How diverse is London compared to major North American cities? (living in, move)

[smool]

Originally Posted by A.J240

That's not very suprising, as NYC, Toronto, London are largest cities in their respective countries. I can't think of one other citiy in England that feels as global and interantional as London(it is our major city), though there are other multicultural cities. I imagine this is true for other nations.


OP: I think NYC and London are on par with one another, but are diverse in slightly different ways. NYC for example has far more people from Latin America, which, at least in my experience, is quite rare to find in London, In fact I've never met anyone from Latin America. London, I believe, has much more diverse mix of Europeans(especailly from the East)than NYC due to closer proximity and membership in the EU. NYC has a more heavy present of Jews, it felt like I saw more them than I'm used to seeing here in London. London I believe has more muslims, particularly from South Asia, more Hindu's aswell. Though, East Asians are much more common in NYC. Africans and blacks from the Carribeans are defintely more plentiful in London, I think most blacks in NYC are American, but I could be wrong on that one.

Very interesting topic, OP.

Yep btw Latin Americans are one of the fastest growing groups and formed one of the largest ever waves of immigration back in the early noughties. At one point estimates of the Brazilian population alone went up to 160,000, with the ones for the Colombians coming in at 60,000. Since then most have headed home again or moved away from London - the population is now officially 115,000 but more realistically 150,000.

[smool]

Originally Posted by RudyOD

I stand corrected then. Thanks for filling that void in my knowledge. Would be interesting to read more about the early history of international immigration to London. I think everyone is well aware that the British managed to colonize many continents, but not so well aware that it was receiving migrants from all of those continents as well. I wonder if something similar happened in Lisboa or Madrid, or why London was attractive and not those places.

Age of Empires and all that. Basically Europe has been migrating amongst its countries for millennia due to the wars, changing boundaries etc, but also receiving large migrations from outside the continent - the trading Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, then the attacking Arabs who ruled southern Europe for 800 years and the Turks for 400 years. There were also the Huns (read: the remnants of the vanquished Han dynasty from China), the Mongols (who got as far as Vienna) and the Persians. Throw in the wandering tribes from Indian Romani to the Jews for the past thousand years too, and of course the Silk Route traders. The legacy is why Europeans look the way they do with a multitude of dark hair and eyes in the south but also the north (eg the Celts), why there are 60 million Muslims who live in Europe.

Then came more recently the ages of exploration and colonialism (for example one third of all British men in the Raj took Indian wives), then today's postcolonialism and globalisation.

The unsaid thing is these successive waves were 'absorbed' through intermarriage or a century or two of isolationism. For example the multicultural London at the end of the Victorian times had reverted to it's most 'native' by the 1920s, which was overwhelmingly White and supposedly British (many famous high society icons of the era quietly hid their roots, for example the richest family, the Sasoons - originally hailing from Iraq - to Churchill's Native American grandmother, to the Jewish 'habit' of renouncing their faith with each new generation). By the early 1930s however immigrants began arriving again as fascism spread refugees across Europe. Then by the 1950s after the tumult of war London looked very 'native' yet again, having absorbed it's southern Europeans, East Europeans and Jews with a penchant for anglicising their names- but then the Empire citizens began arriving.

All this history results today in a pretty polyglot population, and why native Britons and many Europeans have so much mixed DNA:

[RudyOD]

Originally Posted by mraza9

NYC is no slouch in the South Asian department either; 2010 census put the number at 730,000 and 300,000 in the metro/city respectively. Also like London, but different than the rest of the States; Bangladeshis and Pakistanis comprise a very significant portion of the SA population; wherein most other places in the USA are overwhelmingly Indian with a much smaller Pakistani minority. Also recent analysis puts NYC proper Muslim estimates between 600,000 to 800,000; smaller than London's 1 million (per 2011 census) but not THAT large of a disparity.

Overall, London and NYC are the two most diverse regions of the world.

If we are talking regions, Greater LA and the Bay Area are easily up there as equals with London and NYC. You can add Sao Paulo and Toronto to that list, though they both most likely fall below London, NYC, Greater L.A. and SF Bay.

[RudyOD]

Originally Posted by smool

Age of Empires and all that. Basically Europe has been migrating amongst its countries for millennia due to the wars, changing boundaries etc, but also receiving large migrations from outside the continent - the trading Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, then the attacking Arabs who ruled southern Europe for 800 years and the Turks for 400 years. There were also the Huns (read: the remnants of the vanquished Han dynasty from China), the Mongols (who got as far as Vienna) and the Persians. Throw in the wandering tribes from Indian Romani to the Jews for the past thousand years too, and of course the Silk Route traders. The legacy is why Europeans look the way they do with a multitude of dark hair and eyes in the south but also the north (eg the Celts), why there are 60 million Muslims who live in Europe.

Then came more recently the ages of exploration and colonialism (for example one third of all British men in the Raj took Indian wives), then today's postcolonialism and globalisation.

The unsaid thing is these successive waves were 'absorbed' through intermarriage or a century or two of isolationism. For example the multicultural London at the end of the Victorian times had reverted to it's most 'native' by the 1920s, which was overwhelmingly White and supposedly British (many famous high society icons of the era quietly hid their roots, for example the richest family, the Sasoons - originally hailing from Iraq - to Churchill's Native American grandmother, to the Jewish 'habit' of renouncing their faith with each new generation). By the early 1930s however immigrants began arriving again as fascism spread refugees across Europe. Then by the 1950s after the tumult of war London looked very 'native' yet again, having absorbed it's southern Europeans, East Europeans and Jews with a penchant for anglicising their names- but then the Empire citizens began arriving.

All this history results today in a pretty polyglot population, and why native Britons and many Europeans have so much mixed DNA:

Hrm. That reminds me of the way Mexico has integrated its diverse roots, a little like Brazil, but different...and definitely not like the U.S. Most Mexicans are assume to be a mix of Spanish and Indigenous, but the reality is that the country has also receive waves of immigrants from the Middle East, Asia...as well as smaller groups of Africans, both through the slave trade and from the U.S. as refugees (freed men and women.) These groups have been pretty much absorbed into the general population though, as ethnic enclaves in Mexico are rare, and immigrants have tended to scatter and marry with locals. Also, they would adopt Spanish names and change their last names to sound more Hispanic. Which isn't too different from what happened in Britain. There are exceptions, like the Koreans, who instead of integrating with Mexico's mainstream mestizo populace, ended up migrating to the Yucatan peninsula, learning Mayan -not Spanish-, and intermarrying with the indigenous of that region.

All in all, both Britain and Mexico are examples of how when people immigrate, on average, they tend to take on the cultural customs of the locals and soon become as local as the locals. There are major exceptions of course (like the colonization of the Americas, which just about wiped out Native Americans).

[bballniket]

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London is very multicultural/ racially-diverse and that United Nations feeling is really there. You regularly encounter people from all corners of Europe and encounter Black people from all different countries of Africa. Then of course the Asian communities and they have expats from all over the world. When I visited Toronto, it felt similar in the racial sense.

US cities excluding NYC feel different to me- they just don't feel "international" in the same way London or even Toronto do.

Have you been to the western suburban counties outside of DC (in particular Montgomery/Fairfax counties)? I feel like outside of Toronto/NYC, they have the most pan-international/cosmopolitan vibe that you find in London. Taken together, they're only like 31% foreign born out of a population of ~2.2 million, but the mix of nationalities is really mind-blowing. Of course, the area is suburban, so it doesn't feel quite as intense.

[Noggin of Rum]

Statistics aside, as to how the city feels (for what it's worth) London nowadays has more of a mile high club international jetset feel about it than New York. On balance, there's less feel of diversity outside of the professional white collar domain in central London.

[King of Kensington]

Leading countries of birth in London, 2001 and 2011:

London's population by country of birth | Poverty Indicators | London's Poverty Report

[King of Kensington]

57% of births in London were to foreign born mothers. After the UK, Poland is the most common country of birth.

57 per cent of new babies in London have mothers born abroad - London - News - London Evening Standard

[Spillip]

I just need to correct some major inaccuracies here:

Originally Posted by smool

In terms of Hispanics NYC always had more, but now the roles are reversing as they move out to the suburbs in NYC while the largest waves of immigration yet seen in the UK came from Latin America during the noughties (Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador etc increased the population four-fold within a decade).

Ambiguous phrasing, but obviously the population of London didn't increase four-fold in the noughties. You probably meant that the South American population increased four-fold, which, whether true or not, was not the largest wave of immigration in the UK has ever seen. It wasn't even the biggest wave in the noughties.

AS for the Europeans they come and go in huge waves, 400,000 French by the mid noughties, Poles reaching their peak at 500,000 but now a fraction of that, 300,000 Greek speakers at their height etc.

They come more than they go. At no point has any European population declined in number from any year to any other year in the past decade, except white British and white Irish. So all the populations you mentioned are currently 'peaking' at present, and will continue to be at a 'record high' every single minute of every day for the foreseeable future.

As thousands of EU expansion workers headed home after the economic downturn in 2009 new waves are now arriving with the recent upturn, notably from the new member states.

Incorrect. New member states (with the exception of Romania and Bulgaria) are fairly stable in their immigration levels, and have been for some time. The greatest recent waves of EU immigration have been from Western European original EU states.

The European population is the largest, but also the most transient and hard to record, not just from movement but by registering as 'White British'.

Eastern Europeans tend to have an ethnic, not civic, concept of nationality, so basically none would consider themselves 'White British'. The number of 'white other' newborns registered in 2010 corresponds very closely with the number of EU mothers (minor discrepancies likely mirror the fact that 1) some UK born mothers may consider themselves and their children 'white other' and 2) some EU-born mothers are ethnically white British, born to white British service personnel, usually in Germany).

Age of Empires and all that. Basically Europe has been migrating amongst its countries for millennia due to the wars, changing boundaries etc, but also receiving large migrations from outside the continent - the trading Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, then the attacking Arabs who ruled southern Europe for 800 years and the Turks for 400 years.

Essentially everything relevant to the genetic make-up of modern Europeans occurred prehistorically. None of the above empires or invasions have left a discernible mark on Europe.

There were also the Huns (read: the remnants of the vanquished Han dynasty from China), the Mongols (who got as far as Vienna) and the Persians. Throw in the wandering tribes from Indian Romani to the Jews for the past thousand years too, and of course the Silk Route traders. The legacy is why Europeans look the way they do with a multitude of dark hair and eyes in the south but also the north (eg the Celts), why there are 60 million Muslims who live in Europe.

Again, incorrect. Even ethnic Romanians lack any trace of Roma admixture. There's no East Asian genetic material west of Hungary, and even there it's only around 1.5-2% (some/most/all of which is likely prehistoric and unrelated to the Huns, Mongols etc.). Likewise, the gene flow was almost exclusively from Europeans to Jews, and not from Jews to Europeans.

Then came more recently the ages of exploration and colonialism (for example one third of all British men in the Raj took Indian wives), then today's postcolonialism and globalisation.

Not even a correct statistic, but none of the hundreds of Britons whose genomes I've seen analysed competently had any S. Asian ancestry, with the exception of one British-Australian, who was around 2% Indian.

The unsaid thing is these successive waves were 'absorbed' through intermarriage or a century or two of isolationism.

It's not really 'unsaid', though, is it? In fact, it's been said so much that I almost believed it myself, until I saw hundreds upon hundreds of British and other European genetic results that essentially showed there was no outside contribution of genes to Europe in the last two or so thousand years.

For example the multicultural London at the end of the Victorian times had reverted to it's most 'native' by the 1920s, which was overwhelmingly White and supposedly British (many famous high society icons of the era quietly hid their roots, for example the richest family, the Sasoons - originally hailing from Iraq - to Churchill's Native American grandmother, to the Jewish 'habit' of renouncing their faith with each new generation).

It wasn't very multicultural in Victorian times. It was pretty much just ethnic Britons, ethnic Irish, and ethnic Jews (who were obviously concentrated in Whitechapel). Again, I myself assumed London had long been a mixed city, until I 1) completed a fair few family trees of Londoners, and 2) saw the genetic results of a fair few Londoners. Churchill didn't have a Native American grandmother.

All this history results today in a pretty polyglot population, and why native Britons and many Europeans have so much mixed DNA:

Nope. That documentary used the garbage AncestryByDNA test, which had error margins of up to 15% (the same morons 'discovered' that Italians were around 13% Amerindian), because they 1) used AIMs, which are pretty useless, and 2) only used a few hundred AIMs anyway, compared to the ~500,000 SNPs (SNPs are better than AIMs) most companies use today. The documentary was shot in 2006, when there simply wasn't anything better available. The only reason it even got greenlit was that they knew the test was faulty enough to give them inaccurate results they could easily politicise. The same documentary wouldn't be made today, obviously, because the results would backfire, showing Britons to be among the least admixed world populations, and this would cause copious SJW butthurt.

[olgabolga]

Originally Posted by smool

I imagine linguistically London would be higher than NYC due to the higher amount of Indians and Africans, which are the most diverse parts of the planet (the two biggest communities of the city - the Nigerians speak 520 languages, the Indians up to 700). About 15 years ago they bandied around a 300 languages figure - but that was just a school in South London.

The unsaid thing with 'White British' is that it doesnt really count ancestry. For example one third claim Irish ancestry, but don't on the census, where it falls dramatically. Studies show huge amounts (up to half), and often overlapping have French or Jewish ancestry too. Likewise in much more recent times anyone whose parents are from Iraq through to Australia can tick 'White British', and often do in far larger numbers than in other countries.

Lastly London doesn't really take into account the EU diversity - the freedom of travel and right of abode means the biggest waves of migration these days are now White (notably from Romania, Bulgaria), as happened in the 1990s and 2004 with East European expansion, and unrecorded.

Colour of skin is not the be all and end all of diversity, I think the US needs to remember that.

London has less linguistic diversity than NYC, which has 800 languages spoken.

Race is a broad way of determining ethnic diversity - if your society has people from Africa (black), Asia, Latin America, etc, it's almost certainly more diverse than a society with only one or two broad racial elements.