Estimating commuting flows for minority ethnic groups in England and Wales

Various studies have pointed to the persistent labour market disadvantage faced by many individuals from minority ethnic groups in Great Britain. Analyses have also shown that minority ethnic groups remain spatially concentrated in particular parts of the urban and regional system, and that they are over-represented in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. There has been considerable debate about the skills and spatial dimensions to labour market mismatch, and minority ethnic issues have been given particular prominence in the work of the Social Exclusion Unit and Policy Action Teams. However, analysts in Great Britain examining the ethnic minority dimension to the problem of labour market mismatch are hampered by a lack of data, including detailed local information on journey-to-work flows disaggregated by ethnic group. This article is concerned with estimating commuting flows by ethnic group in England and Wales, and using these estimates to examine commuting patterns by ethnic group in 1991 in the context of employment change over the preceding inter-censal period, in order to provide some insights into labour market mismatch