Making sense of ‘mixture’: states and the classification of ‘mixed’ people

Making sense of ‘mixture’: states and the classification of ‘mixed’ people

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Avaiable online: 2012-02-01
9 pages
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.648650

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent, United Kingdom

Diversity and the growth of ‘mixed’ people

In many Western multi-ethnic societies, and increasingly in non-Western societies, ‘super-diversity’ has emerged as a major demographic trend in various metropolitan centres (Vertovec 2007). Contemporary Britain is marked by both super-diversity in urban areas and ‘old’ racial and ethnic cleavages which reflect continuing social divides in many parts of the country. As a result, there is considerable flux in the meanings and significance of race and racial difference across a variety of contexts. Such growing diversity is due to continue, based upon continuing flows of migration, increased interracial and interethnic partnering, and the growth of ‘mixed’ individuals. While I focus on the case of Britain, much of this editorial, I would argue, will be of relevance to what many other multi-ethnic societies will encounter in the coming years.

Notably. while only 2 per cent of marriages are ‘inlerethnic’ in Britain (Office for National Statistics 2005), such marriages are expected to grow rapidly. Black-white partnering is the most common in Britain the direct opposite of the US. where black/white partnering is least common. In a recent analysis of the Labour Force Survey, nearly half of black Caribbean men in a partnership were partnered (married or cohabiting) with someone of a different ethnic group (and about one third of black Caribbean women), while 39 per cent of Chinese women in partnerships had a partner from a different ethnic group (Platt 2009). There are now more children in Britain (under age 5) with one black and one white parent than children with two black parents (Owen 2007)…

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