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The great migrant explosion
BLACK and ethnic minorities will make up more than 10 per cent of Yorkshire's population within the next 25 years, new figures reveal.
Soaring migration will help push minority communities in the region up by 65 per cent – more than 15 times as fast as growth in the indigenous white population.
According to the latest figures there are 408,134 ethnic minorities living in Yorkshire, including 260,408 people of Asian origin.
Now a major study will show those figures are predicted to jump to 673,962 and 436,898 respectively by 2030, buoyed by increased migration and higher birth rates among second-generation Asian families. Overall the population will rise from 5.1 million to 5.7 million.
The changes will pile pressure on the Government to prevent the region becoming fractured, with increasingly large minorities growing up in parallel but separate communities.
Yorkshire Muslim peer and Shadow Communities Secretary Baroness Warsi said: "We need to create better understanding so that we don't polarise communities more. I don't want my daughter to think there are certain areas where only she can go and certain areas where she can't go."
Yorkshire Futures, which carries out research into the region, now estimates that it will be younger, immigrant families who will provide a key increasing share of the workforce as the population ages.
While most of the 36,000 immigrants given national insurance numbers to work in the region last year were from eastern Europe entering soon after the EU lifted its barriers, that is not expected to be repeated in future years as saturation hits the available jobs market.
But Yorkshire's ageing population will soar, playing havoc with the region's economy, particularly in rural and coastal areas. In total, those aged 60 or over in Yorkshire currently make up 21.4 per cent of the population, or one million people. By 2030 that is expected to rise to 29.3 per cent, or 1.6 million people.
Experts said yesterday that it would therefore be the districts that are popular with ethnic minorities, who tend to come to Yorkshire at a young age and then have large families, that would prosper in the decades to come.
Yorkshire Futures director Les Newby cited Bradford – where the Asian population is expected to grow by 90 per cent, making up one-third of the entire city by 2030 – Leeds and the Kirklees district as the three places set to benefit most from the changes.
But he stressed that employers needed to tap the skills of the whole community so the region can benefit fully.
He said: "As population grows, areas with diverse communities will tend to have the most young and working age people. In an era of ageing population that will become a real economic advantage."
Leeds North West MP Greg Mulholland said: "More needs to be done to address social mobility and do away with divided societies. A large proportion of ethnic minorities live in poorer households.
"It's not a racial thing, it's to do with access to education. More needs to be done to educate minority communities, and that will become increasingly important in the years to come."
Other districts about to embark on a profound change include Sheffield, where the indigenous white population will fall by 13,000 by 2030, to be replaced by 37,000 new minorities.
In Hull the minority community will grow by only 5,000 by 2030 but the indigenous white population will decline by 29,000 – with most moving to the East Riding district in search of a perceived better quality of life.
The findings, based on research by Leeds University, will be made available in the Yorkshire Futures Trends and Scenarios to 2030 report which will be released in the next fortnight.
It states: "Migration has economic impacts, providing a number of workers in the lower-paid service industries as well as opportunities in public services."
There are also social impacts: "a demographic effect as most min-ority communities have higher growth rates"; changes in communities' cultural make-up; and implications for social cohesion.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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