Getting into Local Power: The Politics of Ethnic Minorities in British and French Cities

287 Pages·2005·1.55 MB·English

by  Romain Garbaye(auth.)

GETTING INTO LOCAL
POWER
Studies in Urban and Social Change
Published by Blackwell in association with the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Series Editors:Harvey Molotch;Linda McDowell;Margit Mayer;Chris Pickvance
The Blackwell Studies in Urban and Social Change aim to advance debates and empirical analyses stimu-
lated by changes in the fortunes of cities and regions across the world.Topics range from monographs on
single places to large-scale comparisons across East and West,North and South.The series is explicitly inter-
disciplinary;the editors judge books by their contribution to intellectual solutions rather than according to
disciplinary origin.
Published
Getting Into Local Power:The Politics of Ethnic Minorities in British and French Cities
Romain Garbaye
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Forthcoming
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Cities and Regions in a Global Era
Alan Harding (ed.)
Urban South Africa
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Urban Social Movements and the State
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GETTING INTO
LOCAL POWER
THE POLITICS OF ETHNIC MINORITIES
IN BRITISH AND FRENCH CITIES
Romain Garbaye
© 2005 by Romain Garbaye
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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The right of Romain Garbaye to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in
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First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garbaye,Romain.
Getting into local power:the politics of ethnic minorities in British and French cities /
Romain Garbaye.
p. cm.—(Studies in urban and social change)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-1-4051-2697-7 (hardback:alk.paper)
ISBN-10:1-4051-2697-3 (hardback:alk.paper)
ISBN-13:978-1-4051-2694-6 (pbk.:alk.paper)
ISBN-10:1-4051-2694-9 (pbk.:alk.paper)
1. Local elections—France—Case studies. 2. Minorities—France—Political activity—Case
studies. 3. France—Ethnic relations—Political aspects—Case studies. 4. Local elections—Great
Britain—Case studies. 5. Minorities—Great Britain—Political activity—Case studies.
6. Great Britain—Ethnic relations—Political aspects—Case studies. 7. Birmingham (Eng.)—
Politics and government. 8. Lille (France)—Politics and government. 9. Roubaix (France)—
Politics and government. I. Title. II. Series.
JS4975.G37 2005
323.141¢09173¢2 – dc22 2005005880
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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Contents
List of Maps ix
Foreword by Patrick Weil x
Series Editors’ Preface xiv
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
The Election of Ethnic Minorities on European City
Councils 1
Comparing Ethnic Minority Politics in Britain and France 3
Contrasting Levels of Representation and Modes of Access in
the 1980s and 1990s 6
Towards an Analysis of Local Political Processes 13
1 Historical Institutionalism and the Comparison of Local Cases 20
Strategies of Management of Ethnic Conflict and Historical
Institutionalism 20
Strategies of management of ethnic conflict 21
Historical institutionalism 25
Central and local factors 26
Birmingham, Lille and Roubaix, 1980s–2001 29
The Main Propositions and the Outline of the Book 32
vi Contents
The framing of debates on immigration and integration in national
politics: 1945–2001 32
Contrasting local political systems 34
2 The British Policy Framework: Liberal Citizenship Regime,
Depoliticization and the Race Relationism of British Cities 37
1948–1958: Pressure on Local Authorities and National
Indifference 39
The beginning of mass migration 39
National apathy and local agitation 41
1958–1968: The Birth of the British Race Relations Policy
Framework 44
Depoliticization 44
1965–1968: the first ‘race relations’ policies 46
Consequences of the race relations framework on later patterns of
minority participation 49
The 1970s and 1980s: The Legacy of the 1960s Settlement 50
The polarization of the 1970s 50
The Labour Party as the minorities’ party – until 2001? 51
The 1980s onwards: local Labour activism 54
The ‘Race Relationism’ of British Cities in the 1980s and 1990s 57
Equal opportunities policies, city networks and the election of
non-white councillors 57
Local variations 59
Conclusion 61
3 The French Policy Framework: Planned Migration, Xenophobic
Politics and Durable Political Exclusion 63
1945–1973: State Planning and Unintended Effects 64
The 1945 framework and the generation gap 65
The unexpected arrival of extra-European immigrants 68
The management of North African populations by the central state 69
1974–1983: The Bureaucratic Management of Political
Incertitude 70
From migrants to minorities 70
Struggling to define immigration policy 71
1983–1997: National and Local Politicization of Immigration
in Xenophobic Terms 73
The Socialist Party and the failure of the Beur movement 74
The rise of the Front National and the contradictory reactions of
party elites 78
The Construction of Consensus after 1997 86
Socialist policy innovations 86
The 2001 local elections 89
Conclusion 90
Contents vii
4 Birmingham, 1980s–2001: Inner-city Labour Politics and
Pluri-ethnic Government 92
From Indifference to Multi-ethnic Coalition: The Birth of Ethnic
Politics in Birmingham 95
Birmingham government: polycentric and partisan 95
A large, diverse and disadvantaged ethnic minority population 97
From indifference and hostility to pluri-ethnic government: 50 years of
ethnic politics 103
Institutions and Activists: How Ethnic Minorities Penetrated the
Labour Party 116
Styles of community organization 117
The political institutions of the inner city 122
Three styles of co-optation in Labour ward-level politics: from vote
brokerage to independent councillors 125
Conclusion 142
5 Lille, 1980s–2001: Machine Politics and Exclusion of Minorities
in the French Municipal System 144
Introduction 144
The Lille–Roubaix comparison 144
A strategy of avoidance and denial 145
Lille’s Double Strategy of Externalization and Political Exclusion 147
The emergence of a North African minority 147
The municipality’s policy of gentrification 150
The persistence of a social and ethnic ‘problem’ in Lille 152
Social discontent in the political arena: Front National, republican
universalism and minority disorganization 155
The French Municipal System, Machine Politics and Minority
Exclusion in Lille 159
Municipal institutions in Lille 161
The 1980s: municipal politics and the failure of the Beur movement 164
The 1990s: machine politics and the marginalization of North
African dissent 169
Relations between municipality and North African groups in the 1990s:
patronage and dependence 179
Conclusion 185
6 Roubaix, 1980s–2001: Inclusion Through Neighbourhood Groups
and an Open Municipal Game 187
Introduction 187
Urban Crisis, Migrations and the Political Management of
the Crisis 188
From ‘Holy City of the Proletariat’ to post-industrial crisis 188
A large population of Algerian descent 189
viii Contents
Roubaix identity, Front National vote and pro-minority policies 191
Institutions and generations of activists 195
Roubaix Political History and Immigrant Incorporation in the
1990s 196
Cross-party government and inclusion of migrants in the municipal
community 197
North African activists in an open political game 206
Conclusion 209
Conclusion 211
Strengths and Limitations of Historical Institutionalism in Ethnic
Minority Studies 211
The End of the Path: Muslim Anger in Britain and the
Lingering Burden of Beur Failure in France 213
Ethnic Minorities and the Decline of the European Left 217
Local Strategies and their Unintended Effects 218
Appendix: Interviews and Sources 221
Notes 223
Bibliography 240
Index 256
Maps
Map 1 Birmingham wards and constituencies in October 1996 xvii
Map 2 Percentage of population of black and minority ethnic
groups in Birmingham by ward, 1991 xviii
Map 3 Percentage of population of ethnic Pakistani group in
Birmingham by ward, 1991 xix
Map 4 The neighbourhoods of Lille xx
Map 5 Concentration of foreigners in the neighbourhoods of
Roubaix xxi
Foreword
Patrick Weil, Directeur de Recherches, CNRS-Université
Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I)
It was a challenge,for a young French graduate student,to leave France seven
years ago to work towards a PhD in the United Kingdom on French and
British local politics,drawing on an American,new institutionalist approach.
It was an additional challenge to return successfully to the French academic
system,given the relative lack of interest of the French in institutionalist polit-
ical science and given their traditional distrust of comparative studies.
Yet Romain Garbaye has successfully carried off these challenges, and I
am happy to introduce the result. Trained at Oxford University, he is now
Assistant Professor at the Sorbonne (University of Paris-IV). In his disserta-
tion that is now published as this book, he compares the politics of ethnic
minorities in three cities: a British one, Birmingham, and two French ones,
Lille and Roubaix. Examining how ethnic minorities ‘get into local power’,
he asks why they have successfully entered Birmingham politics while remain-
ing shut out of Lille politics and slowly gaining ground in Roubaix. Is it
because the French are faithful to their republican ideology while the British
have embraced multiculturalism? Or should one point to more persistent
racism and intolerance in France than in Britain? Neither of these.Using his-
torical institutionalism as a tool of enlightenment, he demonstrates instead
that it is features of local political systems such as central–local relations,
modes of local party organization and styles of local government that have
shaped different patterns of access to political representation across countries
and cities.