Mixed Race Studies

Ethnicity: what the census doesn’t tell us

New Internationalist: People, ideans and action for global justice
2012-12-17

Amy Hall, Editorial Intern

As the story goes, we are hurtling towards the anniversary of an important census, when Jesus’s family made its way to Bethlehem. Here in Britain, we have recently been analysing the results of our own 2011 survey – completed without most of us having to undertake an arduous journey (on donkey) back to our home towns…

I have had countless conversations with curious strangers who ask me: ‘Where are you from?’ I would normally answer Cornwall, England or Britain. I often receive a sympathetic smile, or a mildly infuriated expression, and then a ‘yes, but where are you actually from?’ Short of producing a copy of my birth certificate, it can be hard to know how to reply.

The more accusatory their tone, the more they actually mean ‘why are you not white?’ After all, if I were, my initial reply would have been enough. So I explain that my dad was born in Jamaica, my mother in England.

The 2011 census results have been reported as evidence of ‘the changing face of Britain’, celebrating the harmony of the production of children like myself – the ‘Jessica Ennis generation’. There are now over a million people ticking the ‘mixed/multiple ethnic groups’ box.

But nowhere in the mixed section (which wasn’t even added until 2001) is ‘British’ mentioned, despite the presence of mixed-race people being almost as old as the country itself. We are told that immigrants and their descendants need to identify more closely with Britain, but even when they do it is not reflected in monitoring forms like the census. Many mixed-race people can follow multiple cultures and religions, speak multiple languages and support multiple teams in the World Cup and while still feeling British…

Read the entire article here.

Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Identity Language in the British Press: A Case Study in Monitoring and Analysing Print Media

Migration Observatory
University of Oxford
2012-12-11
10 pages

William Allen, Senior Researcher

Scott Blinder, Senior Researcher

Introduction and context

Since July 2012, the Migration Observatory has been building the framework for a Media Monitoring Project. Its aim is to improve understanding of the coverage of migration and related issues in the British press. We are gathering a comprehensive set of articles from Britain’s national newspapers beginning in 2005 and to be continuously updated to the present on a weekly basis. These articles will include all mentions of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in British newspapers. From this large database (or ‘corpus’ of texts), we will get a sense not only of how much attention the press devotes to migration, but also the nature of coverage. This will include the general tone of coverage and the specific ways in which migrants are portrayed. We are interested in knowing, for example, if press is currently contributing to the widespread public perception of immigrants as asylum seekers (see the Migration Observatory report – Thinking behind the Numbers). This image may stem from high levels of asylum applications in the early 2000’s, or it may be partly the product of continued media coverage even with asylum numbers declining. Of course, simply describing and monitoring press coverage does not demonstrate a connection to public perceptions, but it can help us determine whether or not such a connection is plausible.

The media project will also be designed to respond flexibly to other questions, including those raised by organisations working on migration or related issues, from a wide range of perspectives. In this document we present results from the first such effort. The Observatory was commissioned by the think-tank British Future to investigate media use of languages of identity and origins in association with Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah.

Ennis and Farah were among the most discussed and admired British gold medallists in the Games. While clearly they were discussed mainly as athletes, their racial, ethnic, and religious background and relationships to migration were sometimes a matter of public discussion as well. Ennis is the British-born child of a white British mother and father of Jamaican/Afro-Caribbean origins (thus sometimes referred to as ‘mixed race’, although this term like many racial categories is inherently difficult to define precisely and may or may not be frequently used as a self-description). Farah, meanwhile, was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a child. He is also known to be Muslim, whereas Ennis’ religion does not appear to be a matter of public discussion. In the context of the London Olympics, a period widely thought to have produced an outpouring of national pride, their backgrounds seemed to figure in some discussions of the relationships among race, ethnicity, religion, national origins and British/English national identities.

The Migration Observatory was commissioned to attempt to quantify these trends in press coverage of both athletes, to help in discerning what sorts of identity language were most frequently used in connection with each of them. In particular, in commissioning this research, British Future were interested in finding out whether Ennis was described more in terms of her local origins (i.e. the ‘girl from Sheffield’) than her racial/ethnic background, and whether Farah described more as Somali-born than in terms of his more local origins after arriving in Britain as a child. Therefore, quantifying the presence of certain kinds of words in different types of coverage could help indicate the nature of discourses surrounding identity in British public life. The results presented below come from an analysis of the frequency of a set of identity-related words in press coverage mentioning Ennis and/or Farah. Although the words chosen were specified in advance by British Future to represent their hypotheses about the public identities of these two figures, the analysis was conducted independently by the Migration Observatory.

The analysis highlighted a few basic findings. In articles mentioning Ennis, her local origins in Sheffield were mentioned more frequently than her ethnic background, whether captured in terms of her father’s origins in Jamaica or in racial/ethnic terms such Afro-Caribbean, ‘black’, or ‘mixed race’. In articles mentioning Farah, Somalia was indeed much more common than any local origin terms. Notably, explicitly racial or ethnic terms were quite rare in these sets of articles, relative to other sorts of identity terms. There was some discussion of the so-called ‘mixed race’ category in articles mentioning Ennis, while race—at least as identified by the term ‘black’—did not arise in any significant measure in describing Farah. National identity terms appeared frequently in articles mentioning either or both athletes: ‘British’ was used in numerous ways, while ‘English’ often referred to the English language rather than English national identity, in relation to Farah’s arrival in Britain with no knowledge of the English language. Even in the absence of positive net migration, the population is projected to grow significantly in the future. Assuming net migration of zero at every age, the UK population is projected to reach 66 million by 2035 an increase of 6% from the 2010 level…

Read the entire report in HTML or PDF format.

The Life Narrative of a Mixed-Race Man in Recovery from Addiction: A Case-Based Psychosocial Approach to Researching Drugs, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity

Journal of Social Work Practice: Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community
Published online: 2012-12-06
DOI: 10.1080/02650533.2012.745841

Alastair Roy, Senior Lecturer
Psychosocial Research Unit, School of Social Work
University of Central Lancashire

This paper explores the use of a psychosocial approach to researching drugs, race and ethnicity. It produces an analysis of interviews with Bobby, a mixed-race man in recovery from addiction. Sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives are brought to bear on the data in order to consider the character of Bobby’s opportunities, identifications, crises and resolutions. Despite the affective components of the wider discourse on drugs and race, the majority of previous research on the subject has focused on the production of rational explanations produced within objectivist epistemological frames. In contrast, the methods used in this project seek an explicit engagement with the irrational and unconscious aspects of researching these subjects. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of psychosocially oriented narrative methods in this field.

Read or purchase the article here.

Britain is now a better place to grow up mixed race. But don’t celebrate yet

The Guardian
2012-12-15

Lanre Bakare, The Guide’s Previews Editor

Prejudices have receded significantly in the past 20 years, but a report out this week shows racist attitudes remain

Growing up as a mixed race child, with a mother from Leeds and a father from Nigeria, my Bradford childhood certainly wasn’t trouble-free. But I had the kind of relatives to see me through any tricky moments. As well as a fantastic, loving family on my mother’s side, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a strong Nigerian community, focused around a friendship club my father founded, which acted as a focal point for a small but vibrant community.

With my dad and his mates I would hear Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa spoken; I’d listen to the music of Fela, Shina Peters and Ayinla Kollington, and get to taste jollof rice, eba, moinmoin and other Nigerian cuisine. This understanding and engagement with the other side of my ancestry and culture was vital to me. It gave me confidence to fall back on when people would question who I was. Both my parents instilled the idea in me that being different was a huge positive. It was something special, that should be celebrated and cherished rather than hidden or denied.

Not everyone is so lucky, of course. But this week a report released in the wake of the 2011 census threw fresh light on mixed race relationships in the UK and the public’s perception of them. And it seemed to bring good news. The census revealed there are a million people who identify as mixed race. British Future, the thinktank that produced the report (titled The Melting Pot Generation – How Britain Became More Relaxed About Race), found that 15% of the public have a problem with these relationships, compared to 50% in the 80s and 40% in the 90s.

The so-called Jessica Ennis Generation (those born in the 80s and 90s, like me) was portrayed as more tolerant of, and essentially not bothered by, mixed race families…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed race children and young people are individual nation states. They defy classification

The Independent
2012-12-012

Shyama Perea

This week we learned that the number of mixed race people in the UK has doubled to 1.2 million. I’m adding my children to the arsenal of weapons for change

n the late 1940s, the Eurasian poet Cedric Dover wrote a poem about his racial identity. Entitled The Brown Phoenix, it includes the lines: I am tomorrow’s man/ Offering to share/Love, and the difficult quest,/In the emerging plan.

How fitting that in the week that a post-war musical, Privates on Parade, opened with a Eurasian love interest—“Welsh Bombay”—rejected on the grounds of her colour, we learn that in the 2011 census, the number of mixed-race people in the UK has doubled to 1.2 million. On the same day, the On the same day, the think-tank British Future reported that only 15 per cent of people oppose mixed-race relationships. Among the under-25s, that drops to under 5 per cent. British Future calls it The Melting Pot Generation. The Sun proudly declared: “We Are the World.”

Should we be surprised by this after a summer of sporting magic in which so many British Olympians, including the poster girl Jessica Ennis, were golden-hued – an event masterminded by Lord Coe whose father is white English and mother Indian? London has a mayor with a mixed-race wife. Half the X Factor contestants, from Leona Lewis to Marvin and Aston from JLS and this year’s Jahmene Douglas, have black fathers and white mothers. The one thing – possibly the only thing –that Rupert Murdoch and Vince Cable have in common is mixed-race children…

Read the entire article here.

Who are we? Census 2011 reports on ethnicity in the UK

Runnymede Trust: Intelligence for a multi-ethnic Britain
2012-12-11

Dr. Omar Khan, Head of Policy Research

Every ten years the Census provides us with multiple insights into the state of modern Britain. In today’s release of the 2011 Census, we find that the Black and minority ethnic (BME) population has reached nearly 8 million – roughly the population of Scotland and Wales combined.

Overall, the BME population is now 14.1% of the overall total in England and Wales, rising from 7.9% in 2001. This doesn’t include the significant ‘White Other’ population which is now 2.5 million, or 4.4% of the overall population. Much of this growth has been through immigration, and many will assume that the ‘White Other’ population is primarily Eastern European. However, this population also includes White French, White Australian, White Argentinian and White American people, which explains why this disparate ‘group’ is now some 12.6% of the population of London.

Combined with the 40% of the population that is Black and minority ethnic, a minority of London’s residents are now ‘White British’ (46%). While this is indeed a striking development, it masks an arguably more significant development – the greater dispersal of ethnic minorities across the UK. Contrary to much received wisdom, Britain is becoming less ‘segregated’ every year.

Between 2001 and 2011, the regions whose BME population has grown the fastest are those that had the fewest ethnic minorities in 2011. So Wales, the North East and South West have all doubled their proportion of BME people (from just over 2% to over 4%), while London and West Midlands, which had the most BME people in 2001, have grown the slowest. There are more BME people living across the UK, including in villages and the countryside, and this phenomenon can be expected to continue.

One of the striking findings of the census is the reduction in the overall number of ‘White British’ people by over half a million people. So one reason the BME proportion of the population is rising is because the White British population is shrinking. In most regions of England and Wales this decrease or growth was actually quite minimal (with the White British population growing by more than 2% over the decade only in the South East), but London was notable because there were 600,000 fewer White British people living there in 2011 compared to 2001. This clearly points to the phenomenon of White British people leaving the capital, and explains much of the rise in London’s proportion of BME people…

…Inevitably much coverage of the census will focus on the rising ‘Mixed’ population, which now is the second largest, at some 1.2 million people. While the rise in the number of people categorized as mixed has been quite remarkable, so too has the overall BME growth, meaning that the ‘Mixed’ population is only 1% more (15.6%) of the total BME population than it was in 2001 (14.6%)…

…On most social outcome measures, the ‘Mixed’ population shows enormous variation, with Black Caribbean-White and Black African-White people more likely to have outcomes similar to Black people generally. In other words, rather than viewing the ‘mixed’ population as a single group with shared social experiences, we should rather focus on the continued salience of race, and in particular how the racial background of parents affects the social outcomes of children…

…It is also significant that many of these categories have large and growing populations. This raises the final important question – how identity shifts over people’s lifetimes and indeed across generations. While the overall share of Black people within the BME population remained about a quarter, there was a sharp decrease in the proportion who identified as ‘Black Caribbean’. However, the ‘Black Other’ group saw the steepest rise, suggesting that some children of Black Caribbean parents are happier with this ethnic identity.

Depending on how identity and social experiences change, we might expect further development of the current census categories. For example, the children of White Polish parents may plausibly identify as ‘White British’, as many of the grandchildren of Irish and Italian migrants now do, while many ‘Mixed’ people may rather identify as one of their parents. Here it’s worth emphasizing again the importance of social experiences and social outcomes in understanding race and ethnicity. That Barack Obama self-identifies as African American rather than ‘Mixed’ has probably little to do with a rejection of his mother’s heritage or a radical kind of separatist politics. Rather, Obama’s identity is informed by his social experience, and the reality of racism is evidenced not simply in his experiences in the 1970s or 1980s, but in the continued focus on his place of birth and by the fact that over 90% of White American voters in Mississippi and Alabama voted for his opponent.

So while it is important to understand self-identification in thinking about race and ethnicity, people cannot simply choose an identity of their own making, nor can they escape the views and prejudices in others in navigating the world. In the UK, the unemployment rate for Black young men is now 55%, Chinese graduates with better results have lower earnings than their White colleagues and Black and Asian women face such difficult experiences in the labour market that some of them change their names on their CVs…

Read the entire article here.

“Mongrel nation”: How is the face of Britain seen now?

British Future
2012-12-10

Shamit Saggar, Professor of Political Science
University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

Twenty years ago Time magazine put a composite photograph on its front cover. It was generated by an IBM 486 computer and fused together the phenotypical features of the world’s six main racial groups. The face that emerged was that of a woman with a striking, yet blended, appearance. The purpose was to sneak preview a mid-twentieth century future in which growing global migration and cross marriage would produce Global Woman, writes Shamit Saggar, professor of political science at the University of Sussex.

Many younger people in Britain today would, if scientifically surveyed, probably acknowledge her beauty. A fair slice would perhaps welcome what she represented. But a distinctive group—a minority, I guess—would be alarmed, sensing that something with value had, or was being, lost…

Read the entire article here.

The melting pot generation: How Britain became more relaxed on race

British Future
2012-12-12
26 pages

Rob Ford, Lecturer in Politics
University of Manchester

Rachael Jolley, Editorial Director and Director of Communications
British Future

Sunder Katwala, Director
British Future

Binita Mehta, Intern
British Future

As the 2011 census results show an ever larger number of Britons from mixed race backgrounds, this new British Future report The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race examines how these changes might affect the way that we think about race and identity.

When the parents of Olympic champion Jessica Ennis, who are from Jamaica and Derbyshire, met in Sheffield in the 1980s, a majority of the public expressed opposition to mixed race relationships. In 2012, concern has fallen to 15%—and just one in twenty of those aged 18–24. Jessica Ennis is from a generation that worry less about race and mixing than their parents did, and who mostly see mixed Britain as the everyday norm that they grew up with.

Inside this report…

• Rob Ford of the University of Manchester traces how the rise of mixed Britain changed attitudes over recent decades;
• Rachael Jolley explores new Britain Thinks polling on what we think about race and relationships today.
• New Oxford University research reports how media coverage of Olympic medal winners Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah balanced their ethnic origins and local identities.
• Binita Mehta selects ten twenty-something stars who reflect the changing face of their generation.
• Andrew Gimson talks to young Britons about how far being mixed race mattered to their experience of growing up.
• Leading thinkers assess the opportunities and pitfalls of changing how we talk about race.
• Sunder Katwala wonders if his children’s generation will see racial identity as increasingly a matter of choice.

Read the entire report here.

Mixed Experiences: a study of the childhood narratives of mixed race people related to risks to their mental health and capacity for developing resilience

City University London, School of Health Sciences
December 2011
330 pages

Dinah Cecilia Morley

This thesis is submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Community and Health Sciences Research.

Background: The mixed race child population is growing proportionately faster than any other group. Whilst there is a body of research in this country, albeit small, that looks at the experiences of mixed race children, none of this research examines specifically the risks for mental health and the possibilities for developing resilience which may be related to growing up as a mixed race child.

Methods: Twenty-one adults, recruited through the internet, were asked to reflect on their childhood experiences in relation to being mixed race. They were offered a choice of response methods. The majority chose to provide a written account. A thematic analysis was carried out, within a phenomenological framework. A further analysis was undertaken to assess whether risks to mental health or opportunities to develop resilience could be identified in the findings from the phenomenological analysis using known risk and resilience factors relating to the mental health of children and young people.

Results: The data show that there are some additional risks to the mental health of mixed race young people. As well as difficulties experienced in establishing personal identity, they show that there are specific difficulties in secondary school and that young people of mixed race experience racism and prejudice from both black and white peers. The data indicate a capacity for building resilience, necessitated by their mixedness, linked to supportive families.

Conclusions: The overarching findings from this study mirror many of those from other mixed race studies. However this study shows how mixed race young people may experience some additional risks to mental health which need to be understood and considered by professionals in health, social
care, education and justice systems.

Table of Contents

• Index of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements and Declaration of Powers
• Abstract
• Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Background and context
  • Popular discourse
  • Creative writing and personal accounts
  • Demographic trends
  • Reasons for undertaking this study
  • Risk and resilience as a theoretical framework
  • Methodological approach and method
  • Positionality
  • Terminology
    • Race, ethnicity and culture
    • Mental health
  • The Structure of the Thesis
• Chapter 2: A Review of the Literature
  • Chapter overview
  • Mental health and ethnicity
  • Mixed race young people
  • Service delivery issues as they affect young people of mixed race
  • Chapter Summary
• Chapter 3: Risk and Resilience
  • Chapter overview
  • The Literature
  • Risk factors relating to family
  • Risks associated with the wider community
    • The school
    • Peers
    • The community beyond the school
  • Resilience
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 4: Relevant Demographic Data
  • Chapter Overview
  • Robustness of the data as it relates to mixedness
  • Ethnicity
  • Location
  • Education
  • Crime
  • Victims of Crime
  • Early Pregnancy
  • Children in Public Care
  • Mental Disorder
  • Summary of statistical information
• Chapter 5: Methodology
  • Chapter overview
  • Using phenomenology
  • Interpreter bias and reflexivity
  • Using narrative
  • Rationale for the use of deductive material in the secondary analysis
  • Methodological approach summary
• Chapter 6: Method
  • Chapter overview
  • Participant eligibility
  • The recruitment process
  • The chosen web sites
  • Contacts and participants recruited
  • Sample size
  • Types of responses – pros and cons
  • Confidentiality, anonymity and integrity
  • Reflexive aspects
  • Use of the internet to identify participants
  • Who uses the internet?
  • Other recruitment methods
  • Data quality
  • The thematic analysis
  • Reliability
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 7: The Thematic Analysis
  • Chapter overview
  • The analysis process
  • Telling the stories
  • Identifying the dominant themes
  • Themes and risks relating to the child
    • Appearance
    • Involvement in anti-racist work of some participants
  • Themes and risks relating to the family
    • Attitudes of family members
    • Access to wider family and visits for parents’ home countries
    • Sibling differences
    • Class
    • Meeting the absent parent
  • Themes and risks relating to the community
    • Mixed race isolation
    • School experiences
    • The multi-cultural nature of the community
    • Access to groups outside the family and school, including black groups
    • How public services respond to children on mixed race
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 8: The Obama Election
  • Chapter overview
  • Background
  • Participants’ views
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 9: Analysis of Risk and Resilience Issues
  • Chapter overview
  • Grouping the risk factors
    • Poor self esteem
    • Hostile and rejecting relationships
    • Discrimination
  • Establishing proxy indicators
  • Disconfirming evidence
  • Racism
  • Identity
  • Isolation
  • Overview of risk
  • Resilience
  • The continuum of risk to resilience
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 10: Theoretical Possibilities: an exploration of ‘risk’ and ‘mixed race’ from a sociological perspective
  • Chapter overview
  • Theorising mixed race in the context of globalisation and the risk society
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 11: Discussion of Findings and their Context
  • Chapter overview
  • Reviewing and assessing the thematic findings
    • Identity confusion
    • Otherness and isolation
    • Secondary school experiences
    • Racism
    • Family support or lack of it
  • Review of the methodology
  • Policy and practice implications
  • Strengths, limitations and future opportunities
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 12: Concluding Remarks
• Appendices

Index of Tables

• Table 1: Prevalence of specific child and adolescent mental health risk factors and impact on rate of mental disorder
• Table 2: Mixed race demography (UK) 2001
• Table 3: Mixed race demography (E&W) 2001
• Table 4: Age distributions across the ethnic groups
• Table 5: Location of people of mixed race in the UK – 2001 Census
• Table 6: Educational attainment (higher educational qualification) as a proportion of ethnic population (16-74yrs). 2001 Census E&W)
• Table 7: 5 A-C passes gained by 15-year olds in GCSE and equivalent by ethnicity – England)
• Table 8: Attainment at Key Stage 4 (KS4) – percentage of pupils gaining 5 A*-C grades of pupils of mixed race, by gender, ethnicity and free school meals (FSM) eligibility in England
• Table 9: Criminal justice disposals of young people aged 12-17 by ethnicity
• Table 10: Convictions for drug usage by ethnicity in young people aged 10 – 17
• Table 11: Children in Public Care by Ethnic Group. (DfES 2006)
• Table 12: Initial response grid p.105
• Table 13: Households with access to the Internet in Great Britain
• Table 14: Length of written submissions
• Table 15: Characteristics of participants, showing pseudonyms
• Table 16: Clusters of Themes
• Table 17: Family status of participants
• Table 18: Wider family relationships and influences
• Table 19: Growing up without two birth parents
• Table 20: Indicators of specific risks for mixed race young people
• Table 21: Proxy indicators showing the presence of risk factors in relation to the significant findings for the selected sample

Documents: Introductory Materials, Volume 1, and Volume 2 (Appendices)

Mixed-race Britain: Proud of both sides and here to stay

The Daily Mail
Lindsay John’s blog
2012-12-11

Lindsay John

According to data from last year’s census, revealed today, Britain’s mixed-race population probably now exceeds one million. Moreover, the mixed-race population is among the fastest growing in Britain and is already the largest ethnic group among under-16s.

Introduced onto the census form in 2001, the mixed-race category was at the time somewhat controversial, seen as a ‘divide and conquer’ mechanism by old school, anti-racism campaigners, but is now widely accepted as a very useful and apposite tool for reflecting and describing the manifold complexities of race and personal identity.

What do these intriguing census results say about Britain today, the way we now perceive ethnicity and the progress we have made as a nation with regards to race? As a person of mixed race myself (with a Coloured South African father, a white English mother and proud of both sides), I feel I am in a fairly good position to comment…

Read the entire article here.