Ethnic Minorities And Social Capital Exploring Individual Level Determinants Of Trust And Political Participation In Britain

Britain has become increasingly diverse over the last fifty years and she has been fortunate to attract relatively highly educated immigrants with democratic values and positive perceptions of the British political system. But Britain's ethnic minorities have suffered prejudice, harassment and discrimination, while politicians increasingly argue that they have failed to integrate adequately into British society and accuse them of leading separate lives. In this book we set out to explore the extent and nature of the political rather than the economic integration of Britain's growing ethnic minority population. We consider what ethnic minorities in Britain think about and how they engage in British politics. This includes political knowledge and interest, political values and policy preferences, perceptions of parties, preferences for parties, what parties offer ethnic minorities, electoral registration, turnout and vote choice, other forms of political participation (such as signing petitions and demonstrations) and trust in political institutions and satisfaction with the democratic system. The book considers the ways in which ethnic minorities resemble or differ from the white British population, and differences between different minority groups. The analysis is based on the largest and broadest academic survey ever of the political attitudes and behaviour of Britain's main ethnic minority groups, the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study, in conjunction with the nationally representative British Election Study and other surveys. The findings are based on complex statistical regression models but they are presented and interpreted for more general readers. To what extent does discrimination at work and social exclusion alienate ethnic minorities from the political process? Are those minorities who associate more with those from their own ethnic group less engaged politically? Are those who were born in Britain better integrated than immigrants? This study addresses these and related questions. Despite there being many reasons for minorities to disassociate themselves from British politics they engage in positive and constructive ways. But there are important differences between the nature of white British and ethnic minority political engagement and between different minority groups, and especially between immigrants and their descendants. As a result politicians and political parties should not take the political support of ethnic minorities for granted.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Political trust – in government, parliament, or political parties – has taken centre stage in political science for more than half a century, reflecting ongoing concerns with the legitimacy and functioning of representative democracy. To provide scholars, students and policy makers with a tool to navigate through the complexity of causes and consequences of political trust, this Handbook offers an excellent overview of the conceptual, theoretical, methodological and empirical state of the art, complemented by accounts of regional particularities, and authored by international experts in this field.

This book contains a number of papers presented at a workshop organised by the World Bank in 1997 on the theme of 'Social Capital: Integrating the Economist's and the Sociologist's Perspectives'. The concept of 'social capital' is considered through a number of theoretical and empirical studies which discuss its analytical foundations, as well as institutional and statistical analyses of the concept. It includes the classic 1987 article by the late James Coleman, 'Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital', which formed the basis for the development of social capital as an organising concept in the social sciences.