The failure of the importation of ethno-racial statistics in Europe: debates and controversies

ABSTRACT

The 2010 census round has shown a significant growth in the number of countries collecting ethnic and racial data as a consequence of the increasing consciousness of their internal ethnic diversity and to implement more active equality policies addressing ethno-racial discrimination. However, Europe is not part of this dynamic: almost nothing has changed on the ethnic statistics’ frontline in between the two census rounds. This article addresses some of the justification for the enduring resistance of “statistical blindness” to ethno-racial diversity in Europe, locating it mainly in the strategy to erase race from the public sphere as a leverage to combat racism. The limits of this strategy in the context of mass migration from former colonial empires where racial subordination and classification have been produced and developed are discussed. Europe should ultimately face its past domination (rebranded but still active today) without silencing its consequences.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrimination
• race and ethnicity
• Europe
• classifications
• official statistics
• public controversies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Considering the fuzziness of the distinction between race and ethnicity, I adopt here the conflation of the two terms in a single one (see inter alia, Brubaker 2009).

2 Final statement of the 33rd CEIES seminar on “Ethnic and racial discrimination on the labour market: measurement, statistics and indicators”, Malta, 7–8 June 2007, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/conferences/introduction/2007/33th_ceies_seminar.

3 The microcensus is a survey based on a 1 per cent sample of the German population, which has been carried out since 1957.

4 See (De Zwart 2012) for a critical discussion of the Dutch case.

5 As its Race Relation Act going back in 1965 testifies.

6 For example, in General Recommendation n°32, para 8, CERD, 75th session, 2009.

7 Wendy Roth calls this type “reflect race” in her compelling article on the multiple dimension of race (Roth 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This article has benefited from a fund by the French National Research under the program ANR-15-CE28-0010.