Mobility and Representation: Legislators of Non-European Origin in the British House of Commons, 2001–2015

While the share of immigrants as apercentage of theUKpopulationhas increased steadily since the 1950s, it was not until the early 2000s that the descriptive representation of such new citizens in the House of Commons became more proportional. Focusing on Members of Parliament with a “Black or Asian Minority Ethnic” background in the three Parliaments between 2001 and 2015, we examine the extent to which these legislators’ parliamentary behaviour was influenced by their partymembership, legislative experience, “immigrant generation” and constituency demographics. Based conceptually on a sociological “mobilities” framework and Fenno’s work on “Home Styles” in the US Congress, we perform a dictionary-based content analysis of over 23,000 parliamentary questions for written answer. Comparing first-generation immigrants and the immediate descendants of such immigrants, we find that the content of questions reflects a relatively strong concern for transnational mobility amongst the former and a stronger focus on questions of social mobility in the UK in the latter group. Having been the origin of significant levels of emigration to non-European destinations in previous centuries, European states have become the destinations for large-scale immigration from non-European societies since the Second World War. Great Britain is a case in point: the number of foreign-born residents – socalled “first-generation immigrants” – in England and Wales nearly quadrupled from approximately 1.9 million (4.5 per cent of the “usually resident” population) in 1951, the first census after the Second World War, to around 7.5 million (13 per cent of the population) in the latest census of 2011.1 While the arrival of a large number of people with transnational biographies is not extraordinary, Great Britain differs frommany other European countries in one crucial respect: most of its early post-war immigrants arrived from Commonwealth States and therefore had full citizenship rights on arrival, including voting rights and the right to stand for 1 Office for National Statistics. Non-UK Born Population of England and Wales Quadrupled Between 1951 and 2011 (17 Dec. 2013), in: Census Analysis, Immigration Patterns of Non-UK Born Populations in England and Wales in 2011. URL: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011census-analysis/immigration-patterns-and-characteristics-of-non-uk-born-population-groups-inengland-and-wales/summary.html (13 June 2015). 84 | Lucas Geese, Wolfgang Goldbach and Thomas Saalfeld election. Nevertheless, it was not until 1987 that the first four Members of Parliament (MPs) claiming a “Black or AsianMinority Ethnic” (BAME) backgroundwere elected to the House of Commons. At the time this “Gang of Four”2, all members of the Labour Party, constituted approximately 0.6 per cent of all MPs. When the Commons met for the first time after the general election of 2015, this share had increased approximately tenfold to some 6 per cent of all 650 Members (Table 1). Despite this increase in “descriptive representation” (see below), the political underrepresentation of BAME groups in the United Kingdom continues, as is the case in other liberal democracies. The present study seeks to explore aspects of, and differences among, the behaviour of MPs with a BAME background in the Parliaments elected in 2001, 2005 and 2010 (i.e. between June 2001 andMay 2015). Empirically our study is based on the content of parliamentary questions for written answer, which many MPs generate in large numbers. They will serve as indicators of the issues MPs promote in the chamber, or emphasise in their oversight activities vis-à-vis the government. Our aim is to highlight variations within the group of BAMEMPs rather than focusing on similarities and differences between this group and MPs of European descent. Therefore we are not comparing MPs with a BAME background to MPs without such a background. This shifts the analytic focus to some biographical factors such as “immigrant generation” or parliamentary experience on the one hand and elements of the political opportunity structure in which the BAME MPs operate on the other (e.g. MP’s party membership or socio-demographic composition of the electoral district). The emphasis of this study is not on single legislators and their individual life stories but on a few group characteristics that will be used for exploratory statistical analyses. The advantage is greater generalisability, the drawback is a loss in biographical granularity. Our data is far from carefully reconstructing the life-courses especially of the “first generation” of non-European immigrants in the House of Commons.3 Nevertheless, it carries some key information on the personal experiences, political preferences and structural factors empowering or constraining BAME MPs, which have been found to be significant influences on parliamentary behaviour: This includes the fundamental distinction whether the MPs are immigrants themselves, or whether they are the sons or daughters of immigrants, as the latter often display weaker affective ties to their ancestral “home2 These were Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Keith Vaz. 3 Some data connecting the politicians’ biography in their home countries with their career in their countries of residence will become available for the United Kingdom and seven other European countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) in 2017 when “PATHWAYS” (www.pathways.eu) a large comparative research project delivers some more finely granulated data on personal backgrounds. Mobility and Representation | 85 lands” than their parents.4 We also use information about the party an MP represents. After all, political parties are the primary contexts of political socialisation, provide and constrain opportunities for political careers and select thosewho represent them in Parliament. Not least, our exogenous variables include the context of electoral competition and the type of demands directed at MPs, which is partially shaped by the socio-demographic makeup of their constituencies.5 Compared to other studies in this volume, we find that the institutions in the new country of residence constitute very powerful constraints creating strong incentives for MPs with a BAME background to maintain a clear local or national focus. Although we may discover traces of “rooted cosmopolitanism”6 in the parliamentary speeches of minority MPs with a BAME background, they clearly constitute a contrast to the artists, bankers and other groups analysed in this volume where ambiguitymay, on occasion, have been an asset. Caseswhere British BAME MPs overtly or covertly represent the interests of ethnically related foreigners or receive foreign donations from such countries are highly exceptional and may be drawn to the attention of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.7 Migration, Representation and Mobilities The present study is in the tradition of work that treats the migratory and ethnic background of MPs as consequential for their behaviour in the legislature, in 4 The importance of the difference especially between immigrants and the “second generation” of their descendants is well documented in sociological and historical research. In sociology, see Richard Alba and Victor Nee (eds.): Remaking the American Mainstream. Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA 2005; Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut: Immigrant America. A Portrait. Oakland, CA 42014. In historical research, see, amongstmany others, Eric L. Goldstein: The Great Wave. Eastern European Jewish Immigration to the United States, 1880–1924, in: Marc Lee Raphael (ed.): The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America. New York 2005, 70–92. 5 Regarding the last two variables, see, for example, Thomas Saalfeld: Parliamentary Questions as Instruments of Substantive Representation. Visible Minorities in the UK House of Commons, 2005–10, in: Journal of Legislative Studies 17 (2011), 271–289. 6 Sidney Tarrow: Rooted Cosmopolitans and Transnational Activists, in: id. (ed.): Strangers at the Gates. Movements and States in Contentious Politics. Cambridge 2012, 181–199. 7 See, for example, Emily Dugan: Keith Vaz Reported to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over Lobbying Visa Officials for Controversial Cricketing Tycoon, in: Independent (25 July 2015), URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keith-vaz-reported-to-parlia mentary-standards-commissioner-over-lobbying-visa-officials-for-controversial-cricketing-tycoon10303541.html (7 Aug. 2015). 86 | Lucas Geese, Wolfgang Goldbach and Thomas Saalfeld their electoral district or vis-à-vis the wider attentive public.8 MPs of immigrant origin bring an element of strong “mobility”9 to deliberations in the chamber. This experience of mobility – or “motility” as outlined in the introduction to this volume – affects BAME legislators in the House of Commons in at least two ways: First, immigrant MPs have personally experienced “horizontal” trans-border mobility, involving the arrival in anewsocial, economic andpolitical environment. In this context they often had to overcome “historical political subordination” (e.g. as residents of former British colonies), “low de facto legitimacy”10 and possibly discrimination – not only in the work place, but also within organisations such as political parties or trade unions.11 If their background matters at all to their political attitudes and behaviour, they face a complex task once they stand for elected office: they are only likely to get selected as candidates by their parties and elected by a plurality of the voters in their respective districts, if they can claim to represent all residents of their locally defined constituencies. This leads to different strategic options for “handling” their ethnicity: at one end of a representational continuum they may have incentives to suppress their own background;12 at the other