It's that time of the week where I contemplate my future again.
It turns out there's a thing called reverse culture shock. After being away from my home land of England for almost 14 years now, going back is going to be...well who knows. Some people go back and adjust immediately. Others never quite fit in again.
So I need to prepare not just financially but culturally and socially. The landscape, the demographics, the infrastructure, the economy, the legal system, the job market - everything will have changed in 14 years.
Well, first thing's first, the big topic in the news a lot lately seems to be immigration. This is a bigger deal to me than I expected, and I believe a large part of that is because I've been living in exceedingly homogenous countries this entire time. Even Shanghai where I live now, though it's very international by comparison to the rest of China, is still about 99.99% Chinese. Going from that level of static ethnicity to a place where you got 40% white people, 20% Indian, 10% European, 10% Pakistani, and so on, it's going to be quite a shock, I reckon.
Growing up, the concept of race never really passed my mind. I grew up in the most 'diverse' city in the country by far, Leicester. My friend across the street was brown but I couldn't tell you in hindsight which category he belonged to. My oldest friend is Asian, my closest friend and his brother are black, and you couldn't go for a walk around a park without seeing a Middle Eastern in religious garb and hearing all kinds of foreign languages. Never really questioned it. In fact, nowadays, only 40% of Leicester is White - even fewer are 'English' as there is a large presence of Europeans there, too.
Well, times have changed. Not only have I been living in a completely homogenous land with a shared language, culture and history for my entire adult life, but England had its immigration floodgates thrown wide open after my childhood, and really only started kicking in after I left. Now, we have over 1 million immigrants entering the country per year which is 1 Birmingham City of people (the second largest city in the country) annually. And these people do not share language, culture or ideology.
So the question is, how has this affected the culture and vibe? Has multiculturalism been a roaring success where people of all colours come together and intermingle in harmony, or has it created a segregated civilisation, where all cultures stick to their own and grow fear and hatred for the rest?
This is an important question, and one I cannot really answer truly for myself until I set foot on the soil myself. But I can prepare somewhat by using the very handy, exceptionally details Census data map from 2021. And some of the things I found have been pretty fascinating.
Not in a good way.
Let's compare Leicester to Shanghai
Here, though there are plenty of foreigners you can find if you look, such as myself, we are all University educated, whether it's from UK, USA, Japan or otherwise. Immigration to China is not easy, and living in Shanghai isn't cheap. There is no policy in place to provide welfare for immigrants, and as a result, there just aren't many foreigners overall. China simply doesn't accept them.
There are no foreign shopkeepers or taxi drivers, no foreign doctors (in a few elite private establishments) or builders. Foreigners here are limited to 'high skilled' work, big business, teachers, and with some nationalities limited to being live-in cleaners for the wealthy. If you don't like the way things are run, tough luck. Suck it up or get out. There is no compromise.
In a country like England, whose immigration policy has created entire regions where the majority of the population are foreign-born, efforts to push multiculturalism has demonstrably been a huge failure, something literally visible on a map.
In Leicester, there is a significant population of foreign-born; 60% born within the UK, 10% were born in Europe, 10% Africa, and 20% Middle East. And none of them intermingle:
You can clearly see this lack of melting-pot culture when you look at the Census map data in a bit more detail. Compare the ethnicities of White and Asian:
Only 5% in this highlighted area is white, but you can see most of the Eastern half is devoid of white people at all, let alone White British, with the whitest area of the East maxing out at under 30%.
Meanwhile, the regions on the outskirts, the suburbs, are around 92-95% white. This, for perspective, is walking distance. On the right image, we can see a similar depiction; the Eastern half is 70-90% Asian.
Now, there are fewer black ethnicities overall, but you can also see this division happening here too, where around 15% of the population in the North West are black, compared to 1-5% elsewhere, or even less in the suburbs.
You can continue breaking this down, with specifically Chinese taking up the centre, Indians taking the the East majority of that East side, and Caribbean in the West.
Perhaps the most striking dividing line is between the predoominantly Hindu Indians and Muslim Pakistanis. Somehow I feel these guys have very little interest in multiculturalism. (Dark Blue)
This is the same all over. The supposed ultimate melting pot of diversity, London, is just as segregated, just on a larger scale. Take a look at these 7 different ethnicities, noting the highest densities in dark blue never overlap:
This is a perfect visual representation of the inherent problem with multiculturalism. You can imagine that we white privileged folk love the idea of multiculturalism, opening our arms to all who can join us. Diversity is Strength and all; The ultimate virtue signal to let the world know we are good people with minimal effort. (as long as they don't live near them specifically).
But then, the very people we invite inherently do not agree with this philosophy, at all. Pakistanis and Hindus segregating from each other is just one example and a direct result of their long, painful history of war and uncompromising cultural and religious disagreements. They largely hate each other.
Chinese do it, Arabs do it, whites and blacks do it. Everyone does it to varying degrees. A lot of these cultures and countries are direct enemies with one another, whether it's political, religious, cultural or otherwise.
So, this behaviour of segregation makes total sense, much of which I am also guilty of in my own context, and I wouldn't blame any culture for creating their own little pocket of comfort and familiarity. But this creates a number of enclaves of other mini-nations within borders in which nobody has to interact with any outsiders. Tribalism in full force.
This might be ok in small scale. The real problem arises with sheer scale. Bringing 1 million people from 2 or 3 places allows them to congregate into their isolated enclaves and thrive as is, without any need to even learn anything about the country, the culture, language or people. There are children born into a foreign family who go to schools full of foreign students, and grow up barely speaking the language at all.
This is where the problem arises.
What people tend to do is treat non-white as some massive bloc, a singular alliance VS. white people. But that simply isn't the case. By replacing one ethnicity who share culture, language and history, with 15 different ethnicities with close to nothing in common with each other, in such a short period of time of 20-30 years, it stands to reason problems will ensue, to say the least. And we are seeing that in innumerable ways.
Boots on the ground, I remember seeing integration all over; Muslims queuing at the ice cream truck, lying around on the park grass and so on. But beyond anecdotes, it seems clear division between people is inevitable, and I'm pretty sure we - English, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and beyond - are gonna want less of that, not more.
