Dr David Smith is a Principal Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Greenwich, London where he teaches on various courses related to the sociology of health, social policy, public health and qualitative research methods. His research interests include the social impacts of economic and industrial restructuring; work and employment; community studies and the position of minority groups in contemporary societies. His first was book based on ethnographic research on a housing estate in south London. This explored the changing nature of work, family and community in a white working class community titled On the Margins of Inclusion: changing labour markets and social exclusion in London (2006: Policy Press) which won the 2006 Social Policy Association prize for Best New Publication. More recently he has carried out extensive qualitative research with Gypsy, Roma and Travellers with a particular focus on the social determinants of health and access to health services for members of these communities. In 2013 he published (with Professor Margaret Greenfields) the first in-depth study into the settlement of the UK’s nomadic communities and the social and cultural implications of this trend, Gypsies and Travellers in housing: the decline of nomadism (Policy Press). He has recently completed a Roma inclusion project for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency Local Engagement for Roma Inclusion (LERI) with Slovakian Roma migrants in Kent, UK. This addressed educational inequalities and developed educational programmes and language training based on a ‘family learning’ model. He is currently conducting a Health Education England study (with Dr Carlos Moreno Leguizamon, University of Greenwich) into inequalities in access to palliative and end of life care in minority ethnic groups and is carrying out a study into the views, experiences and plans of Polish migrants living in London post Brexit. He is Secretary of the Gypsy Council and is a member of the Social Policy Association and the Working Class Studies Association.
Conference
June, 13th, 15:00, Auditório Multimédia do Instituto de Educação
Ethnicity, class and social relations in post Brexit UK: A case study in south-east England
Dr David Smith, Principal Lecturer in Sociology, University of Greenwich, London.
Following enlargement of the EU there has been a significant westward migration of people from East and Central Europe. Of approximately 2.8 million EU born nationals resident in the UK in 2016 approximately half were from A8 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus) and A2 (Romania and Bulgaria) member states. Among these were significant numbers of Roma often escaping from dire poverty and discrimination in their own countries and the UK now has one of the largest Roma populations in the EU with an estimated population of 200,000 (in addition to 200-300,000 indigenous Gypsies and Travellers).
Migrants arriving in the UK from the mid 2000s following a period of unprecedented high immigration levels arrived at a crucial point. Growing anti-EU sentiment on one hand, which stressed the loss of national sovereignty and decision making powers that EU membership entailed and a parallel critique of multiculturalism on the other, which emphasised social cohesion, national values and the dangers that increasing diversity posed to cohesion and values altered the social climate in which migrants found themselves. Roma migrants were often singled out by politicians and in the media as an example of all that was bad about the EU and its principle of freedom of movement and were a key element in fuelling anti-EU sentiments and calls to restrict immigration by ‘taking back control’ of our borders.
Against this backdrop of rising hostility, which culminated in the vote to leave the EU in June 2016, this paper presents findings from ethnographic and qualitative research in south east England with Slovakian Roma and other Central and East European migrants. In the area under consideration the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) population increased from 5.4% (13,423) of the population in 2001 to 10.4% (27,346) in 2011 with the largest increase in those arriving from EU member states. Many of these are concentrated in the poorest and most derived neighbourhoods where the BME population comprises over 20% of the population.
Through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews and focus groups with different BME communities as well as long term UK residents, one strand of the study explored ideas of neighbourhood ‘belonging’ and experiences of discrimination in a context of ‘hyper-diversity’ and examined the extent to which this was related to the nature of social relationships and networks in the area. Findings suggest that in the locality studied and among the sample who took part, incidents of discrimination and hostility from the white British majority population have declined in recent years. Social relations between minority groups and the majority tend towards cordiality and social distance while for the majority of Roma, prejudice and racism originates from other EU migrants not so much from UK locals with social relationships and levels of integration differing markedly between different generations of Roma. The paper concludes by considering some of the structural and demographic reasons for this and argues for a wider political perspective that transcends the narrow and divisive focus on 'identity' and cultural politics by addressing issues of social and economic justice that effect all low income groups regardless of ethnic identity.
