Ethnic segregation in England and Wales is falling as more people live together with neighbors of different origins, creating ‘rainbow’ towns and cities, a study has revealed.
Neighborhood diversity more than doubled nationally between 2001 and 2021, with massive transformations in some places. There was an almost tenfold increase in diversity in Boston, Lincolnshire, albeit from a low base; Barking and Dagenham recorded a ninefold increase, while diversity in Watford and Reading quadrupled.
Newham was the most mixed place, and outside London the most diverse areas were Slough, Luton, Birmingham and Leicester. The trend was charted by a team of international population geographers, analyzing the latest 2021 Census data on ethnicity and using a “diversity index”, which ranks places according to the prevalence of different ethnic groups represented.
When first published in November, the raw census figures sparked headlines about the first “minority-majority” towns and cities and Nigel Farage’s erroneous claim that “London, Manchester and Birmingham are now minority white cities”. The new analysis argues that these places are better understood as highly ethnically diverse, home to a significant proportion of people from many ethnic groups, rather than single dominant communities.
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However, it does not explore the extent to which increased diversity means access to better education, health care or housing for ethnic minority people, and further research into the “different – and persistently unequal – neighborhood experiences of people of different ethnic backgrounds” is planned. .
Meanwhile, new research shows that in England and Wales, fewer neighborhoods than ever show low levels of ethnic diversity, while the number of neighborhoods with “very high levels of diversity” has risen from 342 (1%) in 2001 to 2,201 in 2021 (6%).
Part of the effect is down to a fall of 1.1 million in the white British population and an increase of 8.7 million in all other ethnicities over the past 20 years.
“But this is not solely a function of the decline of white British people,” said Gemma Catney, a population geographer at Queen’s University Belfast and co-author of the study. “We’re seeing increasing diversity and proliferation. There is a wider range of different ethnic groups represented in the districts than ever before.’
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The researchers found that the most neighborhoods with high levels of ethnic diversity were in big cities, particularly in London, but also in Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff, Nottingham and Southampton.
But there were large proportional changes in diversity in areas such as Boston and South Holland in Lincolnshire and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, where many migrant workers arrived after the 2004 EU enlargement.
“A lot of communities have come and gone,” said Paul Skinner, Boston Council leader. “The speed of change makes some people uncomfortable, but it’s a matter of embracing the differences.”
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He noted that the police force has become more diverse and said that while there are still “tensions,” “I hope people will embrace the good things that come with it.”
In England and Wales, the greatest reduction in segregation has been experienced by black African and black Caribbean ethnic groups over the past decade. Segregation of whites from minority groups also decreased.
Over the past 30 years, the largest proportional decline in residential segregation has been for the black African group, with Bangladeshi, black Caribbean and Indian ethnic groups also experiencing large declines in neighborhood residential segregation.
Places with the lowest diversity index scores are Allerdale and Copeland in Cumbria, Staffordshire Moorlands, Redcar and Cleveland and Anglesey. In each, at least 96% of the population is white British according to the 2021 census.
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