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- Author or Editor: Stephen Jivraj x
Ethnicity is at the centre of major political debates in Britain. From diverse perspectives, politicians and campaigners have highlighted differences between ethnic groups in where they live, the skills and education they are provided with, the jobs they have and the healthcare they receive. The measurement of these ethnic group differences has become increasingly complex as identities evolve, and more people mix within families, neighbourhoods and workplaces. Comparisons made 50 years ago between immigrants from the British New Commonwealth as a whole and the average experience of UK residents are now made between family origins of many more world regions, between immigrants and their children and grandchildren born and educated in the UK. The context of social policies has moved from race relations to also encompass the management of immigration and the integration of immigrants, religious discrimination and the relationships between ethnic and religious claims and state services, as well as the state’s response to terrorist threats.
In this book we show what the largest government statistical enquiry has to say about the dynamics of ethnic identity and inequality in contemporary Britain. The chapters draw on data from the decennial censuses of population in England, Wales and Scotland, which have asked a question on ethnic group since 1991. The first section shows how ethnic groups have grown, the places they are most diverse, how they perceive their national identity, and how ethnic identity changes over time. The second section looks at whether minority ethnic groups are residentially segregated and continue to face disadvantages in health, housing, employment, education and neighbourhoods.
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In 2011, one in five people in England and Wales (20 per cent) described their ethnic group as other than White British compared with 13 per cent in 2001.
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The population other than White British, White Irish and Other White has doubled in size since 1991, from 3 to 7 million, while remaining a small minority of the total population in 2011 (14 per cent).
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The Black African ethnic group has grown faster than any other minority group in the last two decades, doubling in 1991-2001 and 2001-11 to reach 990,000 in 2011.
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Ethnic diversity is increasing in all parts of England and Wales, and at a faster rate in those places where minority ethnic groups were fewest in 2001.
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Minority ethnic groups remained clustered in certain diverse urban areas, most notably London.
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There has been continued ethnic group mixing within families. The number of people identifying with a ‘Mixed’ ethnic category increased by 82 per cent between 2001 and 2011 to more than a million.
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The proportion of mixed households has grown in 346 out of 348 local authority districts in England and Wales. Excluding one-person households, one in eight households now have more than one ethnic group.
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New measures in the census show that the majority of people from minority ethnic groups describe themselves as British, do not have a minority religion, and speak English as their main language.
British society is becoming increasingly ethnically diverse. This is a pattern that has been documented throughout the post-war period and more widely since the inclusion of an ethnic group question in the 1991 Census (Rees and Butt, 2004).
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Half of the population born abroad and living in England and Wales arrived in the UK aged 15-29. This is an age when they are economically productive and are unlikely to require or be eligible for state benefits.
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All ethnic groups in England and Wales have grown in size since 2001 through more births than deaths, apart from White British and White Irish groups. Most have also grown through net migration into England and Wales.
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The excess of births over deaths is because minority ethnic groups have a young age structure, not because of high fertility.
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The fertility of most groups has increased a little in the 2000s, but overall there is less difference in family size between ethnic groups than in past decades.
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For most ethnic groups whose first major immigration to the UK was over a generation ago, growth through further immigration is not as much as their ‘natural’ growth within England and Wales through an excess of births over deaths.
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Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups have each grown by about 50 per cent during 2001-11, and mostly because more people have been born than have died.
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For the Black Caribbean group, whose main immigration to the UK was now 60 years ago, growth has been less than 5 per cent; it was almost entirely due to the excess of births over deaths rather than further immigration.
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The Indian group is an exception among established minority ethnic groups: it has grown through immigration during the period 2001-11 more than through an excess of births over deaths.
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More than half of people in minority ethnic groups describe their national identity as British, English or a combination of the two.
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Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and Black Caribbean ethnic groups are the most likely to consider themselves as exclusively British.
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An English-only national identity is favoured by more than seven tenths of the White British ethnic group.
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Those in the White British ethnic group are less likely to describe themselves as English if they live in London rather than other parts of the country.
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Immigrants from regions where there is a history of British colonialism are more likely to consider themselves as British than those born in other world regions.
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Fewer than a quarter of Muslims do not identify with a British national identity.
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Muslims living in communities where there is a greater cluster of other Muslims are more likely to describe themselves as British than Muslims living away from those clusters.
This chapter presents national identity data from the 2011 Census. It starts with a brief review of the political context and theoretical debates in the field before describing how national identity varies by ethnic group, birthplace, religion and across local authority districts in England.
In 2006 the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, argued that “every child in our country, wherever they come from, must know and deeply understand what it means to be British” (British Political Speech, 2006). In this, he follows a long line of politicians (including John Major on the right and Gordon Brown on the left) who express concern about a perceived lack of affiliation to a notion of ‘Britishness’.
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All minority ethnic groups living in England are more likely to live in a deprived neighbourhood than the White British group.
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More than 30 per cent of Bangladeshi and Pakistani people live in deprived neighbourhoods – three times the England average.
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The proportion living in deprived neighbourhoods fell for most ethnic groups between 2001 and 2011 as a result of each group growing faster outside deprived neighbourhoods.
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Minority ethnic groups are most concentrated in neighbourhoods that are deprived because of low income, barriers to housing, crime or poor living environment, and less concentrated in neighbourhoods that are deprived because of low employment, poor health or poor educational results.
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The inequality between ethnic groups in the proportion living in deprived neighbourhoods is greatest in the northern regions of England.
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Inequalities between the White British group and minority ethnic groups in unemployment and labour market participation are not greater in deprived neighbourhoods than in other neighbourhoods, suggesting that minority groups are disadvantaged wherever they live.
The 2011 Census tells us that unemployment among minority ethnic groups is almost twice that of the White British population in England and Wales (see Chapter Eleven). This disadvantage can only be partially accounted for by the individual characteristics of minority ethnic groups which mean they are more likely to be unemployed, including being younger, having fewer educational qualifications, being born abroad, and not speaking English well (Berthoud, 2000; Carmichael and Woods, 2000). The remainder not accounted for by these characteristics is often regarded as an ‘ethnic penalty’, which refers to unmeasured effects including direct and indirect discrimination by employers (Heath and Cheung, 2006; Simpson et al, 2009).
The chapters of this book have highlighted the ethnic dimension of Britain’s diverse population. When averaged across an ethnic group, the characteristics of individuals have striking differences compared to other groups’ education, health, housing, employment and location within Britain. The analysts who have presented and interpreted these chapters have explained many of these differences by referring to the historical development of Britain’s ethnic diversity, through immigration, adjustment, integration and contribution to the life of this country. In this chapter we discuss the implications of these findings for three main policy areas that have motivated the government to measure ethnicity. The first is the set of policies that address inequality brought about by discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnic or national background that has been illegal since the first Race Relations Act of 1965. The second area of policy addresses the diversity of preferences and needs that are associated with ethnicity, and the respect for these differences that goes hand-in-hand with equal access to services. The third area is concerned with community relations in a diverse society, which more recently has been associated with community cohesion and national security issues.
The last but no less substantial part of this chapter attempts to clarify some of the concepts and measurements that such policies require of social statistics, and asks how far we can rely on ethnic group differences to direct public policy.
Despite improvements in the health, employment, education, housing and neighbourhood deprivation of minority ethnic groups over the last 20 years, clear disadvantage persists in comparisons with the average experience of the White British group.
As debates around ethnic identity and inequality gain both political and media interest, this important book is the first to offer in-depth analysis from the last three UK population censuses focusing on the dynamics of ethnic identity and inequalities in contemporary Britain. While providing a comprehensive overview, it also clarifies concepts associated with greater ethnic diversity, increased segregation, exclusive growth of minority groups through immigration and a national identity crisis.
The contributions, all from experts in the field based at or affiliated to the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, highlight persistent inequalities in access to housing, employment, education and good health faced by some ethnic groups. The book will be a valuable resource for policy makers and researchers in national and local government, community groups, academics, students, and will act as an authoritative text to cite in reports, dissertations and funding applications.
