The Multidimensional Aspects of Social Exclusion and Ethnicity in the United Kingdom

In last years 20 years, the UK has become more ethnically diverse with rising numbers of people identified with minor ethnic groups. In 2014, a study of the Migration Observatory at the Oxford University, carried on by C. Rienzo and C. Vargas-Silva, found that between 1993 and 2013 the foreign-born population in the UK more than doubled from 3.8 million to around 7.8 million. During the same period, the number of foreign citizens increased from nearly 2 million to nearly 5 million. In 2013, the foreign-born population was the 12.5 per cent of British society. Underlying reasons for migrations to the UK are complex, but often include push factors such as civil conflict, political instability and poverty, and pull factors such as employment and education opportunities.
In our research we took into account also geographical aspects and characteristics of the territory that may lead to specific regionals effects. For example, London has the greatest number of migrants (2.8 million foreign-born people in 2013) among all regions with comparable data in the UK. Foreign-born people constituted 37% of Inner London’s population in 2013. Across the other English regions, we found Wales as the least diverse area, followed by the North East; over 95 per cent of the population was identified as White in these areas. [...]

Looking at the data of English Census (Office for National Statistics) we can see that the majority (86%) of population, about 48.2 million people, reported their ethnic group as white in 2011. Within this ethnic group, White British was the largest, with 45.1 million people (80.5%), followed by Any Other White with 2.5 million people (4.4%). Gypsy or Irish Traveller accounted for 58,000 usual residents (0.1% of the population), making it the smallest ethnic category in 2011. Another aspects is the increase in these percentages of ethnic minorities since 2001, the only exceptions is the Irish white group, which decreased by almost 50 basis points.
As we can see in Figure 5, the largest ethnic minority in 2011 was Indian with 1.4 million people (2.5% of population) followed by Pakistani (2% of population), African (1.8% of population) and Bangladeshi (0.8% of population). This is consistent with census findings on international migration, which found that South Asian countries (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) continued to rank highly within the most common non-UK countries of birth. Another consistent ethnic group is Arab accounted for 240,000 usual residents, which is a 0.4% of the population. The remaining ethnic groups each accounted for up to 2 per cent of the population in 2011. [...]

This evidence about ethnic minorities in the UK is also reflected in our own dataset acquired through the BHPS (Figure 6). In our sample of 5000 households, making a total of approximately 10,000 individual interviews, the three primary ethnic groups among minorities are Indian (23%), Pakistani (16%) and Black-Caribbean (15.9%).
About ethnic minorities in England, we have to take into account the Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (FNSEM); the aim of the survey was to describe the social and economic conditions of Britain's main ethnic minority groups, including their health, and to explore diversity among these different groups, to describe perceptions and experience of racial discrimination and social harassment.
In the FNSEM, there are two statements to interviewees that captured the importance of ethnic identification:
1. In many ways, I think of myself as being British.
2. In many ways, I think of myself as [respondent’s ethnic group].

Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed and if so, whether strongly or just a little. Both questions are essentially asking about identification with a country, with a place and its way of living and the responses do reveal the difficulty in clearly assigning ethnic groups to different locations within social space. The group that agreed the most are the African-Asians (71%) and the group that agreed the least are the Bangladeshis (56%). The Blacks-Caribbean is the most likely to disagree (34%). Other evidence from this dataset reveals that around a quarter of British-born Black-Caribbean did not think of themselves as being British. This contrasts with the West Indian migrants of the 1940s and 1950s who by most accounts thought of themselves as British and often talked of coming to "the mother country". However, whilst a significant minority disagree with the notion of being British, this is not the case when it comes to their own ethnic identity. There is a strong sense of ethnic identity amongst minority groups. Over 80% of each group either agreed strongly or agreed that they thought of themselves in terms of their own ethnic group (Battu et al. 1999). We have to bear in mind the aftermath suggested by the literature, because it could be one of the reasons of exclusion of these ethnic minorities who are too independent and self-respecting to integrate in the British society.