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In it together: Asylum, multiculturalism and grassroots integration in twenty-first century Britain Author(s): David Bates Source: eSharp, Special Issue: The 1951 UN Refugee Convention - 60 Years On (2012), pp. 113-139 URL: http://www.gla.ac.uk/esharp ISSN: 1742-4542 Copyright in this work remains with the author. _________________________________________________________________ eSharp is an international online journal for postgraduate research in the arts, humanities, social sciences and education. Based at the University of Glasgow and run by graduate students, it aims to provide a critical but supportive entry to academic publishing for emerging academics, including postgraduates and recent postdoctoral students. esharp@gla.ac.uk eSharp Special Issue: The 1951 UN Refugee Convention - 60 Years On In it together: Asylum, multiculturalism and grassroots integration in twenty-first century Britain David Bates (University of Sunderland)   Introduction For much of the twenty-first century, immigration and cultural diversity have rarely been far from the top of the political agenda in the UK. Throughout the 2000s, numerous opinion polls seemed to suggest that for a significant proportion of the population, immigration (and specifically asylum) was one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary British politics (Finney and Peach 2004, p.10). These concerns about the nature and scale of immigration were often linked to questions of identity and national belonging, with many believing that cultural diversity posed a threat to both national security and national collective solidarity (Lowles and Painter 2011). A numbe