British People
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Figure 2 looks at trends in opposition to immigrants/ immigration, however, the variety of available data sources and the changes to question wording over the years mean this cannot be seen as one coherent continuum. The data points derived from the British Election Study (BES) show that opposition to immigration was high in 1964, 1966 and 1979 with 85-86% of people at each of those times reporting that there were too many immigrants in Britain. The data points from 1983 and 1987 were based on slightly different question wording to the rest (see notes under the chart), so we need to consider these with caution. However, the earlier question was repeated in 2017 where the percentage agreeing that there are too many immigrants had dropped to 66%.
Since the EU Referendum in June 2016, however, immigration has been mentioned by far fewer people, falling from 48% in June 2016 to 13% in November 2019. Over this same period, it is perhaps not surprising that Europe/ the EU has increased in salience. As of November 2019, 62% mentioned this as a concern, with a further 42% mentioning the NHS (as respondents can name more than one issue if they want to, the total comes to more than 100%).
This British preference for highly skilled migrants fits with other research showing that, when asked about what criteria should be applied to incoming migrants, British people attach high importance to skills, but lower importance to skin colour and religion (Heath and Richards, 2018).
This section considers whether the UK is more negative in its immigration outlook than other countries in Europe. Figure 5 shows two different measures from the European Social Survey for 12 countries: The first shows the percentage of people saying that a few or no immigrants of a different race should be allowed (the same as shown in Figure 2). At 26%, the UK is among the least anti-immigration of these countries and only Sweden and Norway are more favourable. Of these 12 countries, the least favourable views are seen in the Czech Republic and Estonia. Note however that this question may combine attitudes to immigration and race relations.
Brexit is commonly thought of these days as major divide in British Society. Leave voters and remain voters had different visions for the future of the United Kingdom, and immigration plays a key role in those visions. Remain voters are, on average, more socially liberal and pro-immigration while leave voters are more socially conservative and anti-immigration. It is now also well established that older people tend to be less favourable towards immigration and more likely to have voted for Britain to leave the EU, while those with more education are more pro-immigration and more likely to have voted remain (see e.g. Kunovich, 2004; Hobolt, 2016).
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits,[35] are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.[36][37][38] British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, \"British\" or \"Britons\" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain and Brittany, whose surviving members are the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, and Bretons.[37] It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.[39]
Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Normans.[49] The progressive political unification of the British Isles facilitated migration, cultural and linguistic exchange, and intermarriage between the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales during the late Middle Ages, early modern period and beyond.[50][51] Since 1922 and earlier, there has been immigration to the United Kingdom by people from what is now the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth, mainland Europe and elsewhere; they and their descendants are mostly British citizens, with some assuming a British, dual or hyphenated identity.[52] This includes the groups Black British and Asian British people, which together constitute around 10% of the British population.[53]
The British are a diverse, multinational,[54][55] multicultural and multilingual people, with \"strong regional accents, expressions and identities\".[56][57] The social structure of the United Kingdom has changed radically since the 19th century, with a decline in religious observance, enlargement of the middle class, and increased ethnic diversity, particularly since the 1950s, when citizens of the British Empire were encouraged to immigrate to Britain to work as part of the recovery from World War II. The population of the UK stands at around 67 million,[58] with a British diaspora of around 140 million concentrated in the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with smaller concentrations in the Republic of Ireland, Chile, South Africa, and parts of the Caribbean.[59]
The earliest known reference to the inhabitants of Great Britain may have come from 4th century BC records of the voyage of Pytheas, a Greek geographer who made a voyage of exploration around the British Isles. Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them. Pytheas called the islands collectively αἱ Βρεττανίαι (hai Brettaniai), which has been translated as the Brittanic Isles, and the peoples of what are today England, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοί (Prettanoi), Priteni, Pritani or Pretani.
Greek and Roman writers, in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the Priteni,[62] the origin of the Latin word Britanni. It has been suggested that this name derives from a Gaulish description translated as \"people of the forms\", referring to the custom of tattooing or painting their bodies with blue woad made from Isatis tinctoria.[63] Parthenius, a 1st-century[clarification needed] Ancient Greek grammarian, and the Etymologicum Genuinum, a 9th-century lexical encyclopaedia, mention a mythical character Bretannus (the Latinised form of the Ancient Greek: Βρεττανός, Brettanós) as the father of Celtine, mother of Celtus, the eponymous ancestor of the Celts.[64]
By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles.[65] However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia (modern day Scotland north of the rivers Forth & Clyde), although the people of Caledonia and the north were also the self same Britons during the Roman period, the Gaels arriving four centuries later.[66][67] Following the end of Roman rule in Britain, the island of Great Britain was left open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors such as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons and Jutes from Continental Europe, who gained control in areas around the south east, and to Middle Irish-speaking people migrating from what is today Northern Ireland to the north of Great Britain (modern Scotland), founding Gaelic kingdoms such as Dál Riata and Alba, which would eventually subsume the native Brittonic and Pictish kingdoms and become Scotland.[68]
During the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Tudor period, the term \"British\" was used to refer to the Welsh people and Cornish people. At that time, it was \"the long held belief that these were the remaining descendants of the Britons and that they spoke 'the British tongue'\".[71] This notion was supported by texts such as the Historia Regum Britanniae, a pseudohistorical account of ancient British history, written in the mid-12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth.[71] The Historia Regum Britanniae chronicled the lives of legendary kings of the Britons in a narrative spanning 2000 years, beginning with the Trojans founding the ancient British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 7th century forced the Britons to the west, i.e. Wales and Cornwall, and north, i.e. Cumbria, Strathclyde and northern Scotland.[71] This legendary Celtic history of Great Britain is known as the Matter of Britain. The Matter of Britain, a national myth, was retold or reinterpreted in works by Gerald of Wales, a Cambro-Norman chronicler who in the 12th and 13th centuries used the term British to refer to the people later known as the Welsh.[72]
The events of the Darien Scheme, and the passing by the English Parliament of the Act of Settlement 1701 asserting the right to choose the order of succession for English, Scottish and Irish thrones, escalated political hostilities between England and Scotland, and neutralised calls for a united British people. The Parliament of Scotland responded by passing the Act of Security 1704, allowing it to appoint a different monarch to succeed to the Scottish crown from that of England, if it so wished.[94] The English political perspective was that the appointment of a Jacobite monarchy in Scotland opened up the possibility of a Franco-Scottish military conquest of England during the Second Hundred Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession.[94] The Parliament of England passed the Alien Act 1705, which provided that Scottish nationals in England were to be treated as aliens and estates held by Scots would be treated as alien property,[97] whilst also restricting the import of Scottish products into England and its colonies (about half of Scotland's trade).[98] However, the Act contained a provision that it would be suspended if the Parliament of Scotland entered into negotiations regarding the creation of a unified Parliament of Great Britain, which in turn would refund Scottish financial losses on the Darien Scheme.[96] 59ce067264