Abstract
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On first sight, this edited volume appears to be the victim of bad timing. It focuses on a concept – community cohesion – that assumed pre-eminence in public policy making in England under the (New) Labour government of 1997–2010, but was erased from the policy agenda following the formation of the coalition government in 2010. Where once it was a guiding theme for policy and practice and the subject of policy papers and guidance documents, government enquiries and a national Commission, since 2010 it is difficult to find any reference to community cohesion within government policy. Yet, this volume is of more than mere historical interest, for although the language of policy makers might have changed, the logics of the community cohesion agenda remain firmly entrenched within public policy making in England. This book recognizes and challenges this agenda and offers up an alternative manifesto in the form of a reformulated cohesion policy.
The community cohesion agenda was at the leading edge of a new politics of community in England, which problematized people labelled as different and distinct along with the places where they live, while deflecting attention from the increasing socioeconomic polarization of society. The attention of policy became squarely focused on communities perceived to be internally cohesive but socially isolated and supportive of values and forms of behaviour at odds with presumed norms and standards. This reasoning guided the political response to the street disturbances in towns and cities across northern England in 2001, when the paradigm of ‘parallel lives’ was forged. Particular ethnic and religious groups were presumed to be self-segregating into ethnic enclaves, limiting contact between themselves and wider society and undermining a common sense of belonging and purpose. Ten years later, the same logics were invoked to explain the riots of 2011, young people in inner-city areas and gang members in particular being deemed to subscribe to values, norms and behaviours responsible for the disturbances. Whereas social problems (such as unemployment, crime, social disorder and community conflict) were once conceptualized as the product of local, national and global forces and addressing them was considered the responsibility of central government, this new politics localized problems and threw them back at places to resolve themselves through the reinvigoration of community. This reasoning was recently evident in the coalition government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda, which encouraged people not to turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face, but to help themselves and their own communities (Kisby, 2010).
This volume critically evaluates this politics of community. It highlights the opaque and ambiguous nature of policies and their aims and objectives, and in response advocates a focus on the broader notion of social cohesion, defined as harmonious relationships stemming from a substantive reduction in material inequalities. As the editors put it in the introduction, sustainable community cohesion, as it has normally been viewed, cannot be achieved without addressing prior challenges posed by material inequalities rooted in and reproduced by racism and widespread and enduring deprivation. Alternative frameworks for policy development within this reformulated cohesion agenda are proposed, along with suggestions for how one might evaluate the fruits of this policy.
The book is organized into four distinct parts. Part 1 seeks to provide theoretical clarity and conceptual clarification in relation to cohesion policy and practice and its evaluation. Some familiar ground is inevitably covered in Ratcliffe’s introduction to the policy paradigm in Chapter 1. This said, it provides one of the most succinct, accessible and encompassing overviews of the ideology and strategy of the community cohesion agenda available. Chapter 2 moves on to consider the merits of different approaches to evaluation and highlights the potential contribution to be provided by theory-based evaluation and, in particular, the Theories of Change (ToC) approach. Chapter 2 is key to the book’s ambition to make a distinctive and innovative contribution through this focus on evaluation. It offers up the ToC approach to evaluation as capable of accommodating the challenges that are posed by social cohesion, in particular, how to delineate outcomes, attribute causality, specify data and engage with a diverse and unequal set of stakeholders. Part 2 of the book addresses many of these challenges, through a focus on the methodological issues associated with the evaluation of the social cohesion agenda, including the problems generating the required data.
The chapters that make up Part 2 are well written, informative and authoritative. Whether they represent a coherent whole that amounts to a thorough assessment of the methodological problems and challenges in evaluating social cohesion is questionable. However, together they do succeed in raising and addressing many core methodological issues associated with evaluating social cohesion. Discussion commences with an assessment of current understandings of community cohesion. Fuller reveals national indicators on cohesion to be vague and ambiguous snapshots of perceptions that wash over local complexities and causal processes. This is a key point given the focus of so much of cohesion policy on the need to develop positive relations between people from different backgrounds. In Chapter 4 Simpson tackles a related concern: segregation levels, which are presumed to be indicative of the fact that people from different backgrounds are living ‘parallel lives’. He dismisses the focus on ethnic composition and indices of segregation by the proponents of the community cohesion agenda as a sterile pursuit, given frequent misinterpretation and failure to appreciate the population changes underpinning headline statistics. Simpson also laments the lack of updated information on neighbourhood populations between the Censuses of Population. Eversley and Mayhew agree, and in Chapter 5 explore the potential for analysis of local and administrative data to cast light on situations, well-being and relations between people from different backgrounds. Doran and Keating also rise to this challenge in Chapter 7, by outlining a framework for evaluating equalities, set within the context of the statutory requirements placed on public bodies by the Equality Act.
Part 3 examines key policy strands. Inevitably, the editors are unable to represent the full scope of policy informing and conflicting with efforts to promote cohesion. In response, attention focuses on three policy areas: housing, education and labour market. These are argued to be key to social cohesiveness, and also areas of key tensions in government policy that can be seen to undermine the promotion of cohesion and equality.
The community cohesion agenda singled out housing policy and provision as a key determinant of the shape of communities and the perceived high levels of ethnic segregation presumed to underpin cohesion problems. Ratcliffe challenges the focus on ethnic segregation and the related allegation regarding the self-segregating tendencies of certain minority ethnic populations. Rather, settlement patterns are argued to reflect limited housing (and labour) market options. Instead of a focus on mixed tenure developments to promote interaction between residents from different backgrounds, he argues for a policy focus on gains in living standards and housing quality for all those with severely constrained housing choices. However, he acknowledges that the state currently appears relatively powerless to effect change in housing market processes. In Chapter 9, Osler considers education policy, recognizing that from the outset the community cohesion agenda stressed the importance of engaging and working with young people. The official reports into the 2001 disturbances identified schools as having a key role to play in breaking down barriers between young people, serving as sites of integration. In response, government introduced a duty on the governing body of schools in England to promote community cohesion, and guidance emphasized the need for schools to promote a common vision and similar life opportunities for all pupils and to provide opportunities for young people from different backgrounds to interact and build positive relations. Osler surveys this terrain and reflects on tensions and contradictions between official policies, intended outcomes and differentials in student attainment. Her analysis reveals that working-class and minority ethnic students remain more vulnerable to disciplinary forms of citizenship training, which aim to instil so-called ‘mainstream’ British values. In response, she calls for more transformative policies that support the development of cosmopolitan citizens.
The final policy chapter considers the policy response to worklessness following the financial crash of 2008. Newman argues that access to employment and an income above the poverty line are the most important aspects of social cohesion. Social cohesion depends upon more equal outcomes in terms of employment and wages. Attempts to support people into work are therefore welcomed, but the context of increased conditionality and poverty wages are argued to undermine the gains secured through work. The failure of government policy to consider the impact of an increasingly flexible labour market that creates a casual, low paid reserve army of labour and the associated insecurities and individualized risks this brings results in a deterioration in social cohesion. Tagged onto this discussion of policy realms are two chapters that respond to the editors’ call to recognize that ‘communities’ are often highly differentiated and internally conflictual entities. In Chapter 12, Hatton-Yeo and Batty review multi-generational policies and their evaluation, and in Chapter 11 Mayo, Jones and Camilo Cock explore local efforts to foster positive encounters and reconciliation between new migrants and settled populations and promote human rights and social justice.
The final part of the book renders coherent a theory of change that can provide a new basis for the evaluation of social cohesion. Re-engaging with the approach outlined by Sullivan in Chapter 2, the insights, conclusions and recommendations detailed in the preceding chapters – which can sometimes feel like distinct, standalone contributions – are knitted together into a tentative proposal specifying desired outcomes and elucidating a theory of causality. Recognizing that the immediate future looks rather grim, with growing discontent and tensions as inequality increases, public services are cut and the contradictions of government policy multiply, the volume concludes with a call to arms for those committed to social cohesion. Only through evaluations based on a clear theory of change, it is argued, will disadvantaged groups be able to access evidence detailing the need for interventions, the relevance of government approaches, the pertinence of alternative proposals and the consequences of these interventions. To do otherwise, Ratcliffe and Newman conclude, is to allow injustice to continue without challenge. It is difficult to disagree.