Change and Continuity Among Minority Communities in Britain

Andreas Georgiadis and Alan Manning ()

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: There is widespread concern currently that some ethnic minority communities within Britain,especially Muslim, are not following the stereotypical immigrant path of economic andcultural assimilation into British society. Indeed, many seem to have the impression thatdifferences between Muslims and non-Muslims are widening. In this paper we compare thetwo largest Muslim communities in Britain (Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) with other ethnicminorities to ask the questions 'are Muslims different?' and 'is their behaviour changing overtime?' The indicators we look at are the gender gap in education, age at marriage,cohabitation and inter-marriage, fertility and the employment of women. In all thesedimensions we find that the Muslim communities are different but we also find evidence ofchange. This is partly because those born in Britain generally have markedly differentbehaviours from those born in the country of origin, but also because there is change withinboth the UK-born and foreign-born communities. The evidence suggests there is, alongalmost all dimensions, a movement towards convergence in behaviour.

Keywords: Immigration; assimilation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J61 F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mig
Date: Written
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0903.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0903

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Series data maintained by ().