Abstract
The mixed population increased almost threefold in size between 1985 and 2001, moving mixing and mixedness demographically into the mainstream. A further important change was the shift in attitudes towards mixed marriages with prejudice declining sharply in the 1990s. This change in attitudes and the wider social climate created a need in government for a new terminology that was met by the privileging of conceptualisations of origin or descent, leading to full recognition in the 2001 Census.
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Notes
- 1.
Sillitoe and White (1992: 146) note that in Haringey, the area used for the main census test, ‘co-operation from the public, in both the census test and the social survey field trial, was seriously affected by a campaign conducted by some local organizations which urged people not to answer any questions about their ethnicity, their birthplaces, their parents’ countries of birth or their nationality, on the grounds that the collection of this information was linked with proposals to change the nationality laws in a manner that would jeopardize the status of all ethnic minorities in Britain’.
- 2.
The options on the card were as follows: 01 White; 02 West Indian; 03 Indian; 04 Pakistani; 05 Bangladeshi; 06 Chinese; 07 Turkish; 08 Other Asian; 09 African; 10 Arab; 11 Other (please state); 12 Mixed Origin (please state); 13 Refused. See (p. 208): National Dwelling and Housing Survey: (Phase I, 1977–1978) (London: HMSO, 1979).
- 3.
The question was termed ‘ethnic origin’ in the index of topic mnemonics. The options on the card were as follows: 00 English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish; 01 Polish; 02 Italian; 03 Other European; 04 West Indian or Guyanese; 05 African; 06 Indian; 07 Pakistani; 08 Bangladeshi; 09 Arab; 10 Chinese; 11 Any other racial or ethnic group or of mixed racial descent; 12 No reply. The questionnaire included the instruction, ‘If code 03 or 11 please specify’. In the 1981 and 1983 surveys, the ‘Mixed’ and ‘Other’ groups were separate free-text categories and the four white categories were replaced by just ‘White’.
- 4.
The ‘Mixed’ subgroups were as follows: white; West Indian or Guyanese/white; Indian/white; Pakistani/white; Bangladeshi/white; Other Asian/white; African/white; Arab/white; Asian mixture; African/West Indian or Guyanese; African/Asian; Miscellaneous ‘partly coloured’; Miscellaneous ‘coloured’. See Economic and Social Data Service (1998).
- 5.
The process was led by the Census, Population and Health Group of ONS’s Census Division. The main vehicle for the delivery of new questions—including that for ethnic group—was the 2001 Census Working Group on Content, Classification, and Question Testing and various subgroups that reported to it (that on ethnic group comprising members of the Census Advisory Groups representing the main government departments, NHS, local authorities, and academia, and other co-opted members such as community groups and the Commission for Racial Equality). Peter J. Aspinall was ONS National Convenor for the ethnic group question in the 2001 Census Development Programme, 1994–1999.
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Caballero, C., Aspinall, P.J. (2018). Social Acceptance, Official Recognition, and Membership of the British Collectivity. In: Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_13
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