Why It Matters
Ethnic Identity
Summary
We have captured the ethnic make-up of all the inhabitants of each London postcode.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern-Irish or another British ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of an English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern-Irish or another British ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of Gypsy or Irish Traveller ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as being members of the Gypsy or Irish Traveller ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of Irish ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of the Irish ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of another White ethnicity (not otherwise mentioned) | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of another white (not otherwise mentioned) ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of mixed White and Asian ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify pimarily as members of both the White and Asian ethnic groups. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of mixed White and Black African ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as being members of both White and Black African ethnic groups. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of mixed White and Black Caribbean ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify as members of both the White and Black Caribbean ethnic groups. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of Asian ethnicity (not otherwise mentioned) | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of an Asian ethnic group that does belong to the Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Chinese ethnic groups. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of African ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of the African ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of Caribbean ethnicity | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of the Caribbean ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of another Black ethnicity (not otherwise mentioned) | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as members of a Black ethnic group that is not an African or Caribbean ethnic group. |
| Estimated Percentage of residents that are of another ethnicity (not otherwise mentioned) | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that self-identify primarily as being members of an ethnic group other than those already listed. |
Definition
Since ethnicity is a multifaceted and changing phenomenon, various possible ways of measuring ethnic groups exist. What seems to be generally accepted, however, is that ethnicity includes cultural, social and nationalist aspects, and others, in combination. As there is no consensus on what constitutes an ethnic group membership is something that is self-defined and subjectively meaningful to the person concerned. Construct new housing stock, would constitute a sudden supply shock and lead to upward pressure on local rents.
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
Commercial inhabitants will find information about the ethnic make-up of their locale vital to understanding the level of business need for their offering. For example, there is a higher uptake for certain sorts of accommodation or business amongst particular ethnicities than others, and business owners have not previously been able to obtain such granular information about their immediate vicinity than that which Walulel is able to offer.
Further particular ethnicities have a different age structure than others, so this also has a bearing on the commercial offerings which will thrive in a given vicinity. For example, a new ethnicity to appear on the census is Gypsy and Irish Traveller. They have a far greater proportion of young persons in their population than is the national average so there would be a greater uptake of business offerings geared towards those of child rearing age than in others.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
Residents will be impacted by the ethnic make-up of their area, in the first instance because it will impact the goods and services on offer. For example, the majority of Londoners identifying as White Other are Eastern European, and they may wish to access certain products that they are able to obtain at home.
Access to such goods and services, will often enhance a community’s sense of belonging. Also, the ethnic make-up of one’s area might dictate the social spaces available – for example, tea houses, public houses and shisha cafes are all sought by different ethnic groups so if your neighbourhood is heavily made up of a certain group you might find more of a certain type of space than others.
However, studies have shown that whilst one typically seeks access to the amenities most associated with their ethnicity in the first instance, a deeper sense of belonging is found by urban inhabitants when they cross cultural divides and access a variety of amenities beyond those they may have sought out in the first instance.
General commentary
London is incredibly diverse, especially when compared with the rest of the UK. Some 40 percent of its citizens identified as Black, Asian, Mixed or another non-White ethnicity. By way of comparison, the figure for the UK as a whole was 13 percent. London also experiences incredible variation from one postcode to the next. From Havering, which is 88 percent White, to Redbridge which is 42 percent Asian, London’s villages can be as varied in their demographics as nations are from one another.
London’s largest ethnic group is still White, with 56 percent identifying as being part of this ethnic group, although the makeup of that group has changed, as a smaller proportion, now 44.9 percent, identify as White British. While White British remained the majority ethnic group in London, London had the lowest percentage of persons identifying as White British across England and Wales.
London also has the highest proportion in the country of people identifying as Other White, at 12.6 percent. The next largest ethnic group was Asian, at 18 percent of the capital’s population, followed by Black Londoners, mostly made up of Africans and Caribbeans who made up to 13 percent of London’s rich and varied tapestry.
Another testament to the melting pot that is London is the growing number of residents identifying as mixed race which now stands makes up 405,000 of the capital’s population and five percent of its population.
There are also clear spatial trends when looking at London’s ethnic groups. Currently, London’s White population is most highly concentrated in Outer London; its Black population in east London; and its Asian population in west and north east London. However, it is not as simple as White populations migrating ever further out of London.
The annual Notting Hill Carnival is a famous celebration of London’s diverse cultures (Photograph: S Pakhrin, Wikimedia Commons)
Trivia
People from two of the four specific White ethnic groups (White Irish and Other White) were most likely to live in London, with 33.1% and 41.6% of their populations doing so respectively.
History
London has always been incredibly diverse and the majority of inhabitants that settled it were not ethnically British. At the time of Londinium’s establishment as a Roman town in 43 CE the population was thought to be around 60,000 ethnically diverse inhabitants from across the Roman Empire, continental Europe, the Middle East, and both Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, many of whom came to Britain as soldiers of the Roman empire to serve in London, York and other staging posts for the Roman army. The sixth century CE onwards saw the settlement of various Saxon peoples in London followed by the Vikings in the ninth century and the Norman French from 1066 to 1154.
By the late 1600s the population of London was thought to be around half a million, estimated by Gregory King, Britain’s first great demographer. In the meantime, further populations of black Africans reached London -for example Catherine of Aragon brought black African attendants with her when she married Henry VIII. Others came here following the war with Spain which had seen additional black African people arrive following its colonial expeditions. Trade lines also opened directly between London and West Africa such that there was believed to be a minimum population of 20,000 black people in London by the mid-seventeenth century.
Another significant population in London which had been increasing from the sixteenth century was the Irish whose numbers peaked in the mid-eighteenth century during the famine years. In 1801, when the first reliable modern census was taken, greater London recorded just over a million people; rising to a little over 1.4 million inhabitants by 1815. No single decade in this period witnessed less than robust population growth.
During these decades smaller communities of Chinese, Indian and African sailors, established communities living and working along the riverside. And finally, there was a thriving and substantial Jewish community, replenished decade by decade by further European migration. Let’s us not also forget the population group which most fuelled London’s growth – those from the home counties.
The 20th century saw significant influxes of migrants from the Caribbean and Africa as colonial subjects who volunteered to fight in the First and Second World Wars and following the arrival of the Windrush in 1948. The latter came in the wake of the British Nationality Act in the same year, which conferring British Citizenship on all who lived in the British Empire and Commonwealth, granted due to concerns about job and skills shortages following the Second World War.
The 1950s-1970s was when Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis started to make up a more significant proportion of the population of London, following the breakup of then India. They came to London, predominantly to work in the production, wholesale or retail of textiles but also crucially as doctors to bolster the NHS which was otherwise lacking a sufficient number of qualified staff. Significant numbers of East African Indians arrived in the 1970s and 80s following expulsions from Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar. This era also saw the influx of Chinese economic migrants.
The first decade of the 21st century has seen a large influx of non-British White immigration from Europe, following the adoption of the Free Movement of Persons Directive in 2004. This has resulted in a larger proportion of non-British White inhabitants in London than in recent censuses but not the largest proportion ever as noted in regard to London’s original composition.