Introduction

In recent decades, the existence of a growing population of people from ‘minority ethnic groups’ within the UK has attracted increasing attention from politicians, policy makers, the media and academia. The minority ethnic groups of policy interest comprise people who are visibly identifiable because their skin colour is brown or black (unlike most European national minorities), and whose family origins lie in the countries of the New Commonwealth: the Indian subcontinent, South East Asia, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Although small numbers of people with such origins have lived in the UK for centuries, their populations increased dramatically during the second half of the 20th century as a result of high rates of immigration in the 1950s and 1960s, reinforced by high birth rates. Minority ethnic groups now form a significant component of the British population, especially in the younger age groups, and a substantial proportion of the population of London, Birmingham and other major cities. As the pace of globalisation increases and barriers to international travel decline, the diversity of the British population is also increasing as a consequence of new flows of primary migration.

This chapter describes the growth of the minority population, the current ethnic profile of the British population (using data for 1998-2000), the geographical distribution of minority ethnic groups, and the demographic trends underlying the continued growth in the minority population over the medium term.

Evolution of the minority ethnic group population

Statistics on the ethnic composition of the British population began to be compiled only from the late 1970s onwards. Therefore, the growth of the minority population from 1945 to 1981 can only be gauged from Census data on the number of people born outside the UK as well as periodic estimates made by the Office for Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS, 1976, 1977).

The initial growth of the minority ethnic group population of Britain began in the era of mass immigration from the New Commonwealth, which lasted from the passing of the British Nationality Act in 1948 to the mid-1970s. The minority ethnic group population of England and Wales increased from 103,000 in 1951 to 415,000 in 1961 (Eversley and Sukdeo, 1969), and to 1.2 million in 1971 (Runnymede Trust and Radical Statistics Race Group, 1980).

The Cities Programme was set up in 1997 by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – with the support of the (now) Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – to chart the changing circumstances of UK cities and in particular to explore the relationships between economic competitiveness, social cohesion and governance. It undertook a wide range of studies using different methodologies in many communities, within the UK and in Europe. Much of the work of the Programme can now be found in a variety of academic and more popular publications, including the book of the Programme, City matters (http://cwis.livjm.ac.uk/cities). One important part of the Programme's work was devoted specifically to the role and contribution of different ethnic communities and groups to UK cities and the challenges and opportunities they faced in those cities. For example, our research looked at patterns of education, training and labour market issues, especially for young people, in both the under-performing North and the booming South of England. It explored issues of ethnic entrepreneurship. And it commissioned research on issues of identity, community, citizenship and rights.

The Cities Programme was particularly pleased to support the seminar on which this volume was based. We believed it important to explore in detail the range and diversity of experience of different ethnic groups in different regions in modern Britain. It was obvious to everyone that some groups in some places were doing well. But others were facing persistent discrimination and disadvantage, a fact underlined by the disturbances experienced in a range of northern cities in 2001. This volume was not intended to specifically explore the causes and consequences of those disturbances, although some authors do so. Rather it was intended to look behind those events to identify the nature and sources of the persistent patterns of ethnic and class disadvantage in Britain. The seminar brought together leading researchers in the field with many of the senior policy makers from a range of government departments responsible for shaping and delivering policies in these areas. We were excited by the dialogue that took place on that day. We are equally excited by the prospect of sharing the perspectives and contributions from that day with a wider audience. We look forward to a robust debate about this book's arguments and prescriptions.

Introduction

Since the early 1970s, ethnic differences in health have become an increasing focus of research in Britain. During this time, there have been extensive analyses of mortality data, using country of birth as a surrogate for ethnicity (for example, Marmot et al, 1984; Balarajan and Bulusu, 1990; Harding and Maxwell, 1997). There has also been a growing number of regional (for example, Pilgrim et al, 1993) and national surveys of ethnic differences in morbidity (for example, Rudat, 1994; Nazroo, 1997, 2001a; Johnson et al, 2000; Erens et al, 2001). This growing body of research reflects, at least in part, public policy concern with the health of, and quality of healthcare provided for, minority ethnic groups.

In theory, research should lead to policy developments that improve each of these aspects, but in practice this may not be the case. This is not only because research can be poorly disseminated, or because it may provide unpalatable messages to those concerned with public finance, but also because the research itself may contribute to the racialisation of health issues. The health disadvantage of minority ethnic groups is identified as somehow inherent to their ethnicity, a consequence of their cultural and genetic ‘weaknesses’, rather than a result of the disadvantages that they face as a result of the ways in which their ethnicity or ‘race’ is perceived by others.

Indeed, despite the extensive data-collection efforts and analyses cited earlier, the factors underlying ethnic differences in mortality and morbidity remain contested, and there continues to be debate around how far differences might be attributable to the disadvantaged social circumstances in which minority ethnic people are more likely to live. For example, as long ago as 1845, Engels attributed the poor health of Irish people living in England to the poor social circumstances in which the majority of the Irish population lived (Engels, 1987). On the other hand, some claim that socioeconomic inequalities make a minimal contribution – or else none at all – to ethnic inequalities in health (Wild and McKeigue, 1997). Others suggest that, even if they do contribute, the cultural and genetic elements of ethnicity must also play a role (Smaje, 1996).

Given the growing sophistication of this field, it is worrying that crude explanations based on cultural stereotypes and claims of genetic difference persist (see, for example, Soni Raleigh and Balarajan, 1992; Gupta et al, 1995; Stewart et al, 1999).

Background

In this chapter, I aim to set out the context in which we have to understand the apparent increasing diversity of experiences of disadvantage by Britain's minority ethnic communities. In doing so I shall try, so far as is possible, to avoid anticipating too much of the material that is set out in the following chapters. A key underlying assumption of what I have to say is that neither diversity nor variations in the experience of ethnic disadvantage are new. From the outset, the various groups that have come together to constitute the population of Great Britain have had diverse experiences, both of the process of migration and of establishing their places in an increasingly multi-ethnic Britain. The failure to recognise this diversity probably has a number of sources. These include the initially strikingly visible differences between the newcomers and those already resident in Britain (summed up graphically in the title of Sheila Patterson's book Dark strangers [1963]); the adoption for both official and unofficial purposes of the designation ‘immigrant’; and a general ignorance about the countries and locations from which migrants had come. Both the general public and policy makers struggled gradually towards a distinction between African-Caribbeans (often referred to as West Indians) and Asians. Only slowly and uncertainly did recognition emerge that the ‘Asian’ group was not homogeneous, and the significance of different island origins among African-Caribbeans has been all but overlooked.

This is not to say that there are not processes afoot that have made diversity more obvious, nor that there have been no changes in the character and patterning of disadvantage within and between groups. Having said that, the growing consciousness of increasing diversity is a product of a complex of real change, improved data and greater sensitivity to the nuances of ethnic variation. The move away from old assumptions has been greatly facilitated by improved data. Nevertheless, I want to suggest that both past perspectives and the way we are able to grasp the character of current trends are structured by some persistent underlying assumptions about the character of ethnic difference and by our (inherited) categorisation and measurement practices. As a result, even our improved awareness of diversity really only scratches the surface of the real ethnic variety of modern Britain.

Background

This volume arises from a seminar entitled Explaining ethnic differences, which was jointly organised by the then Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) and the Economic and Social Research Council's ‘Cities’ programme. Held in December 2001, the seminar was intended to help inform the policy response to a series of communal disturbances that had taken place in a number of towns, including Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, in the north of England, in the spring and summer of that year. These disturbances, or riots, were notable for the participation of large numbers of young men of South Asian descent, a significant proportion of them Muslim. Such overt conflict between Asian (as against African-Caribbean) young men and the police, was not entirely unprecedented but the scale of the disturbances, together with the involvement of far right white groups, shocked the political establishment and led to series of inquiries and official reports. By bringing together policy makers and social scientists with experience of researching various aspects of ethnic disadvantage, the seminar aimed to explore the current state of knowledge about the structure of ethnic disadvantage and to review explanations for the patterns observed. The chapters that make up this volume are all, with the exception of Chapter Five, revised versions of presentations made to the seminar.

Like the report of the Macpherson inquiry into the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence published two years earlier (1999), the urban disturbances of 2001 refocused attention on the continuing significance of ethnic disadvantage for public policy. In this respect, the disturbances might be said to fit into a long-established pattern in the development of policies to address ethnic disadvantage in Britain, that is, the tendency, after a period of public hand wringing and a spate of policy initiatives, for the issue of ethnic inequity to disappear from the agenda for a period, before dramatically being forced back on – not infrequently by events on the streets. In this respect, it might be said that British policy has frequently failed to learn the lessons of the past or, at least, has consistently failed to act on them. Virinder Kalra's contrast between the events following the Brixton riots of 1981 and those of 2001 represents one of the more dramatic examples of the case in point (Chapter Nine of this volume), but there are others.

Slipping through the ‘racial equality’ cracks

The uncompromising recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry with regard to institutional racism generated widespread political and public response and commitment to racial equality. However, in their efforts to avoid being labelled as institutionally racist, few organisations reflected on the gendered nature of their racial equality policies and practices. Few have stopped to consider that the Lawrence Inquiry was an all-male committee and may therefore have had a male-centred view of racism. In terms of racial equality, it is still a man's world. Thirty years on, the African-American women's saying of the 1970s – “all the women are white and all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave” – still holds true (Hull et al, 1982). Gender is still seen as a white woman's issue, while it is taken for granted that ‘race’ is a black male issue. Black and minority ethnic women appear to fall into the cracks between the two. They are often invisible, occupying a ‘blind spot’ in mainstream policy and research studies that talk about women on the one hand or ethnic minorities on the other.

Black and minority ethnic women still do not seem to be part of the race equality picture of the new millennium. The ‘new language’ of racial equality and inclusion, in the context of the liberal democratic discourse on equality and anti-discrimination, has been constructed around the dominant masculine agenda of objectives and targets, enforcement and evaluation, recruitment and audit (CRE, 2001). The pervasive discourse on social inclusion through ‘respecting diversity and achieving equality’ has at its core the concept of the ‘recognition of difference’. However, the social construction of ‘difference’ does not include the invisible or messy contradictions black women pose by their presence. Diversity is now about good public relations and inclusivity as good business sense (Fredman, 2002): it is more about ‘getting the right people for the job on merit’ and the ‘business benefits of a more diverse workforce’ (Cabinet Office, 2001). It is not, then, about removing exclusionary barriers to participation and equal access. However, when we read of the commitment of public sector organisations to ‘meeting needs’, ‘facilitating access’, ‘flexibility’, ‘embracing difference’, and ‘working in partnership’ with black and minority ethnic people (Cabinet Office 2002), it is assumed that racial equality and social exclusion are gender-neutral experiences.