Seite - 142 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 2/2016

142 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Peter Burke | Cultural displacements and intellectual moorings much of a new language. But it is the next generation, above all the children, who are going to school in the host country, who are going to make the transition without anybody forcing them. We must not be in too much of a hurry. Who is, in the end, gaining, who is losing? From a personal point of view it seems that loss is predominant, but for the country as a whole the gains in skills and knowledge are very considerable. And as far as employment is concerned it seems that migrants do certain kinds of job which the natives don’t want to do: the English don’t like to be waiters in restaurants, but in which restaurant can you go in Cambridge and not find a lot of migrants as waiters – Indians, Italians, Poles. And the agricultural workers too. If it wasn’t for the eastern Europeans who take the plane over to come and pick strawberries or whatever it is, farmers would have a real problem. In agriculture you can’t find English people who would do the job, partly because what the farmers pay is not big enough an incentive. But the difference between the level of income here and the corresponding level in Poland makes it worthwhile for the Poles to come and do it. From some countries there has been a tradition of migration to a particular foreign country, which means that it is easier for new people to migrate because there is a community speaking their language already established. However, there is no tradition of Syrians coming here. So it is going to be much harder for them. And the fact that there is a Muslim community doesn’t necessarily help, because there isn’t such a great solidarity between Muslims speaking different languages, to say nothing of the difference between Sunni and Shia … For Syrians who escape to Lebanon or Turkey it is easier. You do not have to believe that the immigrants have to be completely assimilated and become Englishmen with a different skin colour. If a democracy is going to work the citizens must know about at least the political organisation of the country of which they are going to be citizens with votes. I think, England has gone too far with the citizenship test. I had a look at it: I would fail it myself. There are, in 2015, dozens of questions about sport which I do not take an interest in – questions that are not necessary for being a good British citizen. What we do need to know is that there is a House of Commons, a House of Lords, that there are parties called the Labour Party, and the Conservative Party and so on. So, I am a minimalist, in this sense, that for the country to function harmoniously the people who stay long enough to become citizens do need a certain minimum of knowledge. They need a certain minimum of English, but it does not mean that they have to speak it at home, as Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett9 some fifteen years ago recommended – I am happy to say to the shock of many English people who thought the government should not interfere with what goes on in peoples’ houses. 9 Gaby Hinsliff. ‘Speak English at home, Blunkett tells British Asians’, The Guardian September 15, 2002, URL <http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/sep/15/race.immigrationpolicy> URL [accessed 2016-01-18]], referred to in Talbot, Mary, and Karen Atkinson, David Atkinson. 2003. Language and power in the modern world (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 271.