Intermarriage Between ‘White’ Britons and Immigrants from the New Commonwealth and Pakistan

Abstract

The 1983 General Household Survey for the United Kingdom was analyzed to examine the extent to which intermarriage has occurred between white British residents and immigrants from countries of the New Commonwealth and Pakistan (NCWP) as well as between other minority ethnic groups. Comparisons are made between intermarrying and intrarnarrying men and women in terms of area of residence, age, length of marriage, education (school leaving age, type of institution last attended) and occupational category. The 25,000 households sampled yielded 5140 married couples of which approximately 1 % were intermarriages. The female spouses in most of the intermarriages were white (62%). There was a tendency for intermarried couples to be living in urban areas, to be younger, to be more recently married and to have achieved a higher !eve! of education than their intraethnically married counterparts. A comparison is made of the current findings to those of earlier researchers employing different data sources. The implications of the findings for understanding the assimilation of NCWP immigrants in the United Kingdom are briefly discussed. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance provided by the Computer Centre and the Board of Study of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England.