman, Yule, Edgeworth, Dublin and
  Thompson (see Donald MacKenzie (1999), and
  Tukufu Zuberi (2001)

16
Alternative view of Britains changing cities
17
Race and population geography- hypotheses (1) -

• Immigration leads to clusters and population
  growth
• Occupational labour shortages in specific
  locations
• Clustering provides social and economic capital
• Chain migration and family building follows
• Age-structure leads to rapid natural growth in
  settlement areas
• Natural growth becomes greater than immigration

18
Race and population geography- hypotheses (2) -

• Pressure on housing leads to dispersal
• To neighbouring areas with similar social
  conditions
• Counter-urbanisation to better housing, further
  away
• New clusters to maintain cultural and economic
  capital a residential mosaic
• Constraints to dispersal forced segregation
• Indigenous population flight, avoidance, racial
  housing market, or none of these?

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Race and population geography- headline evidence
-
1991 2001
1. Electoral wards with non-White majority 57 118
Proportion of the group who live in these areas Proportion of the group who live in these areas
All non-White groups 15 23
Pakistani and Bangladeshi 22 35

2. Net migration within UK, 2000-2001 Non-White White
118 Electoral wards with a non-White majority -14,716 -9,747
All other wards 15,308 4,818
20
Population dynamics

• After immigration, clusters are to be expected
• Growth of Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and
  Bangladeshi populations is more through natural
  growth (reproduction) than immigration

Black natural change (excess of births over
deaths). Grey Net migration. Source
Williamson (2003)
21
What is Radical Demography?

• Burawoys Public Sociology

Audience academic Audience other
Instrumental Professional sociology Policy sociology
Reflexive Critical sociology Public sociology
22
Case study Migration Watch

• Distribute MW leaflet and MW Advisory Council
• Ask for professional, policy, critical and public
  challenges/questions to the MW leaflet
• Canvass for willingness to collaborate on a
  fuller critique of MW.

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Ideas

• Idea of population change
• Timing of integration
• Language undefined/flexible
• Is overcrowding uniform? Everyone? Just
  immigrants? All immigrants (EU/non-EU)? Who
  crowds? How is crowding/overcrowding determined?
  Is it overcrowded?
• Where do they (MW people live?
• What about skilled immigrants? Emphasis on
  asylum seekers?
• Immigration (esp skilled) has been increasingly
  encouraged as UK population has aged this is
  part of increase/change. Immigration has been
  recruited/encouraged. Scare story of job-taking
  from earlier labour-shortage recruitment periods.

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• Give examples of good practise (Finland)
• Issues surrounding National ID card / estimation