Creating an Output Area Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Heritage

to Assist the Planning of Ethnic Origin Foods in Supermarkets in England and Wales

Guy LansleyUCL

Yiran WeiUCL

Tim RainsJ Sainsbury’s

GISRUK 2015

The University of Leeds@GuyLansley

Context

• Many minority ethnic and cultural groups in Britain have distinctive food consumption habits which emanate from their cultural origins

• The UK is becoming ethnically more diverse due to migration and variations in fertility rates between different cultural groups

• Minority groups still have a tendency to residentially cluster within urban areas

• Understanding where minority groups cluster could be beneficial for grocery store planners

Aim

• Using data from the 2011 Census, this research aims to identify the major spatial traits in ethnic identity across the residential geography of England and Wales by producing a Cultural, Ethnic and Linguistic Output Area Classification (CELOAC)

Defining Ethnicity

• Ethnicity can be an intangible concept

• Definitions can derive from:• Primordialist theories

• Ethnicity as a physicality from ancestry

• Constructivist theories• Ethnicity as a social construction

• Instrumental theories• Ethnicity based on historical & symbolic memory

Defining Ethnicity

• Ethnic groups can be considered as distinct groups of individuals who share a common identity through:• kinship

• Religion

• Language

• Location

• Nationality

• Physical similarities from ancestry Bulmer (1996)

What is Ethnicity?

Defining Consistent Ethnic GroupsThe Modifiable Ethnic Unit Problem (MEUP)!

OR?

Self-identities spectrum Ethnic Groups

(Courtesy Pablo Mateos, 2011)

Uncertainty

• There are various different measures of CEL groups from the 2011 Census• E.g. Ethnicity, Country of Birth,

Language, passports held, nationality…

• And also from other sources too

Extract from Longley et al (2015)

Clustering in London

The most common country of birth in each Output Area (2011 Census)

Data

Census Table NameQS203EW Country of birth (detailed)QS204EW Main language (detailed)QS205EW Proficiency in EnglishQS208EW ReligionQS211EW Ethnic group (detailed)QS802EW Age of arrival in the UKQS803EW Length of residence in the UK

• Variables from 7 ONS Census Quick Statistics tables were selected for the analysis

Methods

• Variables with total populations below 10,000 were aggregated into broader groups based on their global regions of origin or removed altogether if they were considered too distinctive to merge.

• The remaining variables were standardised and transformed so each variable could be fairly compared

• Highly correlated or unstable cases were then identified and removed or aggregated

• 52 variables were clustered using a K-means clustering algorithm

Final Variable Selection

2011 Census Table No of original variables

No of aggregated variables

No of final variables

Country of birth (detailed) 57 49 15

Ethnic group (write-in responses)

94 40 18

Main language (detailed) 92 20 7

Proficiency in English 5 5 1

Religion 9 8 7

Age of arrival in the UK 17 7 2

Length of residence in the UK 5

5 2

Total 435 134 52

.

K-means Clustering

• K-means is an iterative allocation-reallocation method where the number of cluster groups (k) is predefined by the user

• The approach creates distinctive cluster groups by attempting to minimise the sum of the distances from each case to their cluster centre based on the variable distributions.

• An 8 cluster solution was found to hold the best fit overall

• However, for this analysis two groups which were predominately White British were merged as the focus of this paper is on the minority population• Their main distinction was differences in the percent of

those who identified themselves as Christian

Results

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G

Ethnic Group Country of Birth Proficiency in English

White British Romania Cannot speak English

Irish Other EU accession countries Main language

Pakistani & British Pakistani Ghana French

Bangladeshi & British Bangladeshi Nigeria Russian

Arab Other Central & Western Africa Turkish

Afghan Kenya West or Central Asian Language

Australian & New Zealander Somalia South Asian Language

Baltic Other South & Eastern Africa East Asian Language

Polish Middle East African Language

Sri Lankan China Religion

Other Eastern European Hong Kong Christian

Other Western European Other Southern Asia Buddhist

Greek or Greek Cypriot Philippines Hindu

Black British Other South-East Asia Jewish

Caribbean United States Muslim

South East Asian Length of residence in UK Sikh

African Less than 2 years No religion or not stated

Indian or British Indian 10 years or more

Age of arrival in UK

0 to 4

45 - 64

Below Average Above Average

Label

A Pakistani & Bangladeshi

B Indian & South Asian mix

C Black African & Caribbean

D Non-British White

E Middle Eastern & East Asian

F Mixed

G White British

CELOAC and Ethnic Groups

Ethnic Group A B C D E F GWhite British 43.29 22.50 33.14 53.73 42.93 72.15 93.01White Irish 1.21 1.70 1.80 2.82 1.71 1.47 0.64Other White 4.69 8.62 12.40 20.63 14.24 7.96 2.06Mixed & multiple 3.43 3.81 6.64 4.88 4.53 3.49 1.30Indian 9.84 25.14 3.01 2.53 5.55 3.06 0.73Pakistani 20.23 9.36 2.85 0.78 3.46 1.42 0.34Bangladeshi 5.87 2.83 3.10 1.10 1.96 0.66 0.14Chinese 0.66 0.90 1.35 2.09 5.89 1.30 0.30Other Asian 3.11 10.24 3.92 2.88 5.66 2.49 0.43Black ethnicities 5.49 10.81 27.80 5.30 7.72 4.60 0.70Arab 0.84 1.59 1.14 1.35 3.67 0.49 0.10Other 1.25 2.38 2.69 1.85 2.60 0.77 0.17

The average percentage of ethnic groups by each CELOAC group

Mapping CELOAC

• England and WalesA Pakistani & Bangladeshi

B Indian & South Asian Mix

C Black African & Caribbean

D Non-British White

E Middle Eastern & East Asian

F Mixed

G White British

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A 1.27 5.69 7.54 4.61 13.66 2.97 2.59 0.47 3.61 0.49 4.51

B 0.05 0.36 0.14 2.69 1.76 0.45 0.85 0.05 13.55 0.02 2.51

C 0.03 1.15 0.71 0.69 1.45 0.58 0.52 0.57 27.71 0.16 4.45

D 0.01 0.15 0.05 0.02 0.05 0.99 1.30 0.22 19.26 0.03 3.02

E 1.89 1.73 2.07 1.60 1.49 0.83 1.24 0.59 8.51 1.16 2.36

F 3.77 5.84 6.85 10.55 6.62 16.92 18.78 8.07 19.00 4.36 11.38

G 92.98 85.08 82.64 79.83 74.97 77.25 74.72 90.04 8.36 93.78 71.78

Regional Variations

Mapping CELOAC

• London

A Pakistani & Bangladeshi

B Indian & South Asian Mix

C Black African & Caribbean

D Non-British White

E Middle Eastern & East Asian

F Mixed

G White British

A London Only Classification

A Bangladeshi, African and South-East European

B Indian & South Asian

C Black African & Caribbean

D Non-British White & East Asian

E Middle Eastern

F Mixed

G White British

K = 7

Ethnic Origin Food Consumption

• Sainsbury’s provided the number of sales for six pre-selected grocery products by OA as recorded from their customer loyalty database

• The data represented the total sales within a 52 week period commencing in 2011

• Each of the foods were chosen due to their distinctive cultural heritage with minority groups

• The data was standardised by the total number of food items sold in each OA from that time period

Food Consumption Data

GroupBlack Eye

BeansChickpeas

Chinese Leaf

Ghee Halal Ogorki

A: Pakistani and Bangladeshi 215.9 80.99 81.49 250.5 163.2 122

B: Indian and South Asian Mix 472.7 111.2 137.8 601 711.5 312.4

C: Black African and Caribbean 305.8 120.2 131.6 277.2 598.5 286.3

D: Non-British White 218.7 230.3 229.7 216.1 413.4 356.1

E: Middle Eastern & East Asian 202.5 122.7 260.9 229.7 402.4 286

F: Mixed 151.7 136.3 151.4 151.4 109.6 184.5

G: White British 50.4 87.58 78.99 44.77 19.14 49.37

100 = average representation

Conclusions

• The CELOAC successfully segmented 2011 Census Output Areas by cultural, ethnic and linguistic characteristics

• London, and other major metropolitan areas still contain higher proportion of ethnic minorities and there are distinctive segregations between CELOAC groups within towns and cities

• However, the classification still conceals more intricate differences within each CELOAC group

• Ethnic origin food consumption was found to vary between different major cultural groups

References

• Bulmer, M. (1996) ‘The ethnic group question in the 1991 Census of population’ in Coleman, D. and Salt J. (des.) Ethnicity in the 1991 Census. vol.1 Demographic characteristics of the ethnic minority populations London: HMSO

• Harris R, Sleight P, Webber R. (2005) Geodemographics: neighbourhood targeting and GIS. Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons.

• Longley, P.A., M.F. Goodchild, D.J. Maguire, and D.W. Rhind (2015) Geographic Information Systems and Science. Fourth Edition. New York: Wiley.

• Mateos, P. (2011) Uncertain segregation: the challenge of defining and measuring ethnicity in segregation studies, Built Environment, 37 (2) 226-238

• The Office for National Statistics (2014) 2011 Area Classifications http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/products/area-classifications/national-statistics-area-classifications/national-statistics-2011-area-classifications/index.html