What Motivates Ethnic Conflict? Evidence from Ethnically Motivated Violence in the UK

Ethnically motivated violence and harassment harm people and communities. Understanding the reasons behind ethnically motivated violence and harassment is key to designing policy to impact on ethnic violence and improve community wellbeing.

Ethnic violence is violence perpetrated against a person because of their ethnicity. There are three possibilities which seem immediately obvious candidates as motivation for ethnic violence within a community: dislike of those who are different, where an individual gets displeasure simply from living in the same area as those from another ethnic group; competition over control of a public good, where, for instance, violence is perpetrated to dissuade another ethnic group from influencing the type of amenities in the local neighbourhood, or the cultural make-up of the neighbourhood, including types of shops and places of worship; and competition over divisible resources, where, for example, ethnic violence is perpetrated to dissuade other ethnic groups from using social housing or gaining employment in the area.

We seek to better understand the causes of and motivation for ethnic violence and harassment, both in the UK and elsewhere. We construct an economic model in which individuals make decisions both about the local area in which to live and the extent to which they participate in ethnic conflict in their local area. Having established possible motivations for ethnic violence, we assume an individual chooses where to live and his level of violence and harassment against other ethnic groups in his local area based on these different motivations. The individual also takes into account the possibility that different local areas may have different values when making his decision, for example one area may have more jobs or better housing.

Which motive is driving ethnic violence and harassment will affect the level of violence and harassment in a given area, as well as how ethnic violence interacts with factors such as the relative sizes of the various ethnic groups, job supply, housing supply and the wealth of an area. In this way we will use the economic framework to understand how we can tell one motivation for ethnic violence from another. For example, the framework will tell us what we should expect to see in a diverse community if competition over divisible resources is driving ethnic violence.

We will use data on ethnic violence in the UK by local authority area, data on the ethnic composition of each local authority area, as well as data on economic resources (such as job supply and social housing) to examine what we see happening in communities in the UK. We want to understand what we find in our data on the UK in light of the predictions of the economic framework. In light of these findings we would hope to identify potential policy decisions capable of enhancing community wellbeing.

Impact Summary

This research is about community cohesion: identifying the causes and motivation for ethnic violence and harassment in diverse communities.

Who will benefit from this research? This research is relevant to policy makers with a remit to improve community cohesion. This includes: the Department for Communities and Local Government, which is charged with improving community cohesion and is known to value relevant research; the Home Office, which oversees the police force who deal with incidents of ethnic violence in all its forms; the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent body which advises on how migration will impact the UK, including the effect of migration on community cohesion; MPs and government ministers with a stake in matters of ethnic violence, for example Baroness Warsi who reports to the Prime Minister on strategic thinking with regard to social cohesion and big society.

The research can benefit independent bodies including the Equality and Human Rights Commission, whose priority funding area is 'good relations' within communities, and funds community work on tackling hate crime.

Finally the research is also of interest to the media which frequently runs stories on issues of ethnic violence and harassment, integration, and community cohesion. The media has a lot of interest in these issues and disseminates to the wider population as well as policy makers.

How will people benefit? This research is about community cohesion: identifying the causes and motivation for ethnic violence and harassment in diverse communities. The key benefit of this research is to use it to reduce ethnically motivated crime and improve social cohesion within diverse communities.

To effectively impact policy on social cohesion and reduce violence we have to understand the causes of and motivation for ethnic violence. Being able to identify motivators of ethnic violence, for example supply of housing, allows us to specify where to direct money to reduce ethnic violence and improve social cohesion in the medium and long-term.

Second, in the short-term, identifying aspects of communities that imply high levels of ethnic violence could influence where to direct resources such as policing, local level initiatives to improve social cohesion, and other mitigation resources.

Third, because such issues are highly important but can also be highly provocative, the need for evidence based research without bias is strong. Disseminated to appropriate stakeholders research can promote clear discussion based on evidence and understanding of the issues involved. Indeed as the world becomes more mobile, questions of social cohesion in diverse communities will not go away. Improving understanding of why and when social cohesion breaks down and bringing this into the debate is clearly very important.

Finally, disseminating work through the media informs the general debate and can be used as another route to influence policy. Disseminating research through the media that informs on why and when social cohesion breaks down targets a wide range of people. It can help communities and local groups in directing resources and effort, and may make people more aware of the issues facing other ethnic groups and increase understanding within communities.