From an ‘island of strangers’ to a ‘nation of neighbours’ – here’s how to make real progress on social connection and integration
David Barclay, Managing Partner for the Good Faith Partnership, responds to recent debate about immigration policy in the UK.
The Government’s White Paper on Immigration has caused a heated debate. This is partly due to the wide-ranging reforms proposed – from cutting back on visas for care workers to lengthening the process for migrants to gain Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK. But it is also due to a particular phrase that the Prime Minister used in the press conference announcing the White Paper, that these measures were required to avoid the risk of the UK becoming “an island of strangers”.
It is a striking phrase, and one that has already drawn significant criticism from some who have compared the rhetoric to that of Enoch Powell and his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. As the Managing Partner of the Good Faith Partnership, a cross-sector collaboration organisation that tackles big social issues by bringing together the worlds of faith, politics, business and charity, I believe the Prime Minister is right in his diagnosis that the UK risks becoming an island of strangers, but wrong in his prognosis of stricter migration rules as the answer.
Looking at the evidence, it is hard to argue with the reality that the UK is suffering from a crisis of disconnection. 7% of Britons say that they do not have anyone that they would call a close friend, and another 12% say they only have one such person in their lives. 3.83 million people in Great Britain experience chronic loneliness, with 16-24 year olds being the age group with highest reported levels of loneliness. In 2023-24, just 61% of adults felt they belonged ‘very strongly’ or ‘fairly strongly’ to their immediate neighbourhood, down slightly from 63% in 2021-22.
Whilst technology means that we have never been more connected, these statistics show us that in many ways we have also never been more isolated, an argument echoed by the Godfather of ‘social capital’, Robert Putnam, in his book The Upswing. In it, Putnam charts the development of US society from the rampant individualism and inequality of the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century through to the much more communitarian era of the mid 20th century and then back towards individualism and social dislocation in the late 20th and early 20th centuries. It is a story that rings true for the UK just as much as the US, and so it is perhaps no surprise that Keir Starmer has struck a particular chord with the fear that we may be becoming ‘an island of strangers’.
What is much less clear is whether tightening immigration rules alone will help us to turn a corner and chart a different path. It is of course undeniable that net migration has surged to unprecedented highs in recent years. It is also not unreasonable for people to question what the constant addition of large numbers of newcomers might mean for community life – after all homophily, our natural human tendency to relate to those most like us, is a well-documented fact of life.
But beyond these simple truths, things quite quickly get much more complicated. For example, the mode by which people have migrated to the UK can create very different integration outcomes—just look at the Homes for Ukraine Scheme through which almost 200,000 have fled conflict in Eastern Europe to safety here.
These people are not strangers, since they have been hosted directly by British households and supported by local Welcome Hubs and other efforts to create a safe landing and a pathway to integration. What the success of this programme demonstrates is that the impact of migration on community cohesion is as much a question of integration infrastructure as it is a question of numbers. That’s why we at Good Faith have joined forces with organisations such as the Pickwell Foundation, the Community Sponsorship Alliance, Neighbourly Lab and many others to create the Welcome Coalition, an umbrella initiative to promote national support for local welcoming efforts.
And of course, this question of integration infrastructure goes well beyond welcome for newcomers. Across the UK, the last two decades have seen the rapid erosion of all kinds of community spaces – from community pubs to libraries to children’s centres and youth clubs. It’s no surprise that the ties that bind us have weakened when the institutions through which we meet and belong have crumbled into disrepair before our eyes.
The good news is that the fightback for rebuilding our communities has already begun, whether through the burgeoning community power movement and campaigns like We’re Right Here, the pioneering work of the Relationships Project and their efforts to develop relationship-centred practice in public services, or our own efforts in building the Warm Welcome Campaign to become a blossoming movement of more than 5,000 community spaces right across the UK.
The social connection movement in the UK is gathering momentum, fuelled by our natural craving for connection. But for this country to truly turn away from becoming an island of strangers and towards becoming a nation of neighbours, we need our government to develop an ambitious and proactive integration agenda, and not just a series of measures designed to look harsh and reduce migration numbers.