A new research programme will track how the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests have reshaped racial and ethnic inequality across Britain’s economy, culture, and politics. The problem is urgent but poorly understood. The pandemic exposed deep disparities in health, employment, housing, and education for ethnic minorities, while the BLM protests triggered unprecedented pledges from politicians and businesses to tackle racism. But no one yet knows whether those pledges will stick, whether the economic shock of Covid-19 will entrench existing inequalities further, or how Brexit will interact with these forces. The research fills that gap by examining inequality at structural, institutional, and interpersonal levels simultaneously. If successful, the work could change how policymakers, employers, and public institutions design interventions that actually reduce inequality rather than just acknowledging it. The team will produce evidence on what works and what does not, drawing on quantitative data, ethnographic fieldwork, and visual methods. The findings could reshape how the UK approaches everything from hiring practices to housing policy and public health planning for ethnic minority communities.
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This proposal sets out an intensive and ambitious suite of work which responds rapidly to the current crisis posed by Covid19 and its social and economic impact on racial and ethnic minorities, as well as the opportunities and challenges posed by increased awareness and activism about racial and ethnic inequalities in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. The proposal will explore racial and ethnic inequality in three broad and inter-related, areas: economic, cultural and political, alongside a commissioned survey exploring the impact of the Covid19 crisis on ethnic minority people nationally. The proposed programme offers new insights into key areas thrown into relief by the current crisis while offering the opportunity for high profile and high impact interventions. The ESRC Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) is the leading research group focused on understanding racial and ethnic inequalities in the UK, and its established track record of empirically grounded, policy relevant and high impact research is uniquely placed to conduct this work. CoDE's consistent purpose across the past eight years has been to map the changing contours of racial and ethnic inequality in the UK, examine the complex factors underpinning racial and ethnic inequalities, at macro (structural), meso (institutional) and micro (interpersonal) levels, and to work in partnership with key stakeholders to respond to, mitigate, and diminish these inequalities. CoDE's work has been central in demonstrating continuity and change in racial and ethnic inequality over time, in understanding the heterogeneity and commonalities of racial and ethnic minority experiences and in examining the multiple, inter-related dimensions of both identity and inequality (gender, class, sexuality, religion, migration etc.). The current context offers new formations of racial and ethnic inequality, and unprecedented challenges and opportunities in understanding the significance of race, ethnicity, and ethnic inequality, in contemporary Britain. The Covid19 crisis has highlighted both the key roles played by racial and ethnic minorities in Britain, and the enduring significance of racial and ethnic inequality, across a range of arenas, from health to employment, education, and housing. Many of these inequalities were already known (Byrne et al 2020). However, as the country faces severe economic crisis in the wake of the Covid19 crisis, and with Brexit taking place during the period of research, there is an urgent need to examine the longer term implications of macroeconomic shocks on already entrenched inequalities for ethnic minority communities. In addition, the recent BLM campaigns have suggested a significant turning point in the public and political debates around racial and ethnic inequality, nationally and globally. This has been met by unprecedented commitments from politicians, businesses and civil society institutions to tackle embedded forms of racism. However the form, efficacy and long-term commitment of such pledges are as yet uncertain, and it will be important to examine how this impetus builds on existing forms of institutional change, 'what works', and what does not work. As in previous work, CoDE's new programme will be distinguished by its multidisciplinary, multi-scalar and multi-sited approach, working within and across different social and policy arenas to draw connections across discrete sites. The research will employ a range of methods, including innovative quantitative data sources and analysis, in dialogue with ethnographic, visual and participatory methods. The Centre will build on its existing network of high-profile and influential public and private sector partners at national, regional and local level to maximise the impact of its work.
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