Translocations: Migration and Social Change
An Inter-Disciplinary Open Access E-Journal
ISSN Number: 2009-0420
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BOOK REVIEW
Finney, N. & Simpson, L. (2009) ‘Sleepwalking to segregation’? Challenging Myths
about Race and Migration, London: Policy Press). £14.99, 212 pages
Finney and Simpson seek to turn the tide on pessimistic visions that forecast diversity,
cultivating a society of division and conflict through providing evidence and
information to stimulate more meaningful debates (2009: 2). Those identified as
promoting these pessimistic views are certain ‘mythmakers’, including politicians,
the think tank, MigrationWatchUK, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission
(EHRC) among others, who make and sustain mythical claims surrounding
segregation and immigration for political purposes, drawing conclusions from a
manipulation of statistics. To counter this supposed misrepresentation of statistics the
aim is to ‘open up more space for discussion of alternative arguments and to
demonstrate that the picture is far less bleak than the myth-makers lead us to believe’
(2009: 15).
The title ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation?’ questions the oft-quoted statement from a
speech by Trevor Phillips, then Chair of the former Commission for Racial Equality
and now Chair of the EHRC, which he made in the wake of the 2005 London
bombings. In this, and subsequent statements by him and others, it was claimed that
Britain was supposedly sleepwalking to segregation due to certain individuals and
groups deliberately breaking away from British society and living parallel lives,
resulting in a fragmentation of society and a threat to British values of free speech,
equality, democracy and freedom. ‘Sleepwalking to segregation’ is the authors’ first
example of a myth or legend that they seek to contend, defined here as powerful and
influential stories that are not true. Myths are said to emerge as memorable statements
which gain ever increasing social currency when repeatedly drawn upon and which
despite their inaccuracy constitute the framework for policy debate. When joined
together these myths gain a cumulative force to build a litany which becomes the
dominant and overriding narrative in relation to a particular issue.
The authors aim to write in a direct and accessible way to reach a wide audience,
including academics and those grappling with public policy issues, but also more
widely those interested in race and migration debates. Two introductory chapters set
out some background on contemporary debates of migration and race and a chapter on
race statistics in Britain, but the main content of the book is focused around
challenging the myths perpetuated in public debate surrounding migration and
integration with five chapters addressing and contesting particular myths, namely,
‘Britain takes too many immigrants’; ‘so many minorities cannot be integrated’;
‘minorities do not want to integrate’; ‘Britain is becoming a country of ghettoes’ and
‘Minority White Cities’’. The final chapter aims to show how the myths culminate to
form a litany which dominates and stifles other debate. Somewhat different to other
academic texts, the text is punctuated with satirical cartoons and the final pages of the
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book are dedicated to a section entitled ‘Myths and Counterarguments: a quick
reference summary’, which summarises the main arguments in the book in bullet
point form.
The core idea in the book is that when statistics are presented in a clear and unbiased
manner they have the potential to bring clarity to debates and provide the basis for
informed policymaking, and therefore through presenting all the evidence Finney and
Simpson seek to ‘induce a little more respect for the widely abused term ‘evidencebased policy’’ (2009: 11). Given the dearth of statistics and data in relation to many
social phenomena, including on migrants and migration and integration patterns, a
goal of bringing more objective evidence to inform debate seems like a worthy
exercise, although they do acknowledge the difficulty in statisticians even agreeing on
what should be measured and even who should be defined as immigrants (2009: 5455). However statistics, rather than being neutral, can reveal much about political and
social convictions. Many contest the notion of a disinterested observer working on
value-free social science research and adhere to the conviction that values precede
facts and steer the discovery of evidence, and indeed make one more open to
accepting empirical evidence seen to be in line with one’s values. The authors admit
that ‘it sometimes seems that statistics are used to support both sides of the political
argument, and the audience is left wondering which are the most believable or
accurate’ and they pose a question to the reader, ‘how do you know that we have used
evidence more robustly than the mythmakers we seek to challenge?’ (2009: 10). They
say that that the only thing they can do is to ‘hope to be responsible critics of the
claims we investigate’ and avoid ‘hit and run criticism’, set out the facts and allow the
reader to draw conclusions, but they do describe their own perspective as one which is
in favour of human rights and against discrimination and prejudice. They note the
difficulties and limitations associated with race statistics in Britain but commit to
using that which is available as robustly as they can.
The chapters have a broad scope and cover a wide variety of issues including the
numbers of immigrants in Britain and population change, international perspectives
regarding numbers of migrants that societies receive, whether immigration costs
Britain money or is a burden on space or resources, engagement of white communities
and ethnic communities, the links between mono-ethnic areas and segregation,
terrorism and poverty among others. However as a text purporting to provide an
overarching view of all evidence and to stand as an authoritative source of data, this
book falls short. While the aims to set out information for the reader to digest and
subsequently formulate informed opinions were noble, the realities show brief, and
perhaps those working in the area may say, selective presentations of data. Also given
their emphasis in the introductory chapter on the importance of providing unbiased
facts, the final chapter builds upon the polemical tone that had been emerging
throughout, and the criticism of the ‘mythmakers’ reaches a crescendo, levelling
criticism at particular personalities and adopting an adversarial and accusatory stance.
These criticisms are not to be interpreted as meaning that the book does not provide
an interesting stance which takes a new look at many issues of importance in quite an
innovative and jargon-free manner, nor to suggest that attempts to bring some
statistics into the ‘swampy lowlands’ of integration and segregation should be avoided
(Schön 1984). Neither should they be taken to suggest that such myths are not
common in the public domain and perpetuated by the media and politicians to the
detriment of relying on the best possible evidence. However given the difficult task
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they set themselves of setting out all the evidence in an area where statistics are
patchy at best, and promising a non-biased, overarching and open account of the
statistics in the area, what they produce does not match their own brief. Rather what
emerges is the impression that, just like the ‘mythmakers’ they wish to contest, they
too have an agenda. Had they set themselves a different brief, advocating a certain
position would not have undermined that which they said they set out to achieve, as
unfortunately appears to be the case here.
Niamh McMahon
Department of Politics and International Studies
University of Cambridge
References
Phillips, T. (2005) ‘After 7/7: sleepwalking to segregation’, Speech to the Manchester
Council for Community Relations, 22 September 2005, available at
www.equalityhumanrights.com.
Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner, How Professionals Think in Action
(London: Basic Books).
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