Introduction

The UK has witnessed a significant shift in the nature of immigration in recent decades: migrants are arriving in greater numbers, and from a far more diverse range of countries, than 20 or 30 years ago. There is evidence that a new geography of immigration is emerging, resulting in the local presence of households with different motivations, aspirations and needs, raising issues for neighbourhood dynamics and trajectories. Public policy, meanwhile, has prompted renewed interest in the notion that ethnicity (and religion) is a divisive issue, suggesting that ethnic residential ‘segregation’ is undermining community cohesion in UK cities (Community Cohesion Independent Review Team, 2001; Ouseley, 2001). However, despite the prominence of immigration and community cohesion policy and the heated debates both issues provoke, very little connection has thus far been made between these two policy areas, particularly at the local level. In fact, immigration policy and discourse have remained largely aspatial, contrasting sharply with the rootedness of the community cohesion agenda in assumptions about the consequences of minority ethnic spatial concentration. The community cohesion agenda, meanwhile, has implicitly focused on South Asian (especially Muslim) populations and the neighbourhoods in which they live, serving to problematise these communities but neglecting the potential neighbourhood consequences of the arrival of new population groups.

Recognition of the local implications of new immigration is gradually emerging in both immigration and community cohesion discourse (see for example Audit Commission, 2007; Commission on Integration and Cohesion, 2007; Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government (IDeA), 2007); a reorientation probably prompted by the significant numbers of migrants arriving in the UK from EU accession states since 2004 and pressure from some local authorities to acknowledge the challenges this presents. However, awareness still fails to reflect the scale and pace of change. This chapter represents the beginnings of an attempt to understand the changing nature of UK immigration and the way in which new immigrant settlement is reshaping neighbourhoods and raising different challenges in different places. It explores the geography of new immigrant settlement and the localised impact of this spatial distribution, examining the ways in which new immigration is shifting the population composition and dynamics of some neighbourhoods as new groups coincide with established minority ethnic communities, or settle in locations with no previous minority ethnic presence.