Convenient blaming
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Immigration was blamed for the perceived crimes of British Asians, many of whom were born in the UK, as part of a broader political strategy rooted in the discourse of integrationism. This argument emerged prominently in the early 2000s following a series of riots in northern English towns like Bradford and Oldham, as well as after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Kundnani explains that rather than recognizing the socio-economic and institutional factors that led to social unrest, integrationists, across both the political right and center-left, attributed the problem to multicultural policies that, they claimed, had allowed immigrants and their descendants to live in cultural enclaves resistant to British norms.
The logic behind this blame involved constructing British Asians, particularly Muslims, as outsiders who failed to assimilate into British society. Even when the individuals involved were second or third-generation immigrants, politicians like David Blunkett and media commentators argued that these communities harbored “alien” cultural values passed down through generations. For instance, the White Paper Secure Borders, Safe Haven (2002) linked issues like forced marriages, implying that these cultural practices were imported threats to national identity. This shift made young British Asians, despite being British-born, targets of demands for assimilation, such as language requirements and citizenship tests.
Underlying this blame was a refusal to acknowledge institutional racism and socio-economic disenfranchisement. Kundnani argues that the political establishment inverted causality: instead of understanding racism as a structural force that marginalized Asian communities and led to ghettoization, integrationists depicted Asian self-segregation as the cause of social conflict. Thus, immigration was blamed not because of actual migrant behavior, but because the rules required a scapegoat to legitimize nationalistic measures aimed at controlling and assimilating non-white populations, reinforcing the idea that Britishness was under threat from unassimilated cultures.