Ethnic diversity in London and other British cities

[Docere]

Re: Irish Catholics (or English Catholics mostly of Irish origin).

English Catholics now number over 5.5 million. The majority traditionally voted Labour and only one-third married non-Catholics in postwar decades (though by the 1970s it was up to two-thirds). English Catholics go to church more regularly than other denominations do; they outnumber worshippers at Church of England services and represent one-half of all churchgoers in England. The majority of English Catholics tended to be immigrants, Irish, and working class; in many ways, they resembled Protestant nonconformists in their social situation. However in the postwar years, as the economy expanded, Catholics also experienced social mobility, and emerged from their subcultures. In some constituencies, the Catholic vote began to be important. (The same mobility occurred in US Catholics, but they kept their hyphenated status, that is, they called themselves Irish-American, Italian-American, or Polish-American. In England, they became Englishmen or Englishwomen with an Irish name.

Source: Peter Dunnigan and Lewis Gann, The Rebirth of the West

Two-thirds of Catholics were still marrying other Catholics as late as the 1950s, one hundred years after the Irish famine. Most marrying in the 1950s would probably have been fourth generation, the great-grandchildren of Famine era immigrants.

It looks like it was in the 1970s that a majority began marrying out, who were probably fifth generation. And even one-third in-marriage is much higher than "by chance."

So no, I don't think a majority of old-stock Londoners have Irish ancestry. Irish surnames would be more common if they did.

[muppet]

...

Originally Posted by muppet

Let's just take one single wave, the 727,326 Irish born that mostly arrived after the famine, and already took up 3% of the population. With the average 5 kids per woman then, they beget 1.818 million offspring for a total of 2.546 million Irish born / Irish ancestry after one generation. 2545641

This first generation (4 kids per woman) has 3.636m kids as a second generation -and lets be cruel and say only 60% of the original wave has survived or stuck around to become grandparents in their 40s and 50s. Your final tally is a little over 5.855 million (out of 38 million 40-50 years later), risen to 15% of the population within a lifetime.

The generation after (3 surviving kids per woman by the 1920s) will produce another 5.45m kids, (and lets say 70% of grandparents survive to see them) nearly doubling, but you're steady at about 18% now of the general population.

So that's from one single wave, hitting 15% of national population before even the 20th Century, despite concentrated in 3 metropoli.

Taking into account the successive waves after (not to mention before) the result will become much higher, especially in those cities. That's why the northern cities turns up with 75% today., as would the 'White British' in London, giving a final tally of about a third overall for the city.

[Docere]

5.88 million is about triple the Catholic population of Britain in 1900 (1.5 million in England and Wales, 500,000 in Scotland). I really don't think they gave up the Catholicism that fast.

There were 1.6 million Irish-born in the US in 1860. Curious what you think the Irish American population was in 1900.

[muppet]

In terms of ancestry, in the US it would be millions.

And for starters marrying a Catholic does not mean everyone in the family will be Catholic, nor yourself. You and your four or five kids may well stay Protestant or be of no denomination -in the world's most anti-Catholic country, not to mention most anti-Irish, UK, this would be quite the option. But hey, we would never know. Also, by the 1950s, kids being born were majority unreligious.

The census also did not ask for religion between 1851 and 2001. Getting data from counting those who attended church, based on estimates from their clergy, does not indicate the whole population either, even if those estimates were accurate.

"Figures available since 1901 concerning the number of Catholics present in the province of England & Wales constitute "softer" data. Gordon Heald has noted how these figures are based on estimates supplied by parish clergy, which vary enormously in particular parishes but when pooled give a steady indication nationally."

https://www.drgareth.info/CathStat.pdf

Today the majority of Catholic churches in the city are populated by congregations from all over the world (mostly Mediterranean, Latinx, African, Filipino etc migrants where these dioceses found new life)- those with Irish ancestry are definitely few and far between. The same applies to pretty much all churches in the city, regardless of denomination, whose congregants tend to be foreign born or the young children of.



London's main Catholic cathedral:

[Docere]

Run your projection again, and tell me:

How many second generation Irish are there in England in 1900?
How many third generation people with Irish ancestry in 1900?

[muppet]

scroll up, https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...&postcount=142


The starting point hypothetically - ignoring all ancestry before and arrivals after -is the single surge recorded in the 1851 census of 727,326 Irish-born for Britain, the majority in just 3 areas nationwide, and the largest recipient being London (not proportionally but in sheer numbers). By average kids per woman, this results in 1.818 million offspring lets say by the 1870s-80s (in reality it would be earlier as many workers were already childbearing age, but we'll err on the side of caution). We'll also take it that 40% of the original parents die/ emigrate/ disappear before they become grandparents.

Anyhoo, the 1.8 million have birthrates reduced to 4 kids by the 1900-1910s, who will have an average 3.63 million kids themselves. As reminder this is ancestry, and can include many who are now only 1/4 Irish and not necessarily be church-going Catholic, have an Irish surname or will identify as such. But they do have ancestry nevertheless (just like how they're still identified as such in the US over a much longer period than this, 150 years later).

To reiterate, that's only one wave being counted - larger waves arrived after. Many waves arrived before.

[Docere]

I'm trying to make sense of this...

1850: 727,000 Irish immigrants

1875: 2,545,000 first- and second-generation Irish, 1,818,000 second generation Irish, 100% of 727,000 first generation still alive and in Britain

1900: 5,850,000 Irish ancestry, not sure how many are first-, how many are second- or how many are third-generation. But you seem to be assuming (I think) the third generation are already the majority.

[muppet]

I'm only subtracting death/ emigration rates after they have their average amount of kids per woman, which is already taken into account (otherwise it would skew the amount).

This still arrives at the same projection, by let's say 1900 (really earlier, but more on that later) of 3.63 million among 5.855 million being third generation, and 55% of the original wave still being about:

Generation 1 - roughly 400,000 left
Gen 2 - 1818000 (childbearing rates already take into account death rates of females who die before or reaching childbirth, so need to be subtracted only after)
Gen 3 - 3636000

= 5.855 million total

The reality should really be about the same total at least 10 years earlier, as many who arrived were already childbearing age, rather than waiting 20-25 years to have all their kids. But we've erred on an extreme side of caution to enable the kiddy count, and it balances out with the death rate later on. In every instance I've taken the option to lower the count, eg the fact birthrates were actually higher and fell later, death rates were high but not that high, and not keying in any new arrivals, so the total's quite conservative.


If you want, feel free to take away let's say another 10% of Gen 2, who will have died or emigrated by their 20s (not taking into account child death rates, as that's already been done for those succumbing before the age of 5, via the birthrate). Total 1890 would be 5.673 million?

[Docere]

Your analysis is based on some wild mathematical assumptions that didn't actually happen.

5 children per women ca. 1860 does not "adjust" for anything.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-uk-1800-2020/

It's simply the number of children women had in their childbearing age. Children often died in the Victorian era. Many children did not survive to adulthood, your analysis assumes they did.

Low life expectancy in the 19th century was due to deaths in childhood. That cuts off a lot of potential reproduction.

And yes, some did move onto America too.

[Docere]

Child mortality rate is 260 per 1,000 in 1860, 1 out of 4 did not make to age 5.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ortality-rate/

So you can cut 5 to 3.75 right there (and that's not taking into account all that didn't make it to adulthood).

And given how poor the first generation of Irish were and their living conditions, the death rates were likely higher among the Irish immigrants.

[muppet]

okay sure (I thought they would have taken that into account otherwise it would skew stats too much?). Anyhoo, that would give:

727,326 +

1,363,736 first generation

by the 1870s it was still 5 per woman (actually risen slightly) so we'll keep to your 3.75 survivors per woman for the next generation.

In turn this yields

2,557,005 +

1,227,362 (90% of the first generation) +

400,000 (55% of the original arrivals, which includes quite a generous death rate)


=4,184,367 by the early 1890s (UK population 33,015,701 in 1891).

This would still equate to 13% of the population, from that single wave of emigrants after 2 generations.

[nito]

I’m currently playing around the MSOA (Middle Layer Super Output Area) and LSOA (Lower Layer Super Output Area) level data on a few topics for London. There are 1,002 MSOA’s and 4,984 LSOA’s, respectively covering an average of population of 8,782 and 1,761 people each. Will come back with some of the results. In the meantime, a few fascinating high level charts.


One fascinating chart is a breakdown of arrivals by decade, which saw a substantial rise commence back in 1991-2000, ending with the last decade experiencing inflows nearly as high as the last three decades combined. As other ONS post-Brexit datasets have shown, people moving and staying in the UK has accelerated; the immediate post-Brexit period (2017-19) were the highest in recorded history, and even with the pandemic, 2020-21 was stronger than whole decades before 1991.




England & Wales is no longer a Christian country; the percentage who identified dropped from 59.3% to 46.2%, a drop of 5.8mn. All other religions saw modest growth, but the other big religious story from the census was the dramatic increase in the number identifying as holding “No Religion”: up from 25.2% to 37.2% (an increase of 8.1mn). It is conceivably that come the 2031 census, we’ll have a no religion majority.




Modal age breakdown by Boomer (born <1965), Gen X (born 1965-1980) and Millennial or Younger (born >1981). It doesn’t come as a surprise that most young people tend to concentrate in the cities and other urban areas, their parents in the commuter regions around these cities, and older generations in rural/coastal zones.


Map produced by Alasdair Rae on Twitter: https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/s...15737753735168


Alasdair Rae on Twitter crunched recent data on commuting, specifically those who travel 60km+ to work, with the below result displaying a dark orange/red band around London, what I’d consider to be a goldilocks zone. Beyond this area and outside of the mainline rail corridors, you have communities that fit the above settlement types; these are still growing, but well below the growth rates of the core urban areas.



Map produced by Alasdair Rae on Twitter: https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/s...62994166484993

[nito]

Some interesting research into ethnic diversification and neighbourhood mixing across England & Wales. Images sourced from research paper by Gemma Catney, Christopher D Lloyd, Mark Ellis, Richard Wright, Nissa Finney, Stephen Jivraj and David Manley: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley....111/geoj.12507

Article source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...research-finds

Originally Posted by The Guardian

Ethnic segregation in England and Wales is on the wane as more people live alongside neighbours of different backgrounds, creating “rainbow” towns and cities, research reveals.

Neighbourhood diversity more than doubled nationally between 2001 and 2021, with huge transformations in some places. There was close to a tenfold increase in diversity in Boston, Lincolnshire, albeit from a low base; Barking and Dagenham recorded a ninefold increase, while diversity in Watford and Reading increased fourfold.

Newham was the most blended place and outside London the most diverse areas were Slough, Luton, Birmingham and Leicester. The trend has been charted by a team of international population geographers crunching the latest 2021 census data on ethnicity and using a “diversity index” that ranks places by the spread of different ethnic groups represented.

In the meantime, the new study shows that across England and Wales, fewer neighbourhoods than ever show low levels of ethnic diversity while the number of neighbourhoods with “very high levels of diversity” rose from 342 (1%) in 2001 to 2,201 in 2021 (6%).

Part of the effect is down to a decline of 1.1 million in the white British population and increase of 8.7 million in all other ethnicities over the past 20 years.

“But it is not solely a function of white British decline,” said Gemma Catney, population geographer at Queen’s University Belfast and a co-author of the study. “We do see growing diversity and spread. There is a broader rainbow of different ethnic groups represented across districts than ever before.”

[Yuri]

London is insane. You literally hear more other languages on the streets, all sorts of them, than English itself.

And the city is so open-minded and easy to adapt. That's certainly part of the appeal for newcomers. Nobody needs to fit in, to adapt: one can just be yourself and nobody minds.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Yuri

That's certainly part of the appeal for newcomers. Nobody needs to fit in, to adapt: one can just be yourself and nobody minds.

New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, and many other US cities are similar in this regard, although the US of course attracts tons of Spanish speakers from Mexico and points south, a whole part of the world that doesn't make it over to Europe in large numbers.

This past week a video from a school in Leeds, England went viral - a classroom singing a Ramones song. Since so many Americans grow up learning English nursery rhymes and children's stories, it's amazing to see something from the U.S. - and something about the U.S. - get treated like a nursery rhyme there.

Here is the video (unfortunately, it's on Facebook):
https://fb.watch/iarPAQmyyn/

Here is a screen shot:


The song gets its power from its nostalgic surf and doo-wop underpinning, while telling the story of someone leaving the California sun to live a punk rock lifestyle in New York City - a complete reversal of 1960s trends. I don't think the kids can possibly understand that even if it were explained to them, but they are getting some sort of implant from the emotive character of implied surf music and implied doo-wop.

This preposterously presented reversing of the westward US migration to California, using the the song structures prevalent at the height of that era, is somewhat analogous to the patriotic setup of My Country Tis of Thee, sung over the melody of God Save the King.


Scrolling through the school's Facebook posts was really interesting. It looks like the kids are actually...learning things. Unlike US public schools, where the kids literally lay around, if they show up at all.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, and many other US cities are similar in this regard, although the US of course attracts tons of Spanish speakers from Mexico and points south, a whole part of the world that doesn't make it over to Europe in large numbers.

Of course not on the same level of the US, but there are plenty of Spanish-speaking immigrants from both Spain and Latin America in London. It's quite common to hear Spanish there. In fact, any language. And they definitely moved from Commonwealth immigration. Now it's from everywhere, specially continental Europe.

Regarding the US, I've never been there, but I guess there is this feeling of everybody feeling home and no one caring much about what other people are up to. That's one of my favorite things here in São Paulo and also in London. Paris is definitely not like that. Germany is a bit, but there is also some strong local habits there.

[jmecklenborg]

^When I visited France I sensed that immigrants were being kept on the edges of the towns and cities as much as they were sticking together by their own accord.

In the United States you observe new immigrant groups settling in one area of town out of convenience, but they aren't being sent to those areas on purpose. There is in fact no legal mechanism by which local governments could make that happen.

What's interesting is that many recent immigrant groups in the United States are settling in the suburbs rather than the cities, meaning your metro area can be building a pretty sizeable new population from Asia or Africa but you don't notice since these people rarely come downtown to work or for festivals.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

^When I visited France I sensed that immigrants were being kept on the edges of the towns and cities as much as they were sticking together by their own accord.

In the United States you observe new immigrant groups settling in one area of town out of convenience, but they aren't being sent to those areas on purpose. There is in fact no legal mechanism by which local governments could make that happen.

What's interesting is that many recent immigrant groups in the United States are settling in the suburbs rather than the cities, meaning your metro area can be building a pretty sizeable new population from Asia or Africa but you don't notice since these people rarely come downtown to work or for festivals.

I guess the original/local population habits are decisive for the adaptation of new immigrants. São Paulo, the US big cities in general were built over waves and waves of migration to the point it's hard to identify the original culture. As their inhabitants have always been used to see differences since the inception, they're ok with differences of the new arrivals.

London was not like that till recently, but I guess British culture is way less intrusive, "hard", than say French, Italian or German (to a lesser degree). That makes easy for newcomers to feel at home.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

What's interesting is that many recent immigrant groups in the United States are settling in the suburbs rather than the cities, meaning your metro area can be building a pretty sizeable new population from Asia or Africa but you don't notice since these people rarely come downtown to work or for festivals.

I don't think there's a single urban Indian neighborhood in the country. This mostly comes down to the extreme caste/class skew of Indian immigrants to the U.S., as working-class Indians do not get visas.

There are a fair number of working-class South Asian neighborhoods in the U.S., but they come from other South Asian groups: Bengalis, Indo-Guyanese, and increasingly the Bhutanese Nepalis.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I don't think there's a single urban Indian neighborhood in the country.

I wouldn't go that far. There are very urban U.S. Indian enclaves:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7355...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7479...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/place/45...!4d-73.8166572

Of course the Indian community does skew suburban, given it arrived very recently, tends to be very highly educated and high income, and is employed in professions most concentrated in sprawly environments. At least the Chinese have many legacy urban neighborhoods, as they have a much longer history in U.S.