Ethnicity in the UK
Compared to the US, the UK is a remarkably homogeneous society. Nonetheless, diversity, immigration, race have been political issues. But a recent report highlights changes in the distribution of minorities in England. These demographic changes might change politics.Ethnic middle classes join the 'white flight'
"The racial map of Britain is being redrawn, with European migrants heading for the country, richer Asians and blacks leaving city centres for largely white suburbs and young whites mixing readily with other cultures - at least until their children reach school age..."A poll published this weekend by charity the Barrow Cadbury Trust dismisses tabloid images of a segregated nation at war with itself, concluding that more than two thirds of respondents in Birmingham consider relations between different communities to be good, while almost half thought there was more integration between communities than a generation ago...
"Yet beneath the optimism runs a worrying thread: concern about so-called 'white flight', or the exodus of better-off families from the inner cities to the suburbs and villages - a movement now joined by the black and Asian middle classes as their prosperity increases...
"So were the quarter of a million Londoners who left the capital last year really fleeing multicultural living - or just escaping the rat race?...
"[And] what about those who are less relaxed about a city where white children are already a minority in the school system? Intriguingly the Barrow Cadbury Trust poll found the professional middle classes - who are more likely to live in less racially mixed neighbourhoods - less positive about community relations than working-class peers...
"[T]he patterns of modern migration are becoming more complex - just as the eastern Europeans settling in rural East Anglia to take up agricultural jobs are confounding the old stereotypes. Suddenly white flight has been reversed, as the new arrivals head for the countryside, not the inner cities...
"Using satellite pictures and government data to illustrate exactly which groups have settled where, they show that, while the longer-established Bangladeshi or Pakistani populations remain concentrated in the big multicultural cities of Leeds, Birmingham, London or Manchester, others have produced more unusual patterns - from Chinese enclaves centred in North Wales to Latvians clustered in Lincolnshire...
"The last census in 2001 put the UK's minority ethnic population at 4.6 million, or 7.9 per cent of the total population. In 1991, it was almost 6 per cent.
"Half the UK's minority ethnic population are of Asian origin. Other ethnic groups are mainly black, either of Caribbean or African origin...
"Nearly half of all minorities live in the London area...
"New migrants are still coming to the UK. Last year, an estimated 591,000 arrived, but almost 400,000 long-term migrants left..."
See also:
- Barrow Cadbury Trust
- Cities in Transition (a .pdf document)
Labels: political culture, UK
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:27 AM
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