Perspectives on the adaptations of immigrants in Britain

Lessard-Phillips, Laurence (2018). Perspectives on the adaptations of immigrants in Britain. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852602

The adaptation of immigrants (the immigrants' long-term integration into British society, and British society's response to it) has become an important topic of academic inquiry and debate among policy makers and the general public. Yet there is little systematic research or unified understanding of this process within and across these different arenas. This project aims to investigate the commonalities and differences in the various perceptions and understandings of adaptation and try to reconnect them. This will be done by using an original research design that will examine: the multidimensionality of immigrant adaptation in British academia (via a meta-analysis of the current literature and quantitative analysis of secondary data). Which will be contrasted with the subjective understandings and perceptions of adaptation in Britain among: - policy makers and third-sector stakeholders (via an analysis of policy documents and interviews) - minority and majority groups among the British population (via focus groups). This project will seek an active involvement by academic and non-academic audiences. It will provide a thorough and updated understanding of immigrant adaptation and its dimensionality in Britain, reaching beyond academic and policy circles, with the aim to build a solid evidence base for future research and policy.

Data description (abstract)

This data collection stems from work directly arising out of the project 'Unity out of Diversity? Perspectives on the adaptations of immigrants in Britain'. The main aim of the project was to examine perceptions of adaptation in academic, policy, and public spheres. The research generated new data in the form of: (1) focus groups conducted in Manchester and Glasgow between November 2014 and September 2015; (2) interviews with local and national 'policy stakeholders' conducted between January 2015 and September 2016. This data collection provides access to this new data and related documentation. The research also used existing data from various sources: (a) Existing surveys available via the UK Data Service such as: (1) Ethnic Minority British Election Study; (2) Citizenship Survey; and (3) Understanding Society. This data collection provides scripts that showed how the data was transformed for analysis. (b) Textual data from journal article abstracts; newspaper articles; and Hansard debates. This data collection provides details of the methodology used to extract such data. (c) Online survey data from a related project funded by the British Academy, where Dr Lessard-Phillips was a co-applicant (PI: Dr Maria Sobolewska). This data collection provides a replication dataset and related documentation.

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