Why second-generation migrants in Britain report more discrimination

FEW SUBJECTS are more chewed over in Britain than migration and race. The country will finally leave the European Union (EU) next week, a policy supported by many voters to reduce, or gain control over, immigration flows. Its former prime minister, Theresa May, will be remembered in part for her shoddy treatment of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants who were asked to prove their citizenship decades after making Britain their home. And Meghan Markle’s decision to leave has prompted introspection in some quarters and defensiveness in others.

On January 20th Oxford University’s Migration Observatory added some rare crunch to the discussion, with an analysis of data from the European Social Survey. Marina Fernandez-Reino, a researcher, found that migrants were slightly less likely to say they had been discriminated against in Britain than the average reported by their peers in 14 other European countries. But their children were much more likely to feel such discrimination: 32% of second-generation migrants encountered it, compared with 16% of their parents. The same pattern holds in other countries, but the disparity is much greater in Britain.