British African-Caribbean people

British African-Caribbean people
Distribution by local authority in the 2011 census
Total population
United Kingdom United Kingdom: 628,296 – 0.9% (2021/22 Census)
 England: 619,419 – 1.1% (2021)[1]
 Scotland: 2,214 – 0.04% (2022)[a][2]
 Wales: 3,700 – 0.1% (2021)[1]
Northern Ireland: 2,963 – 0.2% (2021)[b][3]
Regions with significant populations
Languages
British English · Caribbean English
Religion
Predominantly Christianity (69.1%);
minority follows other faiths (2.7%)[c] or are irreligious (18.6%)
2021 census, England and Wales only[4]
Related ethnic groups
African diaspora · African-Caribbean · Bahamian British · British Jamaicans · Guyanese British · Barbadian British · Grenadian British · Montserratian British · Trinidadian and Tobagonian British · Antiguan British

British African-Caribbean people or British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom.[5] They are British citizens whose recent ancestors originate from the Caribbean, and further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.

The earliest generations of Afro-Caribbean people to migrate to Britain trace their ancestry to a wide range of Afro Caribbean ethnic groups.[6][7][8] Afro-Caribbean people descend from disparate groups of African peoples who were brought, sold and taken from[9][10] West Africa as slaves to the colonial Caribbean.[11] In addition, British African Caribbeans may have ancestry from various indigenous Caribbean tribes, and from settlers of European and Asian ethnic groups.[12] According to the National Library of Medicine, the average African Caribbean person has on average 20% European Admixture.[13][14]

Arriving in small numbers to reside in port cities in England and Wales since the mid-18th century, the most significant wave of migration came after World War II, coinciding with the decolonisation era and the dissolution of the British Empire. The governments of the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands promoted immigration to address domestic labor shortages.[15] Known as the Windrush generation, they had arrived as citizens of United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKCs) in the 1950s and 1960s owing to birth in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. Although those who settled in the UK prior to 1973 were granted either right of abode or indefinite leave to remain by the Immigration Act 1971, a series of governmental policies had caused some to be erroneously labelled as unlawfully residing in the UK in the 2000s and 2010s, which subsequently became known as the Windrush scandal.[16] The population has a diverse background, with origins in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, and Belize.

In the 21st century, Afro-Caribbean communities are present throughout the United Kingdom's major cities, and the surviving members of this generation, sometimes called the Windrush Britons, and their descendants, constitute the multi-ethnic cultural group residing in the country. As there is no specific UK census category which comprehensively covers the community, population numbers remain somewhat ambiguous. 'Black Caribbean' (under a 'Black British' heading), and 'Mixed: White and Black Caribbean' (under a 'Mixed' heading) denote full or partial descent, and recorded 594,825 and 426,715 persons, respectively, at the 2011 United Kingdom census. 'White: White Caribbean', 'Mixed: Caribbean Asian' and 'Mixed: White Caribbean' are census categories which were also utilised.[17][18] In this regard, and illustrating complexities within African Caribbean peoplehood, there are notable examples of those with a parent or grandparent of African-Caribbean ancestry identifying with, or being perceived as, white people in the United Kingdom.[19][20][21][22][23]

  1. ^ a b "Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
  2. ^ "Scotland's Census 2022 - Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion - Chart data". Scotland's Census. National Records of Scotland. 21 May 2024. Retrieved 21 May 2024. Alternative URL 'Search data by location' > 'All of Scotland' > 'Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion' > 'Ethnic Group'
  3. ^ "MS-B01: Ethnic group". Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. 22 September 2022. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  4. ^ "RM031 Ethnic group by religion". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
  5. ^ "List of ethnic groups". Ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  6. ^ Archives, The National. "The National Archives - Homepage". The National Archives. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  7. ^ "Windrush generation: Who are they and why are they facing problems?". BBC News. 24 November 2021. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  8. ^ "Forty-and-one years on: An overview of Afro-Caribbean migration to the United Kingdom" (PDF). Warwick Univsrsity. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  9. ^ Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia (20 September 2019). "When the Slave Traders Were African". Wsj.com. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  10. ^ Kevin Sieff (30 January 2018) [2018-01-29]. "An African country reckons with its history of selling slaves". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409.[please check these dates]
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference bbcjuly2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Derbyshire2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Murray, Tanda; Beaty, Terri H.; Mathias, Rasika A.; Rafaels, Nicholas; Grant, Audrey Virginia; Faruque, Mezbah U.; Watson, Harold R.; Ruczinski, Ingo; Dunston, Georgia M.; Barnes, Kathleen C. (2010). "African and non-African admixture components in African Americans and an African Caribbean population". Genetic Epidemiology. 34 (6): 561–568. doi:10.1002/gepi.20512. PMC 3837693. PMID 20717976.
  14. ^ Parra, E. J.; Kittles, R. A.; Shriver, M. D. (November 2004). "Implications of correlations between skin color and genetic ancestry for biomedical research". Nature Genetics. 36 (11): S54–S60. doi:10.1038/ng1440. ISSN 1546-1718. PMID 15508005. S2CID 13712615.
  15. ^ Cousins, Emily (8 June 2010). "The Notting Hill Riots (1958) •". Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference windrushreport2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference ONSdetailed was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference ONSwrite-in was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference davison2017-2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference goody2009-2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference graham2015-2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sawyer2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference McRae2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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