Exit, Voice or Accommodation?

1. Exit, Voice or Accommodation? Diversity and the White Working Class in England and Wales Eric Kaufmann and Gareth Harris, Birkbeck College e.kaufmann@bbk.ac.uk

2. Exit, Voice, Accommodation • Exit = ‘White Flight’ or Avoidance • Voice = White opposition to immigration and/or far right voting • Accommodation = White acceptance of diversity, immigration, ethnic change • ESRC project: How related?

3. Exit? • Does diversity prompt White UK-born residents in England & Wales to prefer to leave and move from their wards of residence? • Are their destination choices appreciably different from those of minority movers?

4. Existing evidence base • USA: white preference effects whilst controlling for socio/economic individual & neighborhood characteristics (Crowder & South, 2000) • Europe: White avoidance rather than flight (Brama, 2006) • UK: No white flight but counter-urbanisation- both white + mne residents leaving areas of neighbourhood ethnic concentration but lower class whites significantly more likely to leave diverse areas than lower class mne residents especially in London (Catney & Simpson, 2010)

5. Data • Uses 18 waves of BHPS and waves 1 & 2 of Understanding Society to create a cross-sectional data set with person years as unit of analysis (n=192171) • Attached to geo-referenced data at ward-level (linearly interpolated using 1991/2001/2011 census) to capture MNE population, deprivation (Carstairs) and population density. • Ward-level diversity measured in Simpson’s quintiles in which each quintile contains a fifth of the mne population (concentration)

7. Preference to leave by ethnicity and quintile of diversity

8. Preference to leave • Older residents, home owners and those in lower seg less likely to prefer to move • Respondents who are more socially- but not politically- conservative more likely to want to move but not to actually do so • No significant effect for individual ethnicity but white respondents more likely to prefer to leave if living in more diverse quintiles • BUT minority respondents equally as likely to prefer to move from wards in quintile 5.

9. To stay or go? • Respondents who are white, younger, better-educated, single, childless renters more likely to move. • Social conservatives (but not politically conservative) more likely to stay • All respondents more likely to move from more deprived and more urban wards • The odds of moving higher for whites living in wards with higher minority concentration.

10. Predicted probabilities of move by diversity quintile and ethnicity

11. Diversity seeker/avoider? • Single renters were more likely to move to more diverse wards • No attitudinal traits significant • Ethnicity a significant predictor of move away from diversity, especially for whites leaving more diverse wards • White working class residents more likely to move to less diverse wards

12. Predicted probabilities of move towards/away from diversity

13. Conclusions • Whites prefer to leave and do move from more diverse areas after controlling for deprivation and population density • Minority respondents equally as likely to prefer to move from the most diverse wards but less likely to actually make the move • Once the decision has been made to move whites tend to move away from diversity after controlling for population density and deprivation • The question remains how much of this is driven by the mobility preferences of mne respondents– future work on ONS LS