Ethnicity in Britain

Britain has a long history of mixing with foreigners arriving from abroad, beginning with Europeans, such as the Celts [kelts], Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Normans. People from various ethnic groups reside in the United Kingdom. For most of the last millennium, the lands now constituting the United Kingdom were largely inhabited by English, Scots, Irish, Welsh and Cornish people. Since World War II, however, a substantial immigration from the New Commonwealth countries and the rest of the world has considerably altered the demographic make-up of many cities in the United Kingdom.

According to Census 2001 the native populations of Great Britain includes 85.7% of "White British" (50.4 million fell into this category); 77% of UK population, or 45 million people are English; 8% or 4.7 million are Scottish; 4.5% or 2.7 million are Welsh; and 2.8% or 1.6 million are Northern Irish.

An important source of information on the cultural and linguistic diversity is the data from Local Education Authorities on the censuses of schoolchildren ethnicity and the surveys of the first languages spoken. A survey of 850,000 children in London schools has revealed that more than 300 languages are spoken by children. Although English remains overwhelmingly the most common first language, for more than a third of children it is not the language they speak or hear spoken at home.

Although Italians have settled in the UK for centuries, it was only after the Second World War that there was a large influx of them to the country. Many came for work, for study, or for residence when situations of political and economic turmoil forced them to leave Italy. British Italians are popularly known as Britalians. Currently the Italian official records report around 175,000 Italians living in the UK.

Since Greece got its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, Cyprus has seen many of its citizens emigrate to the United Kingdom for economic reasons and in search of a better life. There are more than one hundred Greek communities in the United Kingdom with about 400,000 people. About 3/4 of the Greek Britons come from Cyprus, not Greece itself.

The first Turks to arrive in the United Kingdom were the Turkish Cypriots who were Commonwealth citizens as Cyprus was a British colony until 1960. Some Turkish Cypriots came to find employment, others joined later to escape the tensions between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots which resulted in the Turkish occupation of the north of the island in 1974.

The national census of ethnicity and identity found over 283,000 people had Bangladeshi heritage in Britain. Bangladeshis decided to move to the United Kingdom in need of work and better living. The influence of Bangladeshi culture and diversity can be seen across London in boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, Newham, Camden and Southwark.

By 1970, Brick Lane, and many of the streets around it, had become predominantly Bengali. The Jewish bakeries were turned into curry houses, the jewelry shops were turned into sari stores, and the synagogues into dress factories.

British Chinese are predominately from southern Chinese origin, in particular from Hong Kong. In 2001 they numbered 247,400. Many students of Chinese origin study in the United Kingdom and since 2001 a substantial portion has chosen to remain, increasing their numbers further. The Chinese are the fastest growing non-European ethnic group in the United Kingdom, growing at 11% per annum between 2001-2003.

The largest part of the Black Caribbean population in the UK are of Jamaican origin; In 2001 the Black Caribbean community numbered 565,876 and the total Black population was 1.2 million or 2.2% of the whole population.

In western Europe, the largest Jewish communities remains in Great Britain, with approximately 450,000 Jews (300,000 in 1933) and France, with 235,000 (225,000 in 1933). The first Jews arrived in England in 1070 from Rouen following the Norman Invasion. But the vast majority of today’s Jewish community, however, are descendants from Jews who arrived from Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is hard to discern the number of ethnic Jews in the United Kingdom as they are classified as white on the census forms. In 2001, however, there were 267,373 practitioners of Judaism in the United Kingdom.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11