ABSTRACT
It is now widely understood that London’s crisis is one of growing spatial and social division. Studies of the richest and poorest parts of the city have shown that, even when employment chances were rising overall, the gulf has widened over the last two decades (Congdon 1989). In this chapter I want to argue three things: first, that these emerging splits are both spatial and social but that the causes differ; second, that race and migration are intimately bound up with these changes; and, third, that this is true in ways which are rarely understood. The point of the last is to suggest that what we are witnessing is a new division of work and worklessness which impacts on ethnic minority groups in ways which divide them from each other, as well as from the majority society. In this sense, therefore, the crisis of London is intimately entwined with issues of race, but not in a simple sense. The city sorts and filters; there is more than one ‘front line’.
