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INSTABILITY OR ASPIRATION? ETHNIC CHANGE PREDICTORS FOR MIXED PEOPLE IN THE UK

  • June 2019
  • Conference: NZ Population Conference
  • At: Wellington, New Zealand
Authors:
Tze Ming Mok at The London School of Economics and Political Science
Tze Ming Mok
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Why do mixed/multiethnic people change their reported ethnic group? There is very little large-scale quantitative research into reasons for the widespread phenomenon of mixed people changing their ethnic identification over time, and none in the UK context. What little there is often unable to control for a full range of structural predictors, nor for change in socioeconomic or household circumstances. This study uses a longitudinally linked sample of the Census for England and Wales to detect predictors of ethnic change and of different types of change-such as up or down a racial hierarchy or in and out of a mixed identity. It finds that higher status at baseline is associated with more ethnic/racial stability not with aspirational change. However, decline in individual socioeconomic status is associated with moving out of mixed categories and towards White categories.
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