Ethnicity In Britain Research Articles

Arctic Exploration and the Mobility of Phrenology: John Ross's Ethnographic Portraits of the Netsilingmiut

ABSTRACT Analysing a set of ethnographic images and illustrations resulting from John Ross’s second voyage to find a Northwest Passage in 1829–1833, this article considers the ways in which Arctic exploration intersected with emergent scientific thinking about race and ethnicity in Britain. In particular, it examines how mobility impacted ideas of phrenology and scientific imaging in the context of the Arctic. As a practitioner of phrenology and member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, Ross’s expertise in this new mental science certainly travelled with him to the Arctic. As his field drawings and book illustrations testify, however, Ross’s knowledge was also affected by his immediate contact with the Inuit in Boothia Peninsula in Nunavut. Comparing Ross’s field drawings and illustrations in his two-volume Narrative and Appendix to their accompanying texts and to select ethnographic illustrations produced by his fellow Arctic explorers, this article uncovers the material and conceptual transformations Ross’s scientific visualisation of Inuit underwent during his physical movement between Britain and the Arctic.

Europe is for being recognized for more than an ethnic background” : middle class British, Dutch and German minority citizens’ perspectives on EU citizenship and belonging to Europe’

The paper pinpoints some crucial themes of European belonging arising in the narratives of minority key activists with various hyphened legal national citi-zenship status, e.g. South Asian Brits, Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish/ Kurd-ish-Germans. The interviews capture how visible minorities’ perspectives on European belonging are influenced by structural racism, but also by national-ly specific discourses of symbolic inclusion or exclusion of ethnic minorities respectively.
 In this original research project in total 43 key minority activists, men and women and all of middle class social status were interviewed between au-tumn 2009 and summer 2012, e.g. pre-Brexit, in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. The findings of the study underline ambivalent post-cosmopolitan identities and more contradictory notions of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity in Britain and the Netherlands, due to specific colonial / post-colonial contexts, and a different use of these categories in Britain and the rest of Europe. The minor-ity citizens interviewed in Germany expressed a more troubled position here as their relationship to the European Union is influenced by their feelings of belonging to Turkey, the latter outside the EU and at the border of Europe. 
 As the ‘new’ citizens interviewed in this sample live in major cities, such as London, Berlin and Amsterdam, individual feelings of belonging to Europe, perceptions of being European and cosmopolitan were very much shaped by the concrete city spaces and a positive identification with metropolitan urban identity.

The Intergenerational Social Mobility of Minority Ethnic Groups

This study examines the intergenerational social mobility of different ethnic groups in Britain between 1971 and 1991.The small body of previous research on intergenerational mobility and ethnicity in Britain has not distinguished between premigration and post-migration social class, and thus has been unable to relate findings directly to studies of intergenerational social mobility or to accounts of the changing class composition of different ethnic groups within Britain. This study, instead, focuses on social mobility between generations as it is experienced by different groups in the same country, over the same time period and over the same age range. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Longitudinal Study, this study describes the different patterns of class mobility experienced by a single cohort of children aged 8-15 in 1971 from each of three ethnic groups: white non-migrants, Indians and Caribbeans. It finds that the impact of class origin varies with ethnicity. However, the impact of ethnicity is less salient in determining outcomes for women than it is for men.

Imagining the Asian gang: ethnicity, masculinity and youth after ‘the riots’

The paper explores the discourses surrounding the ‘riots’ of 2001 as a reflection of contemporary understandings of raced/ethnic, gendered and generational identities, and changing discourses about race and ethnicity in Britain. The paper examines these themes in relation to current academic theorizations of culture, identity and difference. Finally, the paper explores the implementation of these understandings in current government policy papers and practices around ‘community cohesion’ and ‘citizenship’. It argues that each of these arenas employs very static and bounded notions of ‘community’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ which deny the complex formations of lived identities and obscures ongoing relations of power and disadvantage. This has clear implications for the future of multicultural policy, citizenship education and social justice.

Buddhism and Ethnicity in Britain: The 2001 Census Data

Buddhism and Ethnicity in Britain: The 2001 Census Data

Sectarianism at work: Accounts of employment discrimination against Irish Catholics in Scotland

This article examines accounts of discrimination in employment against Irish Catholics in Glasgow from both majority and minority ethnic and ­religious perspectives. It reveals evidence of continuing experience of sectarian discrimination in work. Of particular note is the existence of discriminatory practice affecting Catholic (Irish-descended) attempts to move up the social scale. This evidence disputes the thoroughness of analyses which ignore discrimination experience as relevant to the current social-class position of Glasgow's Irish Catholic community. The analysis presented here also questions the practice of excluding 'white' ethnic groups from most studies of ethnicity in Britain and considers whether sectarianism or racism might most aptly describe experiences marked out by religious belonging but clearly denoting ethnic origin. As part of a wider study of prolonged and continuing health disadvantage among the Irish in Britain, it is suggested that discrimination is one component in any explanation of the health of the Irish or Irish Catholic minority, whose minority experience is usually overlooked by researchers of ethnicity.

Ageing and ethnicity in Britain: The case of elderly Sikh women in a Midlands town

Abstract This research examines the effect of modernisation on the status of the elderly migrant in Britain. The findings provide further evidence of double jeopardy theory, first developed in the USA. The research was carried out in Leamington Spa between 1983 and 1985 and records the experience of the minority aged using participant observation of 20 elderly Sikh women. A model of multiple disadvantage is proposed which may be applicable to elderly Asian women elsewhere in Britain. In contrast it is also shown how a distinct ethnic identity can enhance the quality of life in the ageing process where economic and social factors are favourable.

Race and Ethnicity in Britain

Race and Ethnicity in Britain

Ethnicity in Britain: The Gujarati tradition

Ethnicity in Britain: The Gujarati tradition