Saunders: Avert extremism before it starts by building better neighbourhoods

Good in-depth piece by Doug Saunders on the lessons learned from an international study on integration, directed by Manjula Luthria of the World Bank, and how they may avoid future faultiness in Canadian multiculturalism and integration:

The first set of barriers is physical, involving housing, neighbourhoods and transportation.

It’s important to allow immigrants and refugees, after their initial settlement, to join clusters of other people from the same background, in places where they can help each other out. A strong body of research has shown that integration happens faster and more effectively when immigrants settle in common districts. Isolation tends to breed alienation (and, in English-speaking countries, extremism tends to emerge from isolated individuals in non-immigrant neighbourhoods; “ethnic” districts are less prone to extremism)..…

The second group of barriers are institutional: those that prevent immigrants from having their credentials recognized, their health care and social crises addressed, and that stand in the way of their children getting the education and assistance they need.

Absolutely crucial here are schools: Too many school systems have built-in incentives for children – especially male offspring of immigrants – to drop out early. While Canadian cities have considerable experience with educating classes of mixed experience (and we know these mixes are good educationally, for both newcomers and established Canadian students), many school boards today are providing only one teacher per class. A larger class size with multiple teachers and teaching assistants offering several levels of education is a recipe for inclusion….

Third are economic barriers. Key here is small business. Previous immigrant groups have succeeded in Canada and other Western countries because they’ve been able to set up shop, in an ad hoc way, without many bureaucratic or legal barriers. This is tougher today: It is increasingly difficult for immigrants to find low-cost spaces on streets with pedestrian traffic, in which they can start a business; they often live in areas where there are few such spaces at all. When they do get a space, they discover that licensing, regulatory and hygiene requirements often impose impossible costs on a small-scale business: The need to install, say, a $40,000 ventilation system has scuppered many a promising immigrant food enterprise….

Fourth are citizenship and inclusion barriers, both legal (the ability to become a citizen) and de facto (the ability to participate in the community and have access to the resources of the government with or without citizenship). There is probably nothing more threatening to integration than having a large population living in your city on a more or less permanent basis without a pathway to full, legal citizenship…

Germany learned this the hard way, when two million Turks went 40 years without access to citizenship, and became an isolated, lost generation who couldn’t invest in their communities or futures. (In recent years, German Turks have become citizens in greater numbers, and now are becoming a success story.) The United States is still learning this with its 12 million long-term residents, many of them born in the U.S. These people are “illegal,” and thus lack the privileges of citizenship, including full education access. The result: an enormous lost opportunity.

Ambitious immigrants, if they don’t know they’ll become citizens, won’t invest in their communities, start legal businesses, put their kids in higher education or enter the financial or political system: They’ll be stranded. Whether we call them “illegal aliens” or “temporary foreign workers,” we’re risking failed integration – not just for them but for the wider community around them – if we put up barriers to citizenship, inclusion, voting and economic participation.

….

The most successful and non-controversial refugee groups are those that are transformed, as quickly as possible, into regular “economic” immigrants: If they’re included quickly in the employment, education and housing systems of the established immigrant community, they will be more likely to stabilize their lives, give up their temporary mindset and become valuable members of their communities.

If we fear for the futures of our newly settled refugees – or worry that the 300,000 immigrants who settle in our cities every year won’t live the Canadian dream of the previous millions – then we need to step back and look at what has worked. We need to follow the dotted line that leads from a faraway country, through a low-cost neighbourhood somewhere, into the centre of our economies and lives. And we need to see where that line may be interrupted, and restore its path. Integration is something that happens, naturally, if we provide the right footholds.

Source: Saunders: Avert extremism before it starts by building better neighbourhoods – The Globe and Mail