2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

All together now

1London can claim to be the most multicultural
place in the world, its population drawn from every
race, nation and religion on earth. But what about
the rest of Britain? How many new immigrants
move here, who are they and where do they settle?
As a follow-up to last year's award-winning issue
charting immigrant communities in the capital, Leo
Benedictus set out on an even bigger task: to meet
these populations across the whole country. The
result, which ranges from the century-old population
of Cardiff Somalis to the much newer Portuguese in
Lincolnshire, is a snapshot of the extraordinary
cultural richness of the UK today

2This is Britain's second great age of immigration. It seems to be passing with much less fanfare than the first one.
For the past decade, a wave of new comers have been sweeping across the country, scattering new cultures,
languages and religions into almost every town and village. In 1997, a total of 63,000 work permit holders and their
dependants came to Britain. In 2003, it was 119,000. Altogether, between 1991 and 2001, the UK population
increased by 2.2 million, some 1.14 million of whom were born abroad. And all this was before EU enlargement in
May 2004, which pulled in 130,000 more people from the new member states in its first year alone. The last time
this country saw immigration on this scale, in the 1950s and 60s, there were white riots in the streets. Why are there
none today?

3Clearly Britain has mellowed somewhat since then. The first immigration age was a painful process, particularly
for the immigrants themselves, but it helped give the country more of a taste for its second helping. In public life, at
least, it is plainly no longer acceptable to dislike people simply for their foreignness. This is good and helpful, but it
has left those who dislike the idea of immigration with little room for manoeuvre. Which is why the figure of the
fraudulent asylum seeker spinning tales of woe so he can help himself to a piece of our economy - or even our
benefits - has become such a popular target for the instinctive xenophobe. In some parts of Britain, the word
"Kosovan" is now more likely to be shouted in the street than the word "Paki", even when the accused is
Portuguese.

4Asylum seekers and refugees (people who have been granted asylum) may also have served as a distraction from
the general immigration boom. They certainly need more support from the state than migrant workers, and their
numbers did indeed rise worldwide in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, they remain just a fraction of the immigration
picture in Britain. In 2003, when the asylum panic was at its height, there were 1.4 million overseas workers in the
UK and just 49,370 asylum seekers. Now, thanks to some extremely tough government love, the total seeking
asylum is closer to 10,000.

5But liberal attitudes and the asylum distraction are not the only things that make this second boom different from
the first one. For a start, immigration is no longer something that only happens in big cities. Most towns of any size
now have at least one established community from overseas, and scarcely a corner of the country remains that has
not been touched by the process, painting a pattern too complex and changeable to depict in detail. Researching this
issue, we would often hear rumours of garden centres in Devon that were staffed entirely by Poles, or bands of
itinerant Portuguese working on farms in the Scottish borders, but a map of all these micro-communities would
simply be impossible to draw.

6The immigrants themselves are also far more diverse now than they were in the 1950s. All the significant
immigrant and immigrant descended communities in Britain, are still dominated by the traditional groups of
Caribbeans, Chinese, south Asians and Irish. But the new arrivals of the past decade are as likely to come from
Zimbabwe, eastern Europe, the Middle East or the Philippines.

7The trends of the second immigration age may be clearest in London, but a separate story is also developing
outside the capital, where it is now common place for employers to find staff through agencies that recruit abroad,
often through the internet. This applies as much to large organisations such as the NHS, which has brought in many
thousands of health professionals from overseas in the past decade, as it does to farmers in Norfolk or hotels in the
Isles of Scilly.

8The arrival of immigrants in smaller groups than before, and from a greater variety of places, is probably another
reason why they have caused fewer shockwaves, and substantial improvements in legislation and policing have
certainly helped. But the main root of our comparative harmony - the theme that emerged most strongly from the
hundreds of interviews conducted for this issue - is that we have simply become more accepting of difference.

9The great neglected truth of British multiculturalism is that every day, millions of different people across the
country are actually getting along very nicely, while the bad news gets all the attention. Last year's Home Office
figures show Cumbria to have the highest rate of racially aggravated incidents in England and Wales, with 6.2% of
the county's non-white population reporting some form of racial abuse in 2004. Few people would be happy about
this, and yet the other side of the picture is worth considering: 93.8% of non-white people living in Britain's most
intolerant area were left in peace.

10 On many occasions, researching this issue, we asked people if they had had any problems with the locals.
Sometimes they had, but far more frequently they hadn't, and said so with a look on their faces that seemed to ask,
"Is that all you journalists want to know about?" Immigration is a subject, like air travel or life in Africa, that we
only hear about when it is making someone miserable. This vastly inflates the extreme fringes of the immigrant
experience, while the fact that most immigrants and their families just lead normal lives gets forgotten.

11On the whole, Britain today is one of the most tolerant and multicultural society there has ever been - in fact it is
the country's multiculturalism that is making it more tolerant. The same Home Office figures show us that
immigration is not the cause of racism; it is its cure. Racist incidents are diminishing fastest where immigrants and
their families are most established, while it is the parts of Britain with least experience of immigration - the rural
areas, on the whole - that are the most hostile.

12The fact that reported incidents have risen substantially in Cumbria, Northumbria, Devon and Cornwall, most of
Wales, Durham and Cleveland since 2001 reflects the fact that, because of this second immigration boom, many of
the people who live there are rubbing shoulders with foreigners for the first time. It is a new experience, which some
are not comfortable with. But they, or their children, will get used to it. When white Londoners found themselves
living next to Afro-Caribbeans in the 1950s, they rioted in their thousands, but by 2004, less than 1% of London's
1.9m non-white people were reporting any racial abuse.

13In time, integration and acceptance are inevitable. No matter how disadvantaged they were when they arrived,
every community seems to settle and prosper in the end. The only variable is the speed at which this happens, and
it is happening far more quickly than it used to.

Discovering New Vocabulary

1.

Use the dictionary or the internet to define the underlined bold words in the article. Then create your own sentences
using the words in a different context.

2.

Use the correct underlined bold words from the article to fill in the blanks in the following text not all words will be
used.

Our country has a ____________environment. We have people from every______, ___________and __________living in
our country. Yet, not everyone can accept __________ _________ Most______ ________ have _______ _______ to live
and work here. Even though most people are very accepting for foreigners, we still have groups of ________________ people
and they are not very welcoming to them.
There are groups of_____________ foreigners who move from one country to the next and dont seem to want to settle for very
long. They come from many ___________ backgrounds, and often face ________ _________. Sometime things get so bad
between cultures that it creates ___________ incidents. These incidents are usually started by groups who are ___________to
other peoples views, beliefs, or lifestyles that differ from their own. This type of _____________environment can get so bad that
It ______________ on the start of a riot.

________________ amounts of people in our country are starting to accept __________________ and these communities
will become stronger and friendlier for new comers and the nation will ______________ form this unity.

3.

Comprehension Questions
Give your own opinion and use your own words.
1.

In paragraph 2, explain what the author means by the great age of immigration?

2.

Explain why there were riots regarding immigrants in the 1950s and 60s and whats the difference today?

3.

What did the government do to decrease the amount of people seek asylum in the UK?

4.

What groups of immigrants are rumored working in garden centres and farms along the Scottish boards?

5.

What four immigrant groups dominate the British communities? And where are the new groups of immigrants arriving
from?

6.

What truth is the British media neglecting to report about multiculturalism?

7.

In paragraph 11, what did the Home Office figures show about racism in Britain?

8.

Why have incidents risen since in areas such as Cumbria, Northumbria, Devon, Cornwall, most of Wales, Durham and
Cleveland ?

9.

What was the authors final conclusion about immigration in the UK?

10. What is your personal opinion about immigration in Czech Republic?