Maria Sobolewska

The Political Integration of Ethnic Minorities in Britain

1. Exclusion or Integration? 2. Diversity and Integration of British Ethnic Minorities 3. Political Orientations: Home or Away? 4. The Ethnic Minority Agenda(s) 5. Political representation of ethnic minority concerns 6. Partisanship 7. Eligibility, Registration and Turnout 8. Voting, Abstention, and Defection 9. Varieties of Political Action: Activists and Dissidents 10. Satisfaction or Disaffection from British Democracy? APPENDICES The Ethnic Minority British Election Survey (EMBES) Coding the variables

Party Strategies and the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minorities: The 2010 British General Election

The 2010 election proved critical for ethnic minority representation in Britain. The number of minority Members of Parliament reached an unprecedented high. Furthermore, the virtual monopoly of the Labour party on minority parliamentary representation ended. In explaining this development, this article moves away from the traditional discussion of disadvantages facing minority candidates and turns to the role of the political parties. It argues that a new commitment to increased minority representation exists and shows, on the basis of new data, that in the 2010 election both Labour and Conservatives employed a variety of strategies for increasing ethnic minority representation. The strategy to select more minority candidates in ‘white’ seats was not only a key to increasing the numbers of minority parliamentarians but also signals a departure from the traditional pattern of ethnic minority politicians being elected by ethnic minorities.

Ethnic Heterogeneity in the Social Bases of Voting at the 2010 British General Election

Abstract This paper investigates whether in 2010 ethnic minorities continued to give overwhelming support to Labour or whether the Conservatives made inroads, especially among the more middle‐class or entrepreneurial sections of the ethnic minority electorate. Does ethnicity over‐ride other social cleavages such as the class cleavage? Or does religion, especially Islam, now represent a cross‐cutting cleavage alongside ethnicity? Using a major new survey, the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES), substantial variation was found between ethnic minorities in their level of support for Labour, although overall minority support for Labour remains double that of White British voters. In general the Conservatives have failed to make greater inroads than would be expected on the basis of uniform swing. Ethnicity does not in general ‘trump’ social class, although there are other ways in which the predictors of ethnic minority turnout and party choice differ from those of the majority group. Overall considerable heterogeneity is found in patterns of ethnic minority electoral behaviour and in the predictors of that behaviour.

Candidate Ethnicity and Vote Choice in Britain

This article develops and tests a set of theoretical mechanisms by which candidate ethnicity may have affected the party vote choice of both white British and ethnic minority voters in the 2010 British general election. Ethnic minority candidates suffered an average electoral penalty of about 4 per cent of the three-party vote from whites, mostly because those with anti-immigrant feelings were less willing to vote for Muslims. Ethnic minority voter responses to candidate ethnicity differed by ethnic group. There were no significant effects for non-Muslim Indian and black voters, while Pakistani candidates benefited from an 8-point average electoral bonus from Pakistani voters.

The Calculus of Ethnic Minority Voting in Britain

Using data from the 2010 UK general election, the article shows that there is a distinctive calculus of party choice among Britains overwhelmingly Labour-supporting ethnic minorities. Ethnic minority (EM) voters are similar to whites in the importance they accord to partisanship and valence considerations in deciding which party they vote for. However, EM voters place less emphasis on ideological spatial calculations. Additionally, across all ethnic minority groups, there is an important – and differentiated – role for perceptions of discrimination. In 2010, personal experience of (egocentric) discrimination tended to damage Labour as the incumbent governing party. In contrast, perceptions of (sociotropic) discrimination against fellow EM citizens interacted with participation in British cultural practices to increase support for Labour. These findings reflect the history of Labour and Conservative governments in the UK. Labour is the only party that, in power, has legislated actively to promote ethnic minority rights and interests.

Understanding the effects of religious attendance on political participation among ethnic minorities of different religions

In the United States, active church membership among ethnic and racial minorities has been linked to higher political participation. In Europe, the influence of religious attendance on political mobilisation of ethnic minorities has so far been little explored, despite the heated public debate about the public role of religion and particularly Islam. This study uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to theorise the relationship between religious attendance and political participation of ethnic minorities in a European context and extend existing theories to non-Christian minority religions. The article shows that despite a significantly different context in which religions place in political life is more contentious, regular religious attendance increases political participation rates of ethnic minorities. Some possible explanatory mechanisms are tested and an important distinction is introduced between those mechanisms that mediate, and those that moderate the impact of religion. The study finds that British minority churches and places of worships vary in how willing and effective they are in politically motivating their worshippers, and concludes that this relates to the political salience of certain religions within the United Kingdom context.

The public view of immigrant integration: multidimensional and consensual. Evidence from survey experiments in the UK and the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Despite the growing interest in immigrant integration in a wide range of scholarly literature, there is less interest in how integration might be understood by the public. Using a survey-embedded conjoint experiment in the Netherlands and the UK, we ask the public what they think constitutes successful immigrant integration. We show that the public has a multidimensional view of integration, which goes beyond a simple preference for cultural assimilation. We discover that there is a remarkably stable hierarchy of preference of integration outcomes, which is a matter of wide spread consensus in both our countries among different social groups and people with different attitudes on immigration. Using the British data we also show an integration penalty for immigrants of non-white origins. Our article places public opinion of immigrant integration at the heart of a rapidly expanding research agenda into the social and political impacts of immigration.

Is ethnic prejudice declining in Britain? Change in social distance attitudes among ethnic majority and minority Britons

Most literature on racial prejudice deals with the racial attitudes of the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities separately. This paper breaks this tradition. We examine the social distance attitudes of white and non-white British residents to test if these attitudes follow the same trends over time, whether they are driven by the same social processes and whether they are inter-related. We have three main findings. Firstly, social distance from other ethnic groups has declined over time for both white and ethnic minority Britons. For the white majority there are both period and cohort elements to this decline. Secondly, we see some evidence that social distance between the majority and minority groups is reciprocal. Specifically, minorities who experience rejection by the white British feel a greater sense of distance from them. Thirdly, we find that all groups share the perception of the same ethnic hierarchy. We see evidence of particularly widespread hostility towards Muslim Britons from all ethnic groups suggesting that Muslims are singled out for negative attention from many British residents of all other backgrounds, including a large number who do not express hostility to other groups.

Who speaks for Muslims? The role of the press in creating and reporting of Muslim public opinion polls in the aftermath of London bombings in July 2005

Muslim public opinion polls are mostly taken at face value as the direct and unbiased voice of British Muslims, but, as this article argues, most of the public opinion polls are commissioned by the media and suffer from similar framing effects to those seen in the general media coverage of Muslims. At a time of national crisis, following the London terrorist attacks in 2005, it has become especially clear that the media have been following their pre-existing narrative on Muslims rather than responding to public interest. We analyse all public opinion polls conducted in the 18 months following the 7 July attacks and all their broadsheet newspaper coverage to show that the media-framing effects influence both the creation of Muslim opinion polls and their reporting.

Explaining electoral fraud in an advanced democracy: Fraud vulnerabilities, opportunities and facilitating mechanisms in British elections:

Explanatory theories of electoral fraud are usually developed for new and failing democracies. However, while rarer, electoral fraud does happen in advanced democracies. Because data on fraud in advanced democracies are scarce, single instances of fraud are studied in isolation and offer very little generalisability. This study uses a unique comparative dataset of 35 in-depth, semi-structured interviews from eight locations, only half of which experienced allegations of fraud. We show that theories of why and how fraud happens in developing democracies can be extended to an advanced democracy. We also provide a detailed description of two micro-mechanisms, which facilitate fraud taking place and thus provide a causal link between the structural vulnerability to fraud and the direct opportunities for fraud to take place. The case study of Britain focuses mostly on the biraderi structures within the British South Asian communities, but we offer ways in which these structures generalise more broadly.