Ceri Peach

Does Britain Have Ghettos

compare British levels of segregation with those experienced by African Americans in the United States. British levels of segregation are much lower than those found in the USA and, for the Black Caribbean population, they are falling. South Asian levels of segregation are higher than for the Caribbean population but show considerable internal variation. Bangladeshis, the most recently arrived of the groups, show the highest levels of encapsulation, followed by the Pakistanis, while Indian rates are relatively modest. Indirect standardization indicates that the contribution of economic factors to the observed levels of segregation is not substantial.

Good segregation, bad segregation

Much of the literature on segregation is underlain by an implicit model which argues that groups start highly segregated in inner city locations and disperse over time. Parallel and related to this spatial pattern is the social process of assimilation. Groups start highly segregated and unassimilated and become dispersed and assimilated over time. The paper argues that there is a critical distinction between the black American ghetto and other forms of segregation. The ghetto is not part of a continuum of spatial distributions which begins in the inner city and ends in the suburbs three generations later; it is an end in itself. The black ghetto is different in kind from other forms of segregation. Nearly all of its members are black and nearly all the black population in American cities is in such locations. African American segregation has been almost continuously high during the twentieth century and has not diminished with socio-economic improvement. Ethnic enclaves of the Irish, Poles or other ethnic...

Slippery Segregation: Discovering or Manufacturing Ghettos?

Controversy exploded in 2005 over a paper at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of British Geographers which claimed that ethnic segregation in Britain was increasing, ghettos had formed and some British cities were more segregated than Chicago. The paper asserted that indexes failed to measure segregation and should be abandoned in favour of a threshold schema of concentrations using raw data. These assertions were repeated by Trevor Phillips, Director the Commission for Racial Equality, in an inflammatory speech claiming that Britain was sleepwalking into American-style segregation. The argument of this paper is that the index approach is indeed necessary, that ethnic segregation in Britain is decreasing, that the threshold criteria for the claim that British ghettos exist has manufactured ghettos rather than discovered them. A Pakistani ghetto under the schema could be 40 per cent Pakistani, 30 per cent White, 20 per cent Indian and 10 per cent Caribbean. In 2000, 60 per cent of Chicagos Blacks lived in a true ghetto of tracts that were 90–100 per cent Black.

South Asian and Caribbean Ethnic Minority Housing Choice in Britain

The paper deals with choice and constraint in ethnic minority housing in Britain. It argues that the interpretation of patterns has changed from one in which minorities were viewed as powerless victims of racist discriminatory constraint, to one in which they are seen as exercising a greater degree of autonomy. Indian and Pakistani housing tenure is shown to have great similarities in terms of owner-occupation but to diverge greatly in terms of house type and location. Bangladeshis and Caribbeans are shown to share similarities in terms of socioeconomic class and housing tenure patterns, but to differ strongly in terms of the reasons for their high concentrations in council housing and also in the locations in which they live and their trends in terms of segregation. Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are shown to have similar socioeconomic profiles, but to differ in tenure and house types. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are shown to have similar family structures but to differ in house types. The housing patterns of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Caribbeans in Britain owe more to ethnicity and culture than to race.

Muslims in the 2001 Census of England and Wales: Gender and economic disadvantage

Abstract The article presents new data for the Muslim population of Britain from the 2001 Census. It uses the cross tabulations of ethnicity by religion to back-project the growth of the Muslim population from 21,000 in 1951 to 1.6 millions in 2001. It examines the social, economic, demographic and geographic characteristics of the population. Although Muslims are often represented as a homogenous group, there are considerable internal differences, so that the characteristics of the population as a whole do not apply to all groups within. The 2001 Census shows that two-thirds of British Muslims are ethnically Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi, but one-third comes from diverse European, African, North African, Middle Eastern and other Asian sources. Nevertheless, Muslim gender roles emerge as a critical differentiator of socio-economic vulnerability. Taken as a whole, the Muslim population is young and rapidly growing; its socio-economic profile is depressed, marked by the exceptionally low participation rate of women in the formal labour market, and by high concentration in areas of multiple deprivation.

London and New York: contrasts in British and American models of segregation with a comment by Nathan Glazer

London and New York differ dramatically in the social geographies of their ethnic minority populations. London is a city with immigrants and minorities, while New York is a city of immigrants and minorities. In London they are recent, while in New York they are the lifeblood of its history. The contrasts in social geography stem also from the differing origins of the ethnic minority populations and the constitutional differences between the countries within which they are set. In New York, the fundamental divide is racial; in London it is cultural. London and New York have roughly the same population and are both global cities, acting in similar ways in the world economy. Both cities have been showing long-term population losses, but whereas in New York this has been identified as ‘white flight’, in Londons case it is seen in less emotive terms as ‘counterurbanisation’. In particular, population decrease in the major UK conurbations preceded non-European ethnic immigration by at least ten years. Thus, whereas in New York, immigrant and minority growth is represented as displacing white Americans, in London the causation seems reversed. The discussion concentrates on comparisons of the racialised minorities in London with African-Americans and Hispanics in New York. The main thrust of the argument is that Londons Afro-Caribbean population is, against expectations, following a ‘melting pot’ trajectory while South Asian groups are following a more structural pluralistic path. However, in New York, African-Americans continue to experience the hyper-segregated existence that sets the American model apart from the urban forms of the Western world, while the Latino population edges towards the ‘melting pot’. Copyright

West Indian Migration to Britain. A Social Geography

with the economic context of immigration to Britain. At first glance they appear to present an ideal combination, with Peachs statistical analysis of rates of immigration and patterns of distribution being complemented by Pattersons study of immigrant social relationships in the work situation. Thus while the former gives a general picture of broad trends of movement related to the supply and demand for jobs and housing in this country, the latter serves as a case analysis of industrial relationships in a specific area (Croydon), highlighting the ways in which these are affected by the different institutional structures and local and historical economic factors. Unfor-

Immigration and ethnicity

This chapter is divided into three parts. First, the background to immigration and legislation controlling immigration will be reviewed; secondly, the characteristics of the main immigrant groups will be outlined; finally, the prospects for ethnic groups in British society will be discussed.

Muslim minorities in Western Europe

Abstract Since the 1950s the Muslim element within the worker migration to western Europe has grown from almost nothing to over 6 million. There are now more ‘new’ Muslims in Europe than in the indigenous groups of non‐CIS Europe. The situations differ very substantially between the main western European countries in terms of origins and the degree of integration of the groups concerned. The article presents an overview of the current position dealing particularly with the numbers in different countries.

Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in the new Religious Landscape of England

This article examines the dramatic changes brought to English townscapes by Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism. These “new” religions have arrived with the large‐scale immigration and subsequent natural growth of the minority ethnic populations of Great Britain since the 1950s. The article traces the growth and distribution of these populations and religions, as well as the development of their places of worship from front‐room prayer rooms to cathedral‐scale buildings. It explores the way in which the British planning process, dedicated to preserving the traditional, has engaged with the exotic.