How is the cultural diversity of Manchester reflected in the city Essay

How is the cultural diversity of Manchester reflected in the city today - Essay Example After the second World War the migrant communities arrived in great numbers to help rebuild the industries. The immigrants were mainly from the Commonwealth including India, Pakistan, Jamaica and West Indies, and also from Ireland and China. Manchester has a unique sense of national and cultural diversity. According to Taylor et al (1996) the city’s strategic location between a geographic frontier to the north, and an economic frontier to the south, and its distinctive regional openness enabled it to become a kind of Eldorado. From the early nineteenth century, not only English labourers from neighbouring areas, but people from other countries such as Ireland, Scotland, Germany, from Greece and Italy migrated towards Manchester. Significantly, specific localities became colonized by particular migrant groups. Most of the 30,000 Irish immigrants clustered together in Little Ireland at the lower end of Oxford Street, and large numbers of poor, rural immigrants from Cumbria settled in different areas. In contemporary Manchester, it is evident that ostensibly similar, geographically close regions are occupied by diverse ethnic groups of different ethnic mixes. A common feature for all the ethnic minorities is their shared experience of generalized subordination under the white â€Å"host society† of England (Taylor et al, 1996). Thus, Manchester has been colonized in whole areas by particular ethnic or migrant groups: Moss Side by West Indian; Cheetham Hill by Asians; Prestwich by the Jewish; Chorlton by the Irish, etc (Taylor et al, 1996). Further, the borough of Manchester, the central city in the agglomeration forming Greater Manchester, is the main location of residence for the Black ethnic minority group (Musterd et al, 1998). Taylor et al (1996, p.200) express their concern that â€Å"this process of residential dispersal and domination results in a kind of de facto apartheid of different ethnic groups†, which opposes the liberal concept of a multicultural