The UK census collects data on race and ethnicity, and it’s quite common for employers to ask you to self-declare your ethnicity according to the same categories that are given in the census (you of course also have the option to tick “Prefer not to say”). The categories are fine for the predominant immigrant communities as they were around the early 00s or so, but they get weird for people who don’t fit neatly in those categories. Usually the classifications that are presented to you are as follows:
– White:
– White British
– Irish
– Gypsy/Traveller
– Other White
– Black or Black British
– Black African
– Black Caribbean
– Other Black [surprisingly numerous, I think mostly Black people who’ve been in the UK for multiple generations and don’t identify with either Africa or the Caribbean anymore]
– Asian or Asian British
– Indian
– Pakistani
– Bangladeshi
– Other Asian [note that this usually refers to people from places like Sri Lanka and Nepal, and not to East Asians or people from the Middle East]
– Mixed
– White and Black African
– White and Black Caribbean
– White and Asian
– Other mixed
– Chinese
– Arab
– Other
In the US it’s even more ludicrous: there are only 5 major categories plus an additional option to self-declare as Hispanic. The 5 categories are: White [which includes people from the Middle East], Black, Asian [which includes both South and East Asians], American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.
In other countries, such as France, it’s illegal to collect data on race.
How about in your country?
32 comments
Absolutely not, nothing of the sort. You might be able to guess why the apparent obsession with the concept of “race” is a bit outlandish to us.
As far as I know this is not done in official statistics in Germany.
There is information on foreign citizenship and then there is a concept called “Migrationshintergrund” meaning migration background that refers to all people who have a parent that was not born as a German citizen (so a very heterogenous group).
What might be interesting is that Germany has a very bureaucratic system of membership in religious organisations that includes the mainstream Christian denominations like Catholic, Lutheran, orthodox etc as well as Jewish denominations and the state and employers collect information about it. However, muslim groups are thus far not organised in such a way hence it’s difficult to say how many muslims there are in Germany (some small groups do have this organisational form but their numbers are negligible). As far as I know, countries like France also treat religion as a much more private matter and don’t collect official data on this.
I was taught in school there is only one race: The human race.
Since the end of the Second World War, the Federal Republic of Germany has generally not collected population statistics and socio-economic data on an ethnic basis. Whether the DDR did I honestly don’t know.
Yep, it really gets [weird](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/uk-government-apology-school-census-ethnicity-question-italy-families-ambassador-pasquale-terracciano-a7491071.html) sometimes.
In the Italian census the focus is on the citizenship, here’s a picture of that section
https://i.postimg.cc/6q9zqHHW/Screenshot-2023-06-24-10-39-38-121-com-google-android-apps-pdfviewer-edit.jpg
No, Employers dont collect this.
And we have not had censuses since 1970, we have used computeres since then.
The register knows you current and past adresses, and the social security number of you parents.
And it also know from where, if you have immigrated.
Absolutely not. Government keeps track of nationality for statistics but nothing of the race.
I believe it would be illegal for employers to ask about race or ethnicity during job interviews. It sounds insane the US and appearantly the UK keeps track of ‘race’ statistics. I wouldnt even know to what end.
Humans are humans.
According to INSEE (French national statistic organism) It is forbidden to make statistics including ethnic or racial origins. It is also forbidden to have people’s racial or ethnic data show up in official paperworks :
> De ce fait sont proscrits :
> la réalisation de traitements de données à caractère personnel faisant apparaître directement ou indirectement les origines raciales ou ethniques des personnes.
> l’introduction de variables de race ou de religion dans les fichiers administratifs. Cela vaut pour le répertoire d’identification des personnes physiques
If you want to mesure diversity or discrimination it is encouraged to use objective elements like names, nationalities (or past nationalities) and geographic origins.
Additionally subjective elements like “sense of belonging” can be used.
> Dans le commentaire de sa décision, le Conseil constitutionnel précise aussi que la statistique publique (l’Insee et les services statistiques ministériels) peut réaliser des études sur la mesure de la diversité des origines des personnes, de la discrimination et de l’intégration en se fondant sur des données objectives, comme le nom, l’origine géographique ou la nationalité antérieure à la nationalité française.
> Pour autant les données objectives ne sont pas les seules qui peuvent être utilisées dans les études statistiques. Le Conseil constitutionnel indique que des données subjectives, telles celles fondées sur le « ressenti d’appartenance » peuvent aussi être recueillies dans des enquêtes statistiques, et utilisées dans les études en découlant.
Link for the quotes : https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2108548
There is a question about ethnicity in censuses, because there are more than a hundred ethnicities in Russia, but employers don’t ask questions like that. Don’t think that it’s illegal, but there’s no point in collecting data like that.
There’s a checkbox related to ethnicity in the regular population census, but you can put whatever you want in there, it’s anonymous anyway.
Other than that, there’s no mention of race of ethnicity anywhere.
Well, unless you are a Russian these days, that might get you discriminated.
Iceland doesn’t use race in their census. We do imput nation of birth in the census but that’s about it.
The highest immigrant population consists of Poles and Danes, about 10% if I remember right.
In Ukraine we haven’t have a census for a 20 years now:)
The government wanted to conduct one in 2021 (a 20 years anniversary from 2001 census), but covid smashed the plan.
From what I know, 2001 census collected ethnic (Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars, Jews, Armenians, Azerbaijanians, Roma, etc) and linguistic data (which language did people speak).
I think, if the official census will be conducted, these questions will be included.
For census, we have questions such as Ethnicity and Religion to fill them out freely (no choices provided), but according to our constitution, you’re not obligated to answer.
People, minorities mostly, fill them in, so they can have some sort of presence in the country, and can get representation in the government.
Employees don’t ask these questions. Not that I’ve heard of any, that is.
Sweden doesn’t track ethnicity, just country of origin for immigrants.
We haven’t had a census in about 30 years, although the current government wants to conduct a new one. There’s a Statistical Bureau that presents population statistics based on registers, which don’t include ethnicity.
There isn’t necessarily anything stopping an employer to collect data on ethnicity, but I’ve never come across it. It’s not illegal to ask, but it is illegal for the answer to impact the hiring decision, so to avoid suspicions about discrimination most avoid asking.
No. We are not the UK, the US, or N*zi Germany. Race is pseudoscience, less accurate than astrology, and has no place in a modern state.
And I disagree with you, the UK census is incredibly dumb and insulting. An Iranian is Asian, same as a Chinese, but unlike an Egyptian. You mix geography, race, ethnicity, and language, all different concepts, which makes it unacceptable. Brits are as white as Indians by every anthropological metric. etc… Shame.
Nope, never heard of and not even on any party’s political agenda.
It might, you know, smack of something like the nuremberg laws we had sometime ago.
The only exception is Südtirol, where people have to fill in during census a form called Sprachgruppenzugehörigkeitserklärung and declare which of the 3 linguistic groups, German, Italian and Ladin, you belong to, because public sector jobs are allocated based on the overall ethnic composition in the region, among other things.
I applied for a public sector job in the UK and the data requested included questions about my ethnicity, religion (in reference to Northern Ireland) and my sexual orientation. I thought it was extremely intrusive tbh. There’s also a climate of increasingly right wing politics in the UK.
There are also data breech risks:
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/data-leak-hits-thousands-of-nhs/
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/interserve-employee-data-breach/
“The data obtained included contact details, national insurance numbers, bank account details, and information about characteristics including ethnic origin, religion, disabilities, sexual orientation and health conditions.”
What a weird list. Some countries are listed individually, some others are just different variations of the same skin colour…
Definitely not. The government collects data on country of origin and that’s it. And I’m pretty sure that if an employer were to ask about your race that they’d be slapped with a lawsuit before they get to the end of the sentence.
Government collects anonymous data about ethnicity, religion and language you speak at home. It is for statistical purposes and providing financing and services, for instance education in a different language.
For employers I don’t think is illegal, but they don’t ask since gathering some data is presumed to have some purpose and nobody wants to be asked what is the purpose of asking about that.
No, they don’t collect data on race. The census asks if you or your parents were born abroad though.
I only ever was asked about this when I was at an English university.
No, not the government at least. I’ve never seen any employers do it either and I’m pretty sure that would be illegal. The only real metric the government and agencies sometimes (very seldomly) uses, are if you are an immigrant or have immigrants as parents.
We don’t even count our population. It’s just estimations on how many people live in our country. It’s probably not that far off, but at the same time, there have been some cases where cities have several tens of thousands more people than what has been estimated.
I dont think so. Employets certainly not. Census counts nationalities so there is that. But to be fair there are virtually no PoC in croatia anyway so…
No, never. It is illegal in Italy as well. Also the “race” concept applied to humans make no sense, we are all the same species. The whole “race classification” thing is an arbitrary scheme wirh no scientific justification whatsoever and I honestly hope our societies will eventually get rid of it.
I am not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the Central European countries you can claim any (reasonable) official nationality you want, so this would not make any sense.
Thank god we don’t. First and last time we did it was during Fascist Italy. Especially in 1938 with a census of the Jews. It was later used both by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to arrest, deport and persecute Jews.
Not employers. That would be terrifying. Census, yes, I’d expect relevant data to get collected, but in my lifetime there has never been a census in Ukraine, so what do I know.
I’m Crimean Tatar, since 2014, it has become a sometimes relevant information to getting help with accommodation, classes in Crimean Tatar etc. for fleeing people. I was accepted into a school specifically because it provided support for refugees and extra classes in Crimean Tatar language. But usually, no, I don’t report being of a minority. Why should I, Ukrainians can tell my ethnicity just by looking at my name and fortunately, they don’t give a damn. Because of the Crimean Tatar genocide and deportation, when someone tries to single out minorities, we tend to get very suspicious very fast.
And the list you provided is funny, I have no idea what the hell I am according to it.
In Germany, for obvious reasons, this is a delicate issue since people were literally killed based on perceived “race” 80 years ago.
The state does not collect a lot of statistical data in general and even that which is collected is not merged. Different parts of the administrative system (registration office, police, job center for example) generally don’t share what data they have and there is no central department to collect all of it. We literally don’t even know how many people live in this country. It’s all estimates.
I remember the 2002 census in Slovenia, when people literally came to your house and filled out lengthy forms by hand. “Race” is not really a thing in Central-Eastern Europe, but they definitely asked about ethnicity, citizenship, language and religion.
The 2011 and 2021 censuses were done from the registers and I think they didn’t include these data.
In the EU we have a lot of restriction regarding the collection of data about “race” as it is considered sensitive data by the GDPR Regulation 2016/679.
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/legal-grounds-processing-data/sensitive-data/what-personal-data-considered-sensitive_en
In the US you get even asked on the subscription form for a gym membership what “race” you are.
A typical question on all polls in Catalonia is how you identify nationally. Only Catalan, mostly Catalan, equally Catalan and Spanish, mostly Spanish, only Spanish.
I think this would be closer to what you are asking here.