Majority minority
A majority-minority or minority-majority area is a term used to refer to a subdivision in which one or more racial, ethnic, and/or religious minorities make up a majority of the local population.
Terminology
The exact terminology used differs from place to place and language to language. In many large, contiguous countries like China or the United Kingdom, a minority population is often the majority in a subdivision. For example, Tibetan people are the majority in the Tibet Autonomous Region and Scottish people are the majority in Scotland. The demographics in these regions are generally the result of historical population distributions, not because of recent immigration or recent differences in birth and fertility rates between various groups. As a result, it is rare for a Chinese autonomous region or a British home nation to be described as 'majority minority', even though they would fit the definition.Background
Majority minority areas exist in two main forms. One form is when a homogeneous grouping residing within an area make up a majority of the local population. This grouping would otherwise be a minority in the broader jurisdiction. The other type occurs when several disparate groupings, when counted together, form a percentage-share majority of the local population, outnumbering the historically dominant group as a composite of diverse minority groups.Whether distinctions between groups are religious, ethnic, linguistic or racial; these different forms of majority-minority scenarios, or areas, tend to contribute towards different socio-political and cultural environments. For example, a study of the 2006 European Social Survey found that people of localized majority-minority status across 21 EU countries were more supportive of stronger political European integration than existing national native majorities, and a 2019 Pew Research Center study found that 46 percent of white Americans believed national majority-minority demography would negatively impact American culture.
There has also been study on groupings said to have 'old' and 'new' majority-minority status in specific areas. In research funded by the EU's Framework Programmes, a 2015 study explored this difference, finding that, for example, ethnic Austrians living in South Tyrol manifest a culture which tends to oblige ethnic Italians to learn the German language for advancement in the province, such as access to the administration of local government. This was contrasted with 'new' immigration-derived majority-minority populaces in Europe.
Schools
In the United States, the vast majority of African Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans attend schools where white Americans are in the minority. 2006 research from The Civil Rights Project found that, on average, white students attend schools that are 78% white, while black and Hispanic students attend schools which are 29% white. A study on this suggested that; "This data is important because "majority minority" schools have the worst facilities, the least qualified teachers, the worst overcrowding, and the least financial support." In regards to racial classification at a national level, public schools in the US obtained majority minority status in 2014. At the university level, Harvard University's first case of a majority-minority freshman class was reported in 2017.In the Netherlands, majority-minority schools emerged in the post-war period, starting as a phenomenon in Amsterdam with immigration from Suriname and from Curaçao, right after World War II. In the 1970 and 80s, second-generation black Dutch students with ancestry from the Netherlands Antilles, were joined in classes by the children of workers emigrating from Turkey and Morocco, creating ethnic Dutch minorities in some schools within the country's capital. In a 2020 study of school classes in European cities, research on Turks in Austria and Belgium found that "a 'majority minority' school environment may empower minority group members so that relative numbers would protect them from becoming the target of discrimination."
Observation by settlement
Towns and cities
Many cities in North America have majority-minority scenarios. Since the late 20th century, areas of Northern and Western Europe have been undergoing demographic transformation resulting in majority minority cities. A 2018 study in Frontiers in Psychology analyzed:In the United States and Canada racial minorities already comprise a larger share of the population than Whites in dozens of major cities. These cities have been dubbed majority-minority areas—or places where the racial/ethnic majority comprise less than half the population. Western Europe is also becoming more diverse, albeit more slowly. London, England is one of the few major European cities that has been designated a majority–minority area.
Based upon the UK's Office for National Statistics racial or ethnic categorization, demographic research suggests that Leicester and Birmingham will each join London in majority minority status in the 2020s. University of Antwerp's professor Dirk Geldof, writing in 2016, noted that "within a matter of years, Antwerp will also become a majority-minority city, as will many other European cities." An education inclusion project at Hague University published that; "In superdiverse cities like Paris, The Hague and Brussels there is no majority anymore. These are so-called majority minority cities". According to a study at the European Commission's research repository CORDIS:
In cities like Amsterdam, now only one in three youngsters under age fifteen is of native descent. This situation, referred to as a majority-minority context, is a new phenomenon in Western Europe and it presents itself as one of the most important societal and psychological transformations of our time.
In the course of two generations places in Northwestern Europe, such as Amsterdam and Brussels, have become majority minority, with ethnic Dutch, Flemings and Walloons, respectively, representing less than 50 percent of the population of the capitals.
States and regions
In 2010, the BBC reported that "America's two largest states - California and Texas - became "majority-minority" states in 1998 and 2004 respectively." Demographers Dudley L. Poston Jr. and Rogelio Sáenz have noted how "nonwhites account for more than half of the populations of Hawaii, the District of Columbia, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. In the next 10 to 15 years, these half-dozen “majority-minority” states will likely be joined by as many as eight other states where whites now make up less than 60 percent of the population."In Europe, various national medias report on the social situation in the French suburbs with regards to disproportionate poverty and unrest. Known as banlieues, these outer-city regions across France are often majority-minority areas, in terms of race or ethnicity in relation to the ethnic French.
Nations and countries
The meaning of "majority-minority" or "minority-majority", in relation to a whole country, is not well defined and may not be consistent between different users of the terms. A multitude of scholars have designated countries, or sovereign states, particularly in the developed or Western world, which are projected to obtain majority-minority demography between 2040 and 2050. This includes the United States, Canada and New Zealand, with Australia, and nations in Western Europe, estimated to follow this trend toward the end of the century. In this usage, "majority-minority" usually means that a previously majority group becomes a plurality group, less than 50% of the population but still larger than any other group. Occasionally, it may mean a change of the majority group, with the previously majority group becoming a minority group and a previously minority group becoming the new majority group.This will not be the first time that the status of majority ethnic group has changed in these countries: it is estimated that Australia became a "majority-minority" country in the 1840s, when arriving Europeans first outnumbered Indigenous Australians. New Zealand became "majority-minority" slightly later, with non-Māori first outnumbering the Māori population around 1858. David Coleman has studied a similar statistical projection in Britain. Coleman, a professor of demography at the University of Oxford, estimates that by 2060 the United Kingdom will reach majority-minority status.
In the developing world, the South American nation of Brazil has been described as a majority-minority country. This is with regards to white Brazilians being the historically largest group, and while remaining culturally dominant, have since become a national minority.