Building cohesion and trust in London—a social marketing approach

Abstract

Community cohesion has been moving up the United Kingdom (UK) policy agenda since the early 2000s, largely in response to a growing concern about a lack of contact and connection between some of the UK’s Black and Minority Ethnic communities and the long-standing White community. First prioritised following the riots in Burnley and Oldham nearly ten years ago—which were seen to be a result of a lack of integration between Asian and White British communities—there is a broad consensus on the importance of the issue across local and central government. As the number of public authorities concerning themselves with cohesion has increased, the use of the term has broadened, and it is now generally assumed to describe the extent to which different elements of a community get on well and trust one another— across barriers of age and social class as well as ethnicity. Community cohesion (or social cohesion: the terms are often used interchangeably although the former is becoming dominant) is a difficult area to see in isolation. Individuals’ sense that their area is cohesive is influenced by their perception of its safety, the fairness of resource allocation in the area, the pace of perceived social change, the extent to which people feel involved in decision making structures— topics which cross-cut into almost every policy area. Trust is a unifying theme across these disparate policy areas: if people trust both local institutions and each other then cohesion in an area is likely to be higher. If people trust individuals in their area—including those from different backgrounds, of different ages, with different lifestyles—they are more likely to feel that change is positive rather than threatening. Similarly, people who trust institutions to act fairly are less likely to believe that new groups in their area are given unfair advantage: conversely, people who believe that their council, school, or housing association is discriminating against them are likely to be concerned that any change will act against them. Recent UK figures Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark (2011) 8:57–71 DOI 10.1007/s12208-010-0062-5