This document discusses concepts related to race, ethnicity, and migration. It begins by outlining key terms like race, ethnicity, and minority groups. It notes that race is a social construct rather than a biological one. The document then examines theories of racism, including ethnocentrism, group closure, and resource allocation. It also discusses models of ethnic integration such as assimilation, melting pot, and cultural pluralism. The document considers debates around multiculturalism and issues like cultural diversity versus solidarity. It concludes by reflecting on concepts like "us and them" as well as ethnicity and inequality.

1. Race, Ethnicity, and Migration
Society and Culture

2. Your island has a population of 10 million
people.
• What is the cultural background, welfare background,
religious background and political background of your
island?
• How many immigrants should you allow each year?
• What types of visas will you give?
• What will the immigrants be expected or allowed to
wear?
• How will they be allowed to practise their religious or
social beliefs?
• How much access to welfare will immigrants be
allowed?
• How will you encourage integration?
• What will you do when the laws, traditions and cultures
of the native countries of the immigrants contradict
with the laws, traditions and cultures of your island?

3. Today
‘Us and them’: the processes of prejudice and discrimination
• Is it possible to be prejudiced without actually discriminating?
• How might an unprejudiced person find themselves acting in a way which
discriminates?
Models of integration
• Is assimilationism a form of ethnocentrism?
• What would an individual gain and lose from living in a melting‐pot culture?
• Is the hybridization of cultures and identities inevitable in the modern world?
Ethnicity and inequality
• Why do we need to understand history to understand contemporary patterns
of ethnic antagonism?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of thinking of ethnic minorities
as a single social group?
• Should there be limits on immigration? If ‘yes’, what should they be?
• How do inequalities of race relate to social class inequalities?
• How is the experience of ethnicity shaped by gender?

4. Key terms
• Race
– Humans can’t be easily
separated into races (despite
numerous attempts to)
– Scientific theories (late 18th,
19th Cs) used to justify social
orders
• Joseph Arthur de Gobineau
(1816-82)
– White (Caucasian) – superior
intelligence; Black (Negroid)
– animal nature, emotional
instability; Yellow
(Mongoloid) – sly, cunning

5. Race does not exist
• The genetic diversity within populations is as
great as the diversity between populations
– ‘Race’ is an ideological construct (Miles 1993)
• Myth 1 - Idea That Any Race is Superior
– Historical, exploitative relationships
• Myth 2 - Idea that Any Race is Pure
– Human Characteristics Flow Endlessly Together
– Mixture of DNA between ethnicities
• If ‘race’ has no scientific basis, why does the
concept keep recurring? Perhaps we should stop
using the word ‘race’?

6. Race as a label for identity
• Asian gay men more likely to define race as master
status, compared to black gay men, or gay men of
mixed race
– Many felt equally gay, male and the member of an ethnic
group
• ‘on the street, people see my blackness before knowing
I’m gay, so all of the time my race comes first, but I
would hate for you to think I don’t think my sexuality is
important’.
• How others act towards you: ‘I can’t forget I’m black,
but I can forget I’m gay’.
• (Fisher et al, 1997)
• However; feminist critique. People also see ‘woman’,
‘woman of colour’ (Davis, 1981)

7. Key Terms
• Racialization:
– Certain groups of people come to be labelled as
distinct biological groups on the basis of naturally
occurring physical features:
• From 15th Century, Europeans came into contact with others,
attempts were made to categorize
• These attempts have taken codified, institutionalized forms
(e.g. apartheid)
• Social institutions have become racialized; CJS,
education
• ‘Race’ may be disregarded, but remember W.I.
Thomas’s theorem: ‘if men define situations as
real, they are real in their consequences’ (1928)

8. Key terms
• Ethnicity
– purely social in meaning
– Cultural practices and outlook of
given community of people which
distinguishes them from others
– Members may see themselves as
culturally distinct, and others
may see themselves as culturally
distinct.
– Ethnic differences are learned
– Produced and reproduced over
time: maintained by tradition
– Exclusionary devices:
• Prohibition of intermarriage

9. Key Terms
• Minority groups
– Members of groups which are
disadvantaged when compared
with the dominant group
according to power, wealth and
prestige
– Have some sense of group
solidarity (belonging together)
• Minorities draws attention to
inequalities:
– Homosexuals and Pakistanis are
both minority groups: do they
experience subordination
equally?

10. Figure 11.3 The Rainbow Coalition, US Census 2000: percentages of population by
race and Latino categories
Source: Adapted from US Bureau of the Census (2000)

11. Critical thinking
• What’s the difference between
discrimination and prejudice?

12. Prejudice
• opinions or attitudes held by
members of one group towards
another.
• Internalised Norms: learned
(learned from where?)
• Often: stereotypes:
– ‘All black men are good at sport’ /‘All
Chinese students are hard working.’
– Displacement psychoanalytic idea;
projection of negative feelings
towards self to outside object
– Scapegoating: two ethnic minorities
competing for economic position;
blame others for position.
– Simpson & Yinger (1986) black males
thought to be highly dangerous to
white women, when virtually all
criminal sexual contact was initiated
by white men against black women

13. Discrimination
• Actual behaviour:
– Disqualify members of one group from opportunities
open to others
– May rest on prejudice; but not necessarily
• Bertrand & Mullainathan (2003)
• White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.
• Race affects the benefits of a better CV.
– White names, gets 30 % more
• Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but:
– this effect does not differ by race.
• Amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries.
• Federal contractors and employers who list “Equal Opportunity Employer” in
their ad discriminate as much as other employers.
Bertrand & Mullainathan (2003), ‘Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor
market discrimination’Working Paper 9873, National Bureau of Economic Research http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

14. Figure 11.1 Prejudice and discrimination: the vicious cycle
Macionis & Plummer (2008)

15. Critical thinking
• Is it possible for people to be prejudiced but
not discriminatory?
• Are there any examples of this from your
experiences?
• Is prejudice acceptable, as long as is it
unaccompanied by discrimination ?

16. BREAK

17. Sociological theories of racism and
integration

18. Three Broad Sociological Theories of
Racism
1. Ethnocentrism a suspicion of outsiders; tendency to
evaluate culture against your culture’s terms:
• Outsiders = barbarian, aliens, morally, mentally inferior
2. Group closure: process. Boundaries are formed and
maintained through exclusion devices (Barth 1969);
• limiting intermarriage
• restriction on social contact, economic restriction (e.g. trading)
• Physical separation/ghettoisation (e.g. ethnic ghettos)
3. Resource allocation one ethnic group dominates by
occupying position of power: institutes inequalities in
wealth distribution, materials goods

19. • Conflict theories racism is
product of capitalism , ruling
classes use slavery, colonization
and racism to exploit labour (Cox
1959)
• Too rigid? Hall et al (1982)
racism is more than oppressive
ideas enacted by powerful elites:
– Complex, multifaceted
– Interplay of identities: working-
class, ethnic minority

20. Ethnic Integration
• Most developed societies have ethnic diversity
The questions sociologists and politicians ask:
• How can ethnic diversity be accommodated?
• What should be the relation between ethnic
minority groups and the majority population?

21. Models of ethnic
integration
• Assimilation :
– Abandon original customs,
traditions, practices
– Pressure
– Attempts difficult if racialized or
rejected
• Melting pot
– different cultures/patterns
brought in: chicken tikka
– Diversity created through
adaption
– Most desirable outcome?
– Constantly transforming social
milieu

22. Models of ethnic integration
• Cultural pluralism
– Separately but
participate in economy,
politics
– Strongly related:
• Multiculturalism
policies that encourage
ethnic groups to live
peacefully

23. Greater London poster
Promoting an image of London's multicultural diversity
Source: Equality and Human Rights Commission. This poster was originally published by the Commission for Racial Equality, which is now part of the new Equality and Human Rights
Commission: www.equalityhumanrights.com

24. Support for multiculturalism
• Parekh (2000:67) ‘the cultural identity
of some groups (minorities) should not
have to be confined to the private sphere
while the other language, culture and
religion of others (the majority) enjoy a
public monopoly and are treated as the
norm.’
• Sen (2007) Solitarism (nationality or
religion to be primary form of identity) is
dangerous, leading to conflict

25. I am
• A UK citizen
• English
• An Essex Girl
• Australian
• A liberal
• A woman
• …etc
and I see myself as each of these without any
problem...
Which subject positions do you identify with?

26. Of course...
• The debate of political multiculturalism:
• Discourses/ media
– local authorities in the UK ‘cancel’ Christmas?
– A cross to be removed from a van?
– Fear of militant Islam
– Fear of rising immigration
– Political turn against multiculturalism

27. Differentiate
Cultural diversity
• Is not multiculturalism naive ?
• Implies groups can follow
whatever norms they want
Sophisticated multiculturalism
• Emphasizes importance of
national identities and national
laws
• Emphasizes fostering of
connections between groups
• Equality of status does not
mean accepting uncritically

28. The Cut
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDJyZIPvExY
• Taylor (1992):
– If people have rights and respect, they also have
responsibilities
– One responsibility is to follow the law
• The difficulty is when we reach issues which are not
as clear cut:
– France has banned burkhas. This is a assimilationist
approach.
• Critical thinking:
Why do some forms of identification (e.g. national or
religious) seem more powerful than others?

29. Ethnic diversity or solidarity?
David Goodhart (2004)
• Trade off between diversity
and solidarity – welfare state
• People will pay higher taxes
for those considered to
share common values and
assumptions
• Sweden; Denmark
• Tipping point: Britain and
the USA
Bernard Crick (2004)
• ‘Solidarity of what?’
• Britain or UK?
• Historically a multinational and
multi ethnic state
• Dual status: British- Scottish;
British –English = accepted
• It’s not about solidarity or loss
of identity: identity is being a
member of more than one
group
Ask your partner:
Whose opinion do you find more convincing?

30. Conclusions
• Us and Them
• Models of integration
• Ethnicity and inequality

31. Homework
• Forum ‘Make Bradford British’:
– log on to 4od
– Watch the episodes of Make Bradford British
– Take notes according to the questions on the
forum.
– Write up notes and upload them.
• Seminar preparation

32. Extra reading
• Davis, A. Women, Race and Class New York:
Random House, 1981.
• Fisher, K, ‘A Study of the Sexual Behaviour of
Gay Men from Ethnic Minority Groups in the
United Kingdom’. Working Paper 6