Research presented at the International Sociological Association 2018 Congress in Toronto discussed te relationship between political and ethnic identity of the UK’s majority and minority populations.
Using Understanding Society, the UK household longitudinal study, a large-scale, nationally representative study with a substantial ethnic minority boost and a suite of multi-domain identity questions, the paper explored the relationship between ethnic and political identity across UK majority and minority populations. Locating the analysis within social identity theory, the authors proposed that there are underlying factors driving ethnic and political identity for both majority and minority. Jointly modelling the strength ethnic and political identity, net of individual’s general identification propensity, the analysis showed clear underlying associations of the unobservable factors driving both political and ethnic identity. The latent drivers were stronger for majority and for more conservative / traditional respondents. Turning to observed factors correlated with political and ethnic identity: the share of right-wing voters was associated with stronger ethnic but not political identity among both majority and minority populations, while discrimination was linked to minorities’ political but not ethnic identity. Interestingly, both political and ethnic identity were stronger among second generation compared to immigrant minorities.
The findings were summarised in a poster.
And there is also a full paper of the analysis, results and discussion.
Lucinda Platt 