UK: Multiculturalism in reverse as teenagers buck the trend towards integration

Surprising UK study:

Decades of efforts to promote multiculturalism have gone into reverse, major new research showing teenagers are no more likely to mix with people from other racial backgrounds than those 40 years older suggests.

The study, which analyses the social lives of almost 4,300 people from 13 to 80, shows that a clear trend towards each successive generation becoming more integrated than the one before breaks down when it comes to under-18s.

Despite growing up in more diverse society than ever before at a time when mass migration has transformed the make-up of Britain, today’s teenagers have almost 30 per cent fewer friends from other ethnic backgrounds than people in their 20s and early 30s. ….

The fact that those between the ages of 18 and 34 are significantly more integrated than other age groups suggests that universities and colleges offer a more natural way of mixing people than schools or other social settings.

“This isn’t a report about telling people off,” he [Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, who chaired the commission] said.

“Lots of research shows that it is perfectly natural for birds of a feather to flock together.

“But what we would also say is that because we believe integration is a good thing and because Britain is becoming more diverse by ethnicity, age, income and social class we need to look at what steps we might take to overcome that natural tendency.

“None of the commissioners is going to be advocating wholesale social engineering or naming and shaming people but we think that there are things that can be done, things which people would be happy to do which would just give them that little nudge.

“The fact that it looks like colleges and universities are places that encourage integration better than schools is an indication that maybe there are things that we could so.”

Maybe it is a teenager thing given that the older cohort, whether in colleges and universities as mentioned, or in the workplace, seems to be mixing reasonably well.

Multiculturalism in reverse as teenagers buck the trend towards integration – Telegraph.