Past Migrations, Contemporary Representations and Complex Multicultures in London

This chapter is based on data produced in a UK-wide study of immigration and social cohesion undertaken between 2005 and 2008.1 Our intention was to explore the actual lived lives and practices of both new immigrants and the long-term settled population and through this lens consider contemporary social cohesion policies in the UK. One of the key strands of the research was predicated on understanding how previous immigrations are perceived or experienced and how this informs contemporary immigration. We are particularly interested in layered histories of migration, and historically constituted diaspora spaces, that is the spaces of multiculture encounter.2 For many people migration is a key indicator, and often the scapegoat, of social change. In Britain it is associated with periods of uncertainty involving economic expansion, reconstruction or re-structuring, and with political transformations, such as independence for former British colonies and the ‘end of empire’. We emphasise the importance of understanding social cohesion and the nation through the formation, formulation and reformulation of prevailing narratives of belonging, obligation and identity. These narratives inform the way social heterogeneity, resulting from social and geographical mobilities and the porousness of multiculture spaces of encounter, is managed in different places and at different levels, encompassing the global, the national and the local dimensions.