A report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on immigration and inclusion came to my attention as it offered some grounds for optimism. Inevitably, there was a down side with certain myths about immigrants stubbornly immutable.
Researchers explored the perspectives of settled and new residents in Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil and found that the former were likely to be more welcoming if the incomers had jobs.
Grounds for optimism? Yes, but here comes the flip side. Those who were not in work were dismissed as "scroungers". And even some of those who were in employment, such as the Portuguese who as EU citizens are entitled to live and work in the UK, were seen as "taking our jobs". To this, the sympathetic rider was added: "They're working in terrible conditions, mind."
One professionally qualified refugee told researchers: "Work is people's hobby in the UK. If you can't participate you can never be integrated."
Finding that job was difficult for black refugees who reported discrimination - and if it is true that work holds one of the keys to integration then this group of people must feel like permanent outsiders.
It is not only incomers who feel discriminated against. In Cardiff, a group of third-generation British ethnic minority women, all with degrees and in jobs, felt excluded by indirect racism, citing "the way [white people] look at you, the way they talk to you". The inference must be that anyone who isn't white is assumed to be from overseas.
For older people language and other cultural barriers prevented Somali people and Asians from accessing services, such as those provided by Age Concern. As one staff worker said: "It is worrying because the ethnic [older] population has increased but they don't seem to come to us."
Ready for something more upbeat? The study found no evidence that community tensions were an inevitable consequence of new immigration.
There was a feeling among some long-established residents in one traditionally working-class part of Cardiff that middle-class areas were not taking their share of the strain on resources. But these tensions were rare and managed effectively by community police and faith leaders whose work was often undervalued or went unnoticed.
And older people from all groups surveyed were united in one respect: in their anxieties about youth behaviour, youth crime, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual freedom and lack of respect.
At one, at last - but it took young people to unite them!
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