Why It Matters Passport Nationalities
Summary
We have determined the number of residents in your neighbourhood and the issuing nation of any passports they hold.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons with no passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that do not hold a passport. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a United Kingdom passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for the United Kingdom. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a Republic of Ireland passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for the Republic of Ireland. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding an African passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for one of the 55 countries in Africa. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding an Antarctica/Oceania passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for a country in South Polar region, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia or Australasia. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a British Overseas Territories passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a Central America passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding Middle East and Asia passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for one of the 22 Middle Eastern or 48 Asian Countries. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a North America/ Caribbean passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for one of the 23 Countries of North America and the Caribbean. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) persons holding an EU country passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for one of the 28 Countries of the European Union (excluding the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland). |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a European Non-EU country passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Monte Negro, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Macedonia. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of persons holding a South America passport | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that hold a passport giving them nationality or citizenship for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. |
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
A commercial inhabitant can learn a huge amount about their local customer base and locale by understanding the nations its residents represent. They can increase the impact and success of their business offering by considering in advance the additional cultural considerations they should make to have the greatest possible uptake from the local community.
For example, a brand heavily associated with British sensibilities would be more successful when located in certain postcodes within Richmond than in Newnham. There will also be a greater uptake of certain types of accommodation with certain sanitary provisions amongst one culture than another, and again business owners can only gain from having this insight.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
Residents will be surprised to learn of the impact that the passport holdings of their fellow community members can have on their area. Different nationalities have varying social norms, lifestyles, modes of employment and different age structures. For example, if you live in an area where a high proportion of your neighbours hold a Polish EU passport, you will find that your neighbours are more likely to be working and less likely to be in receipt of benefits than if you live in an area where your neighbours only hold a UK passport.
This will have an impact on the feel of the neighbourhood by day and night, as the services on offer would lead more towards the economically active such as a large offering of childcare provision and a number of cafés and bars indicating a populace with disposable income. Further, one will find that their neighbours are more likely to work in certain occupations if they hold certain passports. For example, Indian men in London are most likely to work as Science and Research professionals, so a neighbourhood with a large proportion of Indian residents may be less likely to be full of late-night bars which tend to be more present in areas with a younger population, working part time and with some disposable income.
A large number of people living in London possess an Irish passport (Photograph: Wikimedia Commons)
General Commentary
London sees high numbers of domestic and international inflows as a result of people seeking a new life here. Approximately 3.1 million people living in London were born abroad (37% of the total population), and just under 50 percent of London’s residents arrived in the UK in the last decade and one-in-six Londoners had arrived in the UK since 2001.
London’s foreign-born population does not come from any one region, though there are certain groups who are very well represented in London, and so we see certain passports cropping up as the most common second passport to hold in London. The top non-UK country of birth was India with 290,000 residents. Poland, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ireland also had over 100,000 residents each living in London. After these five, Romania, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Italy and Somalia were the next five best-represented populations in London.
The proportion of Londoners holding a passport from a country in the EU rose significantly following the UK’s adoption of the Directive allowing for the freedom of movement of people between EU member nations. After the enlargement of the EU in 2004 to include ten new countries, London welcomed over 250,000 people per year between 2006 and 2008 from these new member nations. Whilst numbers from these countries have fallen in recent years, and saw a decline following the Brexit referendum result, growth of the EU to include Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 has meant For that there were nearly 193,000 migrants from these two countries registering in London in 2015. Since 2010, there has been a steady rise in the number of people from other EU countries migrating to London. The impacts of the global financial crisis on the economies of many of these countries and particularly on unemployment rates, was a key driver behind these figures. Outside of Europe, the highest international flows are from Asia (nearly 100,000 in-migrants in 2015), although numbers have since fallen from their peak of over 213,000 in 2011.
Trivia
Norwegian immigration to the UK did not stop with the Vikings - in 1251, Henry III was given a polar bear by the King of Norway. Henry III then kept it in the Tower of London, on a long chain so that it could swim in the Thames.
History
Londinium was established as a civilian town by the an immigration population of Romans about four years after the invasion of 43 CE. London was as diverse as it is now as it housed a thriving populace of citizens from across the Roman Empire, continental Europe, the Middle East, and both Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa. The sixth century onwards saw the settlement of various Germans, or Saxons as they were then known. These peoples were followed by the Scandinavian Vikings in the ninth century.
In the middle ages, there was further immigration from the Norman French who brought with them one of the UK’s first significant Jewish populations to London. By the middle of the thirteenth century, there were substantial Jewish communities in London, Lincoln and York. Growing resentment towards their perceived wealth, which stemmed from the fact they could lend money for interest unlike Christians of the day, but ignored the fact that the vast majority of London’s Jews lived in poor conditions, finally culminated in vicious murders, massacres and their expulsion in 1290. A few remained and concealed their religious beliefs, although larger populations were not formally readmitted until Cromwell allowed it in the seventeenth century.
By the late 1600s the population of London was thought to be around half a million with further inflows of black Africans reaching London via Spain, due to the empire building of the latter and the existence of trading partnerships directly between London and west Africa, long before the opportunistic theft of a Portuguese slave ship by the British and their haphazard entry into the slave trade. Consequentially, 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.
French, Italian, German and Spanish refugees (both economic and political) all formed substantial communities in London during these decades, many of them having been forced to flee following the political and economic disorder associated with the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Added to these were smaller communities of Chinese, Indian and African sailors, 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 twentieth century saw significant influxes of migrants from the Caribbean and Africa; as colonial subjects remained here having volunteered to fight in the First and Second World Wars or emigrated here following the British Nationality Act of 1948, which offered nationality to citizens of the British empire and Commonwealth, in order to remedy skill and manpower shortages following the aforementioned wars. This led to increasing influxes of Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis who came here to work in Science and research, and in the production, wholesale or retail of textiles. 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 following the relaxing of emigration laws in China.
Today, whatever your country of origin you’ll be hard pressed not to find a corner of London where you will find members of your community.