Ethnic diversity in London and other British cities

[Docere]

2021 census data.

Greater London

White 4,131,172 53.8%
White British 3,239,381 36.8%
Irish 156,333 1.8%
Other 1,290,838 14.7%

Asian or Asian British 1,817,640 20.8%
Indian 656,272 7.5%
Bangladeshi 322,054 3.7%
Pakistani 290,549 3.3%
Chinese 147,520 1.7%
Other Asian 401,245 4.6%

Black or Black British 1,188,370 13.5%
African 697,054 7.9%
Caribbean 345,405 3.9%
Other Black 145,911 0.9%

Mixed 505,775 5.7%
White and Black Caribbean 132,555 1.5%
White and Black African 77,341 0.9%
White and Asian 125,188 1.4%
Other Mixed 170,691 1.9%

Arab 139,791 1.6%
Any other ethnic group 416,977 4.7%

[Wiwildi]

Do you update this for 2022?

[Yuri]

Only 38.6% White British/Irish!

And even if we consider the whole metro area (around 15 million people), I'm not sure if White British/Irish will be above 50%.

And look at 15% of non-British White. A massive increase. In 2001, they were only 1.4 million in the whole UK. Now 1.3 million in London only.

[Docere]

Birmingham is now majority non-white.

Birmingham

White 556,608 48.7%
White British 491,211 42.9%
Irish 16,964 1.5%
Other 45,914 4%

Asian 355,384 31%
Pakistani 195,102 17%
Indian 66,519 5.8%
Bangladeshi 48,232 4.2%
Chinese 12,487 1.1%
Other Asian 33,044 2.9%

Black 125,760 10.9%
African 66,822 5.8%
Caribbean 44,718 3.9%
Other Black 14,220 1.2%

Mixed 55,202 4.8%
White and Black Caribbean 25,119 2.2%
White and Black African 4,680 0.4%
White and Asian 13,130 1.1%
Other Mixed 12,276 1.1%

Arab 19,196 1.7%
Any other ethnic group 32,769 2.9%

[Yuri]

Docere, could you post figures for the whole UK as well?

[Docere]

Briefly, some data for England and Wales:

81.7% are white, down from 86% in 2011.

74.4% are White British (80.5% in 2011)

Ethnic minorities:

Asian 5.5 million 9.3% (4.2 million, 7.5% in 2011)
Black 2.4 million 4% (1.9 million, 3.3% in 2011)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...les/census2021

[muppet]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Only 38.6% White British/Irish!

And even if we consider the whole metro area (around 15 million people), I'm not sure if White British/Irish will be above 50%.

And look at 15% of non-British White. A massive increase. In 2001, they were only 1.4 million in the whole UK. Now 1.3 million in London only.

Yep Slough, Luton have some of the highest minority counts in the country.

Also noteworthy, the highest White majority area is only 75% (Bromley, of which only 67% are White British):

[Docere]

Yup, a majority in London and the surrounding region have roots outside of the British Isles.

[Docere]

Liverpool isn't very diverse. 84% white, 77% white British.

Notably it has a fairly sizeable Chinese population of 9,000 (1.8%) and has Europe's oldest Chinatown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Liverpool

It also has an old Black community dating back to the 1700s.

[Docere]

Scotland will be out later.

[muppet]

The biggest EU countries are historically Poland and Ireland. After Brexshit the peak of nearly a million Poles went down to about 700,000 in the pandemic, then bounced back to 760,000 last year.

Irish born went down from 410,000 t0 325,000 - but ancestry is of course in the millions (one third of Londoners of all races for example).


The biggest decrease has been amongst the French - back when London was one of France's biggest cities with a rumoured population of 400,000 nationals, now reduced to 150,000 for the whole country.

Romanians have bucked the Brexshit trend -from 410,000 up to 540,000 last year.


Migration from outside the EU has hovered the same since Brexshit for many of the larger minorities, for example the Indian-born remains about 1.4 million with about the same number of 400,000 Indian nationals each year. However, other smaller countries contribute to an overall rise. We receive plenty from Africa and Latin America nowadays:





There's been a sharp spike this year due to Ukraine and Hong Kong:

[Docere]

I really doubt London is 1/3 Irish ancestry, that's a higher % than Boston. But yes the "Irish" box is really first generation Irish.

In Great Britain, Liverpool and Glasgow have the most Irish ancestry but they're descended from 19th century Irish. From the 20th century onward, Irish immigrants mostly went to London.

[muppet]

in terms of long term ancestry it's actually as high as 77% in London, measured in 2001 and again 2010- one quarter of Brits have it

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle...n-8445919.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1224611.stm




10% of the country has at least one Ireland born grandparent

https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/art...h-in-britain-/



There are varying degrees- Irish born (historically one of the cities most maligned minorities), 'London Irish' (parents are Irish but you're born in London, part of a huge and tight knit community), and Irish ancestry - everyone who ever looked west.

Other cities would be Manchester, which has 35% ancestry, and Liverpool with 75%.

[Crawford]

Those estimates sound absurd. How could London have 77% Irish ancestry?

London isn't even 77% British white. Ireland has never been a heavily populated island. London didn't even get heavy Irish immigration until the postwar decades. Nowadays the migration is more likely reversed, as the UK has heavy net losses to the EU since Brexit.

[Docere]

A polyglot global city like London isn't going to be 77% anything.

And three times as much Irish ancestry in the south of England than in Scotland? That makes no sense.

This is obviously a junk survey. Even the authors say so:

But although many hold passionately to their Irish roots, more than half are probably exaggerating or even lying, say the authors of the report.

The last British census, carried out in 1991, suggested five million British people either had an Irish parent or grandparent - less than one in ten of the population.

Dr Roy Bradshaw of Nottingham University's School of Geography, said: "A quarter of the population claiming Irish roots may be true, but you would have to go a long way back to find it, probably to the first half of the 19th century when a lot of Irish labourers came to Britain to work on the canals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1224611.stm

[Docere]

Irish-born, 1861

London 106,879 3.8%
Liverpool 83,949 18.9%
Glasgow 63,574 15.8%
Manchester 52,076 11.3%

https://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/...sus-statistics

Liverpool and Glasgow were proportionately far more Irish than London in the 19th century.

It's true London's Irish community is more of a 20th century phenomenon, but at no time were Irish immigrants even near the share of the population they were in Liverpool and Glasgow (even though their sheer numbers were larger).

London was 5.4% Irish-born in 1961.

[muppet]

You don't have to be full white to have Irish ancestry btw, for example the Caribbean diaspora is mostly mixed, with Irish settling on practically every island. Those stats are from 2001 (and 2010?), so likely lower now, I've heard it's down to about a third for London.

I.e. on the Irish in the Caribbean:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...the-caribbean/


Sidenote: interesting how St Patrick's is celebrated around the Caribbean. In Montserrat, which at one point was 70% Irish about 350 years ago, they still stamp shamrocks on the passports:

[muppet]

^well I do say one third today sounds about right. The survey was done 20 years ago though, when London also had far less non-white minorities.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Those estimates sound absurd. How could London have 77% Irish ancestry?

London isn't even 77% British white. Ireland has never been a heavily populated island. London didn't even get heavy Irish immigration until the postwar decades. Nowadays the migration is more likely reversed, as the UK has heavy net losses to the EU since Brexit.

London didn't get heavy Irish immigration until the postwar years ? Did you literally just decide that????

Big waves in the 1600s (only 40% of the population stayed after war and famine), again in the 19th Century, notably during the Potato Famine 800,000 emigrated to Britain (200,000 a year - proportionally this would equate today to about 700,000 refugees arriving annually), with 100,000 coming to London. Almost overnight London, Liverpool and Manchester became known as 'Little Ireland's'

Ireland's population halved from over 8 million due to starvation and emigration, and today is still a fraction of what it was (before the famine it was about half the population of Britain). 10% of the country moved to Britain in just 4 years. Within a decade of the famine, Irish formed 22% of Liverpool, 18% of Glasgow and 19% of Dundee.

[muppet]

Yes but we're talking about ancestry still. 100,000 in 1861, as a snapshot in time does indicate that they still will procreate and spread -bearing in mind there were successive waves before, and for centuries, not to mention after. The majority still ended in London - to reiterate as a snapshot - but far longer than the other cities historically.

[Docere]

This makes no sense.

Yes, these figures don't include all Irish ancestry. But mass Irish immigration to Britain began in the 19th century. Most in the mid-19th century would have been first- or second-generation. You can also see the proportion in Liverpool is 5x higher than London.

There's far more ethnic groups and nationalities today than there were in the 19th century. The pie may have grown but there's far more slices (hence lower percentages).

So how is polyglot London as Irish as Liverpool whose population is far more homogeneous? I don't get it.

How is London 3x as Irish as Glasgow? Again, makes no sense.

Let's put it this way. There were 260,000 Irish-born in NYC (Manhattan and Brooklyn) in 1860, 24% of the population. Their percentage is down since then because there's far more diversity in the population now than there was then, even with natural growth and 20th century Irish immigration. Or are we supposed to think NYC is even more than 77% Irish.