© Copyright, Fondazione Cariplo - I.S.MU. Milano.
Stampato a Milano nel mese di Agosto 1997
Tipomonza - Via Merano, 18 - Milano

Working group 4

Managing Diversity: Issues of Access and Equity. Report

Baha Abu-Laban
Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration, University of Alberta, Canada

The challenge facing all of the international partners in the Metropolis Project, as well as Working Group 4, is the question of how to deal with and understand diversity without compromising issues of access and equity.

The Working Group commenced its proceedings by inviting Dr. Yngve Georg Lithman to present an overview of the excellent paper (entitled "Managing Diversity: Issues of Access and Equity") which he prepared for the conference. Dr. Lithman's presentation was followed by very useful and wide-ranging interventions from the 40-50 members of the Working Group, citing very interesting examples of how to manage diversity. Examples:

1. Giving immigrants pride in their mother tongue (exemplified by initiatives undertaken in Israel, as reported by the Israeli delegate);

2. Creating a better fit between municipal social services and thesocial/demographic changes resulting from immigration (as reported by delegates from Amsterdam and Utrecht);

3. Understanding and articulating the issue of gender in terms of relations between men and women and between migrants and non-migrants;

4. Going beyond issues of delivery and access, in order to address critically important policy questions. For example:

   • In the health area: What are the determinants of health status among immigrants?

   • In education: What are the determinants of drop-out rates or school leaving among immigrant children?

5. Researching the experiences of the second generation, i.e., children of immigrants; and

6. Examining the impact of major policy initiatives, e.g.,multiculturalism in Canada.

At the conclusion of the discussion, the Chair of the Working Group, Dr. Richard Bedford, thanked all the participants and invited them to contribute additional comments in writing, if they so wished, and deliver them to the Rapporteur, Dr. Baha Abu-Laban. In response to this call, Ms. Rian van Tilburg, Researcher, Department of Social Research and Statistics, City of Utrecht, submitted a very interesting and informative report on the situation in her own municipality.

General Discussion

Although no universal or formal definition of the terms "access" and "equity" was developed by the Working Group, there was agreement that in the context of immigration these two terms involve issues of "inclusion" and "exclusion" and that inclusion/exclusion are very much connected to immigrant integration in the receiving country.

Again, no formal or universal definition of integration was worked out by the Working Group, but is was taken to refer to the immigrant's ability to find his/her way in the receiving country, to navigate with ease and with a sense or feeling of being welcomed.

Working Group 4 believed that issues of inclusion and exclusion, and integration, are related to the possibility of or need for an affirmative action policy. For example, the Israeli delegate stated that

research in Israel had shown that improving the educational qualifications of immigrant children was insufficient for upward social mobility. Thus, impediments facing immigrant children, notwithstanding their educational achievement, had to be overcome by affirmative action.

The policy research priorities emerging out of the Working Group's discussions are premised on the following important points:

1. Need for gender-sensitive research where emphasis is not merely on male-female differences, but rather on understanding and articulating the issue of gender in terms of power relations between men and women as well as in terms of power relations between migrants and non-migrants.

2. Need for holistic research frameworks where there is articulation between migrants and residents (i.e., non-migrants); where the dynamic contexts in which immigrants live are recognized; where no single objective reality defines integration in the receiving contexts; where national and cultural variations among the countries are recognized (e.g., size, volume and source of immigration); and where variations in the discourses of different countries and of the immigrants themselves are also recognized.

3. Need to recognize that the dynamic context of migration/immigration has at least two types of public discourse:

   • Discourse about migration being dominated by a focus on migrants as a problem; and

   • Discourse about migration focusing on opportunity.

4. It is interesting to note that the idea of "management strategy" fits with the discourse of migrants-as-a-problem; while the idea of differences between or among "migration policies" fits with the discourse of "migrants-as-an-opportunity" (i.e., "migrants-as-an-asset"). In research terms, the latter discourse would lead the researcher to look at migrants as part of the whole society.

5. In terms of our strategic research goals, it is important to conceptualize the situation in terms of how immigrants are changing in the urban centres of the receiving countries and how the urban centres are changing in response to immigrants and to immigrant needs.

6. Immigrants are not a homogeneous group.

Key research areas

In the context of the above general discussion of issues of access and equity, the following key research areas were identified by Working Group 4:

Insertion into the Labour Market.

Immigrant insertion into the labour market is believed to be the single most important research area which may have a bearing on housing, education, political participation, etc. Research into this area must be gender-sensitive and must take account of how immigrants are thrust into the labour market within the context of a comparative research design. Issues of inclusion/exclusion, equity in general and gender-equity in particular, and certification of credentials for newly arrived immigrants are of primary importance.

In labour market studies, it is important to compare various groups of immigrants, e.g., same-origin immigrants in different cities; different immigrant groups in the same cities; selected immigrant groups in different countries (e.g., Canada and the U.S.A.); and coloured or "visible" immigrants versus non-immigrants or non-visible minorities.

Information is very limited in areas such as employment-unemployment, impact of globalization, and gender-specific considerations. Research in these areas may result in the identification of policy options such as equity or affirmative action legislation.

Education and Language

Again, in a gender-sensitive way, research is needed in the field of education and language training which often relate to immigrants as well to children of immigrants.

A whole range of research questions can be investigated under the rubric of language and education, ranging from curriculum to teachers’ attitudes and to school leaving; and from sensitivity to diversity, to peer group influence/pressure.

Obviously, children of immigrants are typically part of two worlds which act upon them in contradictory ways. Immigrant family dynamics should be part of this study/analysis. A comparative analysis of second-generations in different urban centres merits special attention.

Housing

There are many research questions in the area of housing that require attention at this time, even though a great deal of research has been done in the area of housing segregation and a number of explanations of this phenomenon have been given.

A few examples of questions that should be given research priority are: Is housing segregation to be explained as a voluntary, self-imposed pattern or is it to be explained in terms of broader social forces propelling the immigrant to gravitate toward certain urban areas for shelter? To what extent are existing institutional arrangements and prejudice factors in immigrant housing? Is it really skin colour or class that is relevant here? Is segregated housing a pattern which we must eradicate because it might diminish the possibility of integration or is it unrelated to integration?

These and other questions need to be researched not only intensively, but also comparatively. It may be that segregated housing per se is irrelevant to integration. Housing simply reflects tenure in a certain physical space and as such may not interfere with how well one may succeed in finding his way (integrating) in the larger community. On the other hand, if it does interfere with integration, then segregated housing might reflect not only occupancy of physical space, but also a mental set that separates the underclass or a disadvantaged minority form the rest of society.

Other aspects of housing in current times reflect patterns where affluent immigrants, such as the recent Chinese immigrants in Vancouver, Canada, situate themselves in highly favourable and different ways that might invite mixed and even some negative reactions from the larger community.

Political Rights

The political and citizenship rights of immigrants vary widely among countries that are partners in the Metropolis Project. Among the worthwhile questions in this research area are: How are citizenship rights granted and with what effect on the political cultures of the receiving countries? How do existing political rights affect the attitudes of immigrants on the one hand, and of members of the dominant group on the other? How are undocumented immigrants dealt with in different countries? What degrees of democratic deficit exist in different receiving countries and with what effect on society at large?
Social and Health Services
In this area, particularly the health area, the questions that need to be asked relate not only to access to services, but also to culturally-sensitive approaches to the provision of such services. But the research agenda should take us beyond the issues of access and equity, and more into examining the social/cultural determinants of health status among immigrants. This is a relatively uncharted research direction that merits special attention.

Municipal Administration

One of the research challenges facing many of the international partners in the Metropolis Project concerns the emerging divisions of municipal areas into smaller units, particularly in the European context. In certain cases, there is not one but rather several authorities within a

given metropolis and this situation is believed to create a wide range of dilemmas for immigrants. The research question here is how the metropolis is managed, and how the management arrangement impacts on issues of access and equity?

Evaluation Research

The final research area proposed by Working Group 4 concerns how research may help policy makers to evaluate the success of their policies.

Many of the participants in Working Group 4 noted that policy-makers tend to have a short-term horizon, while researchers tend to have a long-term horizon for research. Consequently, a strategy designed to bring researchers and policy-makers together to discuss issues of concern at an early phase is highly recommended. Participants in this Working Group from New Zealand and also from Israel commented positively on the successes resulting from bringing policy makers and researchers together on matters related to issues of access and equity and, more generally, on matters related to immigration policy at an early stage in the process of policy development.

Back to index
Previous Section
Next Section