Strength in diversity?

I'm thinking of writing something on the impact of ethnic diversity on the public commitment to the welfare state. My question, if I had to pop one out right now, would be to ask is ethnic diversity bad for national commitment to a strong welfare state, or is inequality more likely to prove a stumbling block. What makes someone "other" - being a different colour, or being poor and needy? (It would also be worth looking at this from a housing perspective, because this is the coal face where many of the frustrations are sewn and many emotional battles fought.)

I've posted once before on the David Goodhart flap (here's his article), but here are a few other links.

This defunct blog has a decent summary of the flaws in Goodhart's argument.

Goodhart begins by offering readers the "progressive dilemma" (from the mouth of Tory MP David Willetts):

"If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask: 'Why should I pay for them when they are doing things that I wouldn't do?' This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the United States you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity, but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests."

His argument, simplified: a large welfare state relies on a homogenous population. Progressives want to accept cultural diversity but citizens do not want the welfare state to support people they do not identify with. How do you solve the problem?

Goodhart's premise rests upon the concept that people like to keep to their own. In terms of the state, this means they much prefer to contribute to the welfare of people who are recognisable in terms of values. It brushes aside any notion of empathy or liberal "live and let live" attitudes in favour of a more Nimby-ish outlook, but there is a resonance there.

To support his solutions, Goodhart first presents us with two differing examples, America and Sweden. One has a relatively small welfare state but a diverse population. The other has a relatively homogenous culture but a huge and supportive welfare system. Where does Britain fit into this? Well, Goodheart suggests that a commitment to diversity suggests we are striving to be America - but his own figures go some way to disputing that context. Britain's ethnic minority population of 9% is actually superceded by Sweden, where 12% of citizens are foreign-born. But our welfare state cannot cope with diversity, he tells us.

Ultimately what Goodhart seems concerned with is the decline of "Britishness". America is very American. Sweden is very Swedish. But Goodhart, and others further to the right who decry immigration more wholeheartedly, worry that Britain is under threat of losing what makes it quintessentially British.

Unfortunately, Goodhart assumes that the only reason for a diversifying of the culture is immigration. This seems to ignore social movements such as feminism and gay activism, which both undermine Britain's traditional WASPish patriachal society - as well as skimming over internal religious diversity. If Britain is informed by protestant values, how does Catholicism, which owes its allegiance to the Vatican, fit in? These things are just as threatening to "Britishness".

For what it's worth, here's something from Harry's Place.

This reads to me that if Britain, like the US, finds itself in the situation where the majority of the poor are non-whites, the white majority will not want to sustain a welfare system to benefit the "others". Or in other words hostility to immigrants eventually will become a threat to the notion of universal public provision.

The problem is that while this difference may (or may not) adequately explain why the US did not develop into a European-style social democracy, it doesn't necessarily follow that already existing welfare states cannot survive in an era of greater diversity.

But there is certainly plenty of evidence already of some sort of linkage between race and welfare in the minds of some. In the Lancashire community I grew up in it was widely assumed that immigrants were 'on the fiddle' when it came to housing benefit and unemployment benefit and that in some way they received preferential treatment from the Health Service. The development Goodhart fears, that there will become a corrosive sense of "we" are providing for "them", was and still is widespread.

But the crucial question is - is there any indication that this has led to a weakening in support for the welfare provisions themselves? I think not. Such attitudes may be reflected in the support for far-right parties, a rising in racial tension and hostility to some local councils but I don't see much evidence of a direct link to opposition to a welfare state.

And here's another one, arguing against big bad multiculturalism. My problem with these arguments about multiculturalism is that they seem to assume that if you don't force peopel to integrate somewhat, most won't. But is there any evidence for that?