The Construction of Identity, Integration and Participation of Caribbeans in British Society

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to contribute to a conversation about the integration of new minority racial and ethnic communities in two major nation states within the European Union: Britain and France. This conversation has gone on for the better part of three decades, but particularly over the last two, and is likely to go on for at least another three decades. And while some commentators thought there were clear signs about possible directions in which these new communities in the two countries were likely to go in the future, this confidence is less certain today. This uncertainty is due to several international and national acts of terrorism from wanton killings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in the late 1990s, followed by the outrageous destructions and further killings on 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, and later similar crimes in Bali and Madrid. The terrorists who perpetrated these crimes sought to justify their action by reference to Islam, and thereby raised new and pressing issues of an international nature but which also urgently require national attention and solutions. In Britain this message was deeply reinforced by the terrorist bombings on the London transport system in July 2005 by young men with British citizenship, claiming to act in the name of Islam, and establishing a climate of fear in all communities, including Muslim communities. These have awoken many to the kinds of enemies there are to what Karl Popper called ‘the open society’.