Making sense of ‘mixture’: states and the classification of ‘mixed’ people

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Wendy Roth for providing valuable comments on this editorial.

Notes

1. In the Labour Force Survey, interethnic partnerships were defined ‘as those where one partner regards themselves as belonging to a different one of the 15 ethnic group categories [used by the ONS] to that claimed by the other partner’.

2. In the England and Wales 2001 Census the term ‘Mixed’ is the overarching term used for the four ethnic background mixed categories: ‘White and Black Caribbean’, ‘White and Black African’, ‘White and Asian’ and a free text ‘Any other mixed background’.

3. Inter-ethnic marriages are defined in Britain as marriages between people from different aggregate ethnic groups, where the ethnic group categories are: white, mixed, Asian (referring to origins in the Indian subcontinent), black, Chinese, other ethnic group. For example, a white British person married to someone from a non-white ethnic group or a Pakistani person married to someone from a non-Asian ethnic group (ONS 2005). The ONS in Britain does not use the term ‘race’ or ‘interracial’, as in the US.