Without borders: community development, biculturalism and multiculturalism

Aotearoa/New Zealand is considered one of the most multicultural countries on the planet. The 2013 census revealed that ‘New Zealand has more ethnicities than there are countries in the world. In total, 213 ethnic groups were identified in the census, whereas there are 196 countries recognised by Statistics New Zealand’. This chapter shares some of the issues, experiences, questions, and practice implications arising for the author, a mixed-race, British-born community development practitioner and social work educator living in Aotearoa. She has sought to better understand the issues and questions regarding the coexistence of biculturalism and multiculturalism; and to question what it might be that we separately and collectively need to do in order to move forward with respect and inclusivity.

The balancing act: community agency leadership in multi-ethnic/multiracial communities

This chapter presents the author's reflections on the question of whiteness and white privilege from the perspective of one who has achieved a substantial leadership position, acknowledged most of all by his co-ethnics (broadly people of Black African and Afro-Caribbean origins), but less so by people of Asian origin and, seemingly, hardly if at all by his white peers. One of the major indicators of racism is the collection of stereotypes used to demean and undermine minorities. The author also offers significant insights for working in multiracial communities, notably that such communities, being heterogeneous, have within them a range of differing and sometimes contradictory sets of values, norms, and practices: being a community worker requires knowing when to challenge patriarchal practices.

Participatory action research with refugee and asylum-seeking women

This chapter discusses the methods, processes, and outcomes of a Comic Relief-funded three-year community development and advocacy programme undertaken with Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Women (RASW) in London. It focuses on how the use of participatory action research and training delivered by RASW can challenge and inform the way in which ‘professionals’ deliver health and legal services to vulnerable communities. The project, undertaken during 2012–15 by Independent Academic Research Services, a London-based charity, was co-designed with participant beneficiaries with the explicit aim of generating institutional change and increased gender sensitivity in the treatment of RASW, both through harnessing research findings to drive policy and practice change and by allowing women themselves to articulate the problems they currently face in terms of accessing appropriate support.

Capacity building with BME groups

This chapter examines community capacity-building processes in relation to the UK black and minority ethnic voluntary and community sector (BME VCS), focusing on a specific project in Birmingham, the UK's second-largest city. The project, Birmingham Skills Training Reaching Organisations and Neighbourhood Groups (B.STRONG), ran from 1998 to 2011 and was evaluated at regular intervals. B.STRONG covered the whole of Birmingham, although at certain times it prioritised certain areas of the city due to limited funding sources, and employed between two and eight staff. The chapter looks at the experiences of BME community groups in their engagement with community capacity-building processes and the wider ‘mainstream’ VCS. It also looks at the current situation for community capacity building for the BME VCS in the longer term, given the current context of recession, government austerity measures, and the reduction of funding possibilities.

Developing communities: do minority groups need development?

This chapter critiques the notion of community development in South East Asia (and elsewhere) by looking at responses to Roma groups in the European context, the challenges of professional ascription of community, and ambitions to fabricate community. It explores assumptions about shared identity/interest and replication of colonial ethos, drawing on Fanonian perspectives. It considers work premised on suppositions about the need for development, how logically (and effectively if not consciously) these promote ‘deficit’ models of practice, implying that groups are relatively ‘underdeveloped’. This suggests an Illichian analysis of community development as a form of professional iatrogenesis that promotes incarnations of ‘weak power’.

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller women: how community work can both challenge and contribute to gender inequalities

This chapter presents an account of the author's community development work with Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) women in the East of England from 2010 to 2016. It summarises a range of observations, reflections, and questions gathered throughout this prolonged period of practice, with a view to informing the work of others working with GRT people, regarded as the most disadvantaged minority communities in the UK. Situated on the margins of a large urban settlement and nestled between motorways, an industrial estate, and sizeable swathes of unsightly marshland lies a 27-pitch local authority caravan site. Practically unnoticeable to passers-by in their cars, trucks, and lorries, it is home to families and individuals belonging to GRT communities in the region of East Anglia. In 2009, new Neighbourhood Management initiatives were developed in East Anglia, in one of which the author was employed as a community development worker.

Community development with Chinese mental health service users in the UK

This chapter focuses on Chinese mental health service users in the UK and aims to illustrate how structural inequalities shape their recovery journeys. It starts with a discussion of the Recovery Approach with which the research critically engaged. It then introduces the diversity within the Chinese community in the UK. It selects two stories from the research to shed light on how, for UK Chinese people, inequalities such as class, gender, and ethnicity intersect at national and transnational levels, and impact on the way recovery journeys unfold. Such inequalities contribute to their distress and ill-health in the first place and could hinder their recovery. The implications for community development work with Chinese communities are then discussed.

Introduction

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's aims, which are to help to fill a substantial gap in the literature on community development work; to outline the history and theory of community development work with minority groups; to explore, through case studies from different parts of the world, how different approaches to community development work can empower minority ethnic communities to overcome social disadvantage; and to encourage a wider debate and writing about this area of work. The chapter then provides an overarching historical, theoretical, and political context for the detailed analyses and accounts of local work that follow. This is important because community workers are now increasingly struggling at the local level against political, social, and economic trends generated at the global level, making their work more difficult but more urgent than ever before.

Cultural identity, migration and community development in Glasgow

This chapter examines two linked stories of community work and migration in Glasgow (Scotland's largest and most multi-ethnic city in terms of numbers and diversity). One is of the work taken forward by the Scottish Refugee Council with refugees and asylum seekers across the city; the other is of the neighbourhood-level work of Crossroads, a long-established youth and community association in the Govanhill area of the city. It is set within the shifting context of community work in the city over the years. The account here, covering 10 years, shows how the work moved from building links and organisational responses to ensure that this deprived population was able effectively to access a range of basic services, through advocacy, to more structured forms of organisation.

sampad: working with arts and culture

sampad is a South Asian arts and heritage organisation based at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, UK, that develops high-quality dance, music, drama, literature, poetry, crafts performances, and events based on traditions drawn from the countries of the Indian subcontinent to engage in a creative intercultural dialogue with all sections of Britain's increasingly diverse society. Through the language of art, it explores the relationship between traditional and emerging identities, between established and popular art forms, within and between different religious, cultural, and social groupings, and between settled communities and new migrants to create the basis for a wider and more informed debate in wider civil society about the construction of community and identity in the modern era. This chapter explores the extent to which sampad has met its aims and objectives. sampad's formal mission statement now is to connect people and communities with British Asian arts and heritage and to play a proactive role in the creative economy.