In recent decades, public debate in the UK about immigration has been dominated by numbers—how many arrive, how they arrive, and what pressure they place on services. But far less attention has been paid to how we live together. In addition to the question of how many people cross borders, we also need to think about how we ensure the social fabric remains resilient, inclusive, and cohesive in the face of profound demographic, cultural, and economic changes.
At Decentered Media, we believe that social cohesion and cultural democracy are not inevitable by-products of good intentions or economic integration. They must be nurtured with care. They require systems of communication and participation that allow people to see themselves—and each other—clearly, fairly, and as part of a shared public life.
From Multiculturalism to Community Cohesion: A Policy Shift with Consequences
UK integration policy has shifted significantly since the early 2000s. Following the disturbances in northern English cities in 2001, successive governments abandoned the language of multiculturalism, instead emphasising “shared British values” and “community cohesion.” As Ted Cantle notes, these policies, particularly in England, reframed integration as a two-way process—but with an increasingly prescriptive tone. The expectation was that newcomers should assimilate into a predefined national identity, with local authorities tasked with delivering programmes to support English language acquisition, employment, and civic awareness.
Yet this top-down approach has come at a cost. When integration is framed as something done to migrant communities—rather than with them—the risk is that trust is eroded rather than built. People feel excluded not only from institutions but from the public conversation itself. In such a climate, it’s no surprise that parallel lives persist and that social cohesion remains elusive in many towns and cities.
Fragmentation Is a Communication Crisis
The real crisis we face is not one of values, but of communication. Many of the social and cultural divides we experience today are not caused by people’s unwillingness to engage—they are rooted in an absence of meaningful platforms for dialogue, participation, and representation. Mainstream media and political discourse often reinforce stereotypes, reduce complex realities to soundbites, and amplify division through an obsession with exceptional or sensational cases.
This fragmentation is reinforced by the digital economy, which commodifies attention and accelerates polarisation. Meanwhile, place-based communication—where people talk with one another, not just about one another—is overlooked, undervalued, and underfunded.
This is where community-focused media can make a critical difference.
Community Media: Not a Luxury, but an Infrastructure for Democracy
Community media platforms—local radio, community video, grassroots publications, and digital storytelling projects—offer a vital space for bottom-up communication. They are not just channels for information but ecosystems of recognition, trust, and voice. They provide a space where diverse experiences can be shared and interpreted, where intergroup contact becomes possible, and where communities can challenge dominant narratives with stories grounded in everyday life.
In cities like Leicester, Glasgow, and Birmingham, community media has played a quiet but vital role in promoting understanding across cultural and generational divides. But this infrastructure is fragile. Despite growing evidence of impact, national and local integration strategies rarely prioritise or resource community media. Funding is often short-term, ad hoc, and geared toward service delivery rather than long-term capacity building.
What We Need Now: A Cultural Democracy Approach to Integration
If we are serious about building an inclusive society, we need a new framework—one grounded in cultural democracy. This means recognising that every community has the right to shape the cultural life of the places they live in. It means enabling people to express, critique, and create meaning on their own terms. And it means investing in communications systems that facilitate reciprocity, empathy, and mutual recognition.
A cultural democracy approach calls for:
- Investment in community media as part of local authority integration strategies, with ring-fenced support for migrant-led, multilingual platforms that have an emphasis on integration and intercultural understanding.
- Integration of media literacy and participatory storytelling into ESOL and employability programmes, enabling migrants to learn English, find their voice and navigate the wider information ecosystem.
- Development of local communication hubs that bring together schools, faith groups, youth projects, and community organisations to co-create shared narratives about place and belonging that assert interaction and integration.
- Evaluation frameworks that go beyond numeric outputs to assess impact on trust, inclusion, and social connectedness.
From Broadcasting to Belonging
Integration is not just about teaching migrants to fit in. It is about building a society in which everyone can participate meaningfully, without fear of exclusion or misrepresentation. That requires communication systems that are decentralised, participatory, and reflexive, while promoting common expression and dialogue that all members of society can join, leaving no one left out, stuck in cultural silos, or overlooked because they don’t have the skills to engage in the general conversation.
We must move beyond the simplistic binaries of assimilation versus multiculturalism, or cohesion versus segregation. What we need instead is a shared infrastructure of cultural expression and dialogue, built from the ground up and rooted in everyday life. This is the work of community-focused media.
If we fail to invest in these platforms, we risk a continued drift into polarisation and mistrust. But if we get this right, we create the conditions for a more open, just, and resilient society—one in which diversity is not feared or fetishised, but woven into the shared story of who we are.