Abstract
There has been an ongoing national debate over the causes and consequences of the evolution of patterns of residence of ethnic minority populations in British cities. This has gained particular prominence since the publication of the Cantle Report, which highlighted ethnic segregation as one of the causes underlying the racialised disturbances in certain northern cities in 2001. In this paper, the geographies of ethnic populations are identified in Leeds, a northern city affected by minor disturbances within its multi-ethnic inner-city. A newly developed set of ‘community areas’ is used to examine the extent to which specific ethnic minority groups are spatially concentrated within the city. The analysis focuses upon Leeds’ South Asian population, highlighting the spatial diversity of sub-groups within it and contrasting their geographies with those of other ethnic groups. Change between 1991 and 2001 is examined in inner Leeds at ward level, where geographical boundaries have remained consistent; evidence is found for deconcentration. Thereafter, each of the main forces responsible for shaping the patterns of ethnic settlement is considered in more detail, drawing on data from a survey of South Asian households in the city.
The 2001 Census attribute and boundary data sets have been provided by ONS and the research based on these data has been undertaken as part of a project funded by the ODPM. We are grateful to Amy Burrage for her work on the statistical data, to Cathy Davis for her work on the South Asian mobility survey, to Leeds City Council, Peter Shepherd, Dimitris Ballas and Richard Kingston for their help in defining the community areas, and to Gary Craig, Tony Stanley and two anonymous JEMS referees for their comments on earlier versions of the paper.