To rebuild our communities we must recognise the importance of social capital rather than force newcomers to be like us
Immigration destroys social capital, the networks of reciprocity and trust that bind people and communities together.
That's the bad news. The good news is that it can be rebuilt, and is rebuilt, not by the kind of integration that requires newcomers to be like us, or by multicultural separatism. It takes time and effort to change Them and Us into a "new us".
A new us? Well, a generation ago, a marriage between an Irish Catholic and an Italian one would routinely have been described as a "mixed marriage".
Since such people's children now marry or raise children with Sikhs or Jews, Hindus or Muslims, Italian-Irish no longer looks exotic. But when newcomers first arrive, and stick together, the natural reaction on both sides is to "hunker down".
Who says so? Robert D Putnam, the author of the influential study Bowling Alone (2000), which asserted that there had been an unprecedented collapse in civic society, in social and political association, in the US since the 1960s, hence the title.
Whereas people once went bowling in groups and played in leagues, now they increasingly played alone.
It's not all bad news. The decline was generational, as the young were not doing what youngsters during the second world war did, but that decline started to reverse in 2001.
Not because of the publication of his book, Putnam jokes, but more likely because of 9/11, a Pearl Harbour moment for many Americans. Barack Obama, whom Putnam knows quite well, was "pitch perfect" for this new generation.
He understands the importance of social capital, the "real" version, made up of people you know, and the "virtual" internet kind. In reality, most networks are now mixed, or "alloy", as Putnam puts it. He says he is closer to his daughter who lives in Costa Rica thanks to the internet: "I did not meet my daughter on the internet." Facebook and other social networks came in stream after 9/11 too.
I listened to Putnam talking at Policy Exchange, the top Cameroon thinktank, at its Westminster offices. He is a very funny and learned man, who is obviously a Democrat ? he's a Harvard professor for heaven's sake ? but also able to disentangle the evidence from his personal views.
That sets him apart from those US conservatives who greeted the Putnam research I summarised in the first sentence above with glee ("At last out of Harvard comes truth," said Pat Buchanan), but ignored the more positive corollary that time and effort cures it.
Interracial social capital is only one aspect of the much studied (social capital among the Incas) phenomenon. Putnam addressed religion ? where the news of greater mutual tolerance is good ? and social capital between classes where, in the US at least, it is not so good.
Work, marriage, residential neighbourhoods ? it's all getting more polarised, not less. "How smart you were at choosing your parents" really matters, as the professor put it.
So Putnam is clearly twitchy about faith schools and their potential to undermine "bridging social capital" of the kind that brings together different sorts of people, as opposed to the "bonding" variety between the likeminded.
He thinks it is unwise to set the state against wider society ("It's not a zero-sum game"), as the Cameroon "big society" obviously seeks to do. The state sustains voluntary activity. The European debate on immigration, which polarises multicultural separatism (has he got that bit right, I wonder?) against the "be like us" alternative also has him worried.
Why does social capital matter? Because the evidence, disputed but never overturned, suggests that people who know their neighbours' names are less likely to be burgled than those ? usually the poor and transient ? who don't. Their kids are likely to be safer, even if they are not the type to join groups such as the PTA or the church.
People with friends are likely to be happier and live longer than those who don't have any. Family and friends are the core form of networking, but it feeds out into wider civic society and all forms of activism, from football supporters' clubs to political and social activism.
I enjoy this kind of chat, especially when the speaker is not a doom-monger. The Putnams arrived in New England in 1640, 20 years after the Pilgrim Fathers, and he has a nice little riff about how unsettling later newcomers can be.
Those Dutch? Those Germans? They don't speak English and they don't mix. But then along come the Irish and the Italians, then the Jews. Suddenly the Brits, Dutch and Germans find they are all Anglo-Saxons after all. They have created "a new us".
By the same token, what used to be called "Jewish comedy" ? most American comics were apparently Jewish at one stage ? is now just comedy. Back in 1910, people deplored the habit of creating an Italian-American Society and wanted immigrants to integrate. But joining the Italian-American Society was just a stage in becoming "real Americans" and joining the Rotary Club. "Bridging it" is a thought we might usefully ponder in Britain.
Putnam knows Britain well enough to know our differences. A conspicuous one is religion and its prominent role in forming social capital in America. In his new work, American Grace, Putnam's research finds that churchgoers score very highly on good causes and are more likely to be involved in secular and progressive good causes as well as religious ones, although they are a tad less tolerant.
Some 65% of Americans believe in the right to speak out in defence of al-Qaida (I'm afraid the UK figure is 45%) but that rises to 70% among the secular and 60% among the religious. All the same, churches have been champions of immigrants' rights, as they were of slaves 150 years ago.
Secular readers may take comfort here from the evidence suggesting that churchgoing social capital is not connected with theology or even a belief in God.
It's the churchgoing habit, far more widespread in the US than here, which is crucial, along with friends made at church, synagogue or mosque. As a non-attender, I have long noted this phenomenon in my own London neighbourhood. Churchgoers are prominent among the activists.
When it came to questions, I couldn't help asking how the Republican party's unruly Tea Party movement fits into the template Putnam had been describing. They're not new activists, they're conservatives, mostly elderly, quite well-off white males, within the Republican party. They feel that other people ? women, ethnic minorities and immigrants ? are getting things they are not getting.
"They're not even against Big Government, they're against Big Government for other people," and thus very attached to the taxpayer-funded Medicare they get, says Putnam ? which will bankrupt the US (says me) unless Congress and the White House can make it cheaper and fairer. So Obama represents pretty much everything they hate, Putnam concludes.
Most advanced societies seem to have about 10% of the electorate that is elderly and grumpy about the establishment, he adds. Look at France or the True Finns party. Do you have one here? he asks. "The Conservative party," quips the man in front of me, whom I will not identify as the ex-Labour MP Derek Wyatt. Naughty Derek, that's not a very bridging remark. Bridging's harder, but we all have to try.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/may/31/big-society-raises-questions-immigration
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