Chamion Caballero

What's in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their childrens personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their childrens heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.

Cultures of mixing: understanding partnerships across ethnicity

This article presents an extensive analysis of ‘cultures of mixing’―that is, relationships between partners from different ethnic backgrounds―based on 2001 British census data. The data is used to show how ‘mixed’ partnerships are relevant to aspects of current debates about the nature of ethnic relations in contemporary Britain. We begin with a discussion of dominant stereotypes around mixed race/ethnicity partnerships in Britain and their links to dystopian visions of majority and minority ethnic relations, before looking at frameworks of understanding that offer a challenge to these gloomy diagnoses, and in particular the concept of ‘convivial culture’. This discussion is followed by an analysis of the location and socio-economic characteristics of ‘cultures of mixing’. We argue that ‘cultures of mixing’ are spatially and socially uneven, and appear to be underpinned by more material and equity-based features of social life and provision.

The barriers to achievement for white/black Caribbean pupils in English schools

Pupils of White and Black Caribbean descent make up the largest category of mixed heritage pupils in the United Kingdom. As a group they are at risk of underachieving and are proportionally over‐represented in school exclusions. Yet little is known to date about the barriers to their achievement. The common‐sense explanation for their underachievement is often in relation to the perception that mixed‐heritage people are more likely to have ‘identity problems’ and low self‐esteem because of their mixed backgrounds. In some cases, this view is further compounded by low teacher expectations associated with the socio‐economic background and household structure of some mixed heritage pupils. By drawing on qualitative data from recent research, 1 this article will explore the barriers to achievement faced by White/Black Caribbean pupils in English schools. We argue that although White/Black Caribbean pupils are likely to experience a similar set of barriers to achievement as Black Caribbean pupils, there are important distinctions to be made. The specific barriers to achievement identified for White/Black Caribbean pupils derive from socio‐economic disadvantage, low teacher expectation linked to misunderstandings of mixed heritage identities and backgrounds, and the behavioural issues and attitudes towards achievement linked to peer group pressures.

Researching mixed race in education: perceptions, policies and practices

Although the ‘Mixed’ primary and secondary school population is rapidly growing in both size and recognition, pupils from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds are largely invisible in current educational policies and practices regarding minority ethnic pupils. In light of initial Local Education Authority‐level data which suggested that pupils from Mixed White/Black Caribbean backgrounds were significantly underachieving and over‐represented in school exclusions, the authors of this article conducted a research project which, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, explored the educational attainment, experiences and needs of this group of pupils. Drawing on the qualitative data from the project, this article will discuss three key areas of findings. Firstly, by presenting data from the case study interviews with pupils, parents, teachers and specialist educational (local Ethnic Minority Achievement Service) advisors, the authors will discuss how the perceptions of the White/Black Caribbean pupils they encountered in the schools encompassed both traditional constructions of ‘mixedness’—which conceptualise mixed identities as inherently problematic—and emerging ‘new wave’ constructions—which conceptualise mixed identities not only as unproblematic, but as positive and celebratory. Secondly, the authors discuss the extent to which these perceptions and their potential impact on pupils’ achievement are supported or challenged by existing educational policies and practices. They conclude by highlighting some of the methodological and theoretical challenges encountered in researching mixedness in the educational context and discuss the implications of these for both their research project and the field of ‘mixed race studies’ as a whole.

The geographies of mixed-ethnicity families

This paper examines the underresearched residential geographies of mixed-ethnicity families. Analyses of 2001 Great Britain Census data reveal uneven patterns, with different concentrations of mixed-ethnicity families in distinct locations. The findings suggest that distributions of mixed-ethnicity families are not aligned with respective minority ethnic groups. The concentration of mixed-ethnicity families within ethnically diverse neighbourhoods is, in part, substantiated. The discussion disrupts media representations of mixed ethnicity and assumptions of the marginalisation of deprived, mixed-ethnicity families, making a contribution to theoretical debates of processes of sociospatial segregation, ethnicity, and neighbourhood change.

The diversity and complexity of the everyday lives of mixed racial and ethnic families: implications for adoption and fostering practice and policy

Recent research on mixed racial and ethnic couples and lone parents in Britain indicates that not only are they a diverse group, but they also have a diversity of ways of understanding their difference and creating a sense of belonging for their children (Caballero et al, 2008; Caballero, 2010, 2011). Such research strongly challenges the idea that there is - or should be - a single benchmark of how to raise children from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds. Nevertheless, placement decisions for this broad group of children are often still rooted in longstanding and politicised assumptions about their identities and how best to instil a positive and healthy sense of self (Phoenix, 1999; Okitikpi, 2005; Goodyer and Okitikpi, 2007; Patel, 2008). Drawing on three recent studies exploring the everyday experiences of lone and couple parents of mixed racial and ethnic children, Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards, Annabel Goodyer and Toyin Okitikpi discuss the ways in which mixed racial and ethnic children who are not in the care system experience difference and belonging within their families, and how they negotiate and manage these factors. In particular, this article illustrates the types of strategies and supports that parents draw on to give their children a positive sense of identity and belonging, as well as the ways in which other issues can be more significant for mixed racial and ethnic children and their parents than what they often see as ‘ordinary’ internal family difference. Arguing that the demographics and experiences of mixed racial and ethnic families are much more diverse and complex than is commonly imagined, the authors ask to what extent policies and practice around the placement of mixed racial and ethnic children reflect the lives of those families outside the care system. Moreover, in what ways can or should the experiences of these families inform policy and practice for those within it? Implications for adoption and fostering practice and policies emerging from this more multifaceted understanding of the everyday lives of racially and ethnically mixed families are also discussed.

‘Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Black Man?’: Representation and Lived Experiences in the Post-war Period

While scholarly work on mixed race children in care reflected some of these issues, the complexity and nuance found by academics was overlooked in the media. In Fitzherbert’s 1967 study of mixed West Indian/British children in care—part of a larger study on West Indians in London—she found that while nearly all the 41 white mothers were ‘of the social type which cannot make the grade in our competitive society’ (58) and 11 of them showed ‘evidence of prostitution’ (56), most were not the ‘prostitute class’ or ‘bamboozled’ young girls made out in the press; in fact, over half had already had one or two white children before having had a child with a West Indian man. The factors that had led to their children being placed in care were diverse and, racial rejection from family and discrimination in housing notwithstanding, similar to white mothers of white children in care: mental health, poverty, social incapacity. Moreover—and contrary to Fletcher’s earlier pronouncements about such mothers—Fitzherbert noted that ‘one feature of these women incapable of running their lives, and coping with jobs, housing and neighbours, was that they were often very affectionate and emotionally satisfying mothers. Motherhood was their only skill, yet they were so ineffectual at providing the necessary conditions for it, that Child Care Officers often considered reception into care necessary’ (59). Furthermore, Fitzherbert noted the willing role that many West Indian fathers were willing to play, with 7 taking their illegitimate children into their married homes and several others expressing willingness to be involved in their children’s lives, though, she remonstrated, these overtures were often passed over by Child Care Officers.

Conviviality, Hostility and Ordinariness: Everyday Lives and Emotions in the Second World War and Early Post-war Years

Though the overall social climate in Britain during and immediately after the Second World War was one in which racial prejudice and practices were highly ingrained and prevalent, there could often be a level of disconnect between the generally disapproving and oppositional wider social attitude to interraciality and that demonstrated on a local, everyday basis. The few first-hand accounts of the wartime parents in mixed relationships who gave up their mixed race children and subsequent accounts of these children in adulthood reveal a picture of emotional distress as well as the wrench of abandonment that lay behind the details of official and media reporting. Yet, at this time interraciality was both normalised and supported via the visibility, networks and social spaces of mixed race families and multiracial communities.

The Era of Mass Immigration and Widespread Population Mixing

The national landscape of mixing and mixedness also changed over the decades of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s as the arrival of the ‘Empire Windrush’ heralded an era of mass migration from Britain’s former colonies. The new migrant populations formed substantially larger communities than the pre-war ‘coloured quarters’ and in parts of Britain which had not had a strong tradition of black and minority ethnic settlement, creating new opportunities for interracial mixing. By the end of the period interethnic marriages (the term of choice of the official agency responsible for the census and social surveys) probably approached 1% of all marriages. A new generation of sociologists, including black scholars, contributed a fresh rigour to scholarship through their preparedness to embed themselves in the communities they studied. Yet these decades were also times of racial disturbances, the politicisation of race relations and intrusive government surveillance of mixed communities.

Social Acceptance, Official Recognition, and Membership of the British Collectivity

The mixed population increased almost threefold in size between 1985 and 2001, moving mixing and mixedness demographically into the mainstream. A further important change was the shift in attitudes towards mixed marriages with prejudice declining sharply in the 1990s. This change in attitudes and the wider social climate created a need in government for a new terminology that was met by the privileging of conceptualisations of origin or descent, leading to full recognition in the 2001 Census.