Ethnicity Map of UK: West Midlands
The West Midlands is the second most ethnically diverse region after London, with big Asian communities in and around Birmingham, England's second largest city. Here, one in five people is Asian. Overall, 13.9% of people in the West Midlands describe themselves as coming from an ethnic minority group.
Nearly 5.3 million people lived in the West Midlands at the time of the 2001 census and just under a million of those lived in Birmingham.
Wolverhampton is the next most ethnically diverse area in the West Midlands after Birmingham. There is a fairly equal number of Indians and Pakistanis in the Asian group in the West Midlands, but In Birmingham there are two Pakistanis for every one Indian, whereas in Wolverhampton the ratio is 10 Indians for every one Pakistani. All in, over 16 per cent of all of Britain's Asian population lives in the West Midlands.
Mike Skinner of The Streets is from Birmingham
Birmingham and Wolverhampton's Black populations are also well above the average, but whereas in London there are now almost as many Black Africans as there are people of Black Caribbean origin, Caribbean still dominates in the West Midlands.
To the north of the West Midlands ethnic diversity tails off, with only 0.7% of the Staffordshire Moorlands population coming from a minority group.
West Midlands in numbers
Out of every 1,000 people:
- 861 are White British
- 73 are Asian
- 26 are White non-British
- 20 are Black
- 14 are of mixed race
- 3 are Chinese
Focus on... Coventry
Coventry has a large Indian population, most of whom are Sikhs, originating from the Punjab in northern India. They make up around 5% of the city's total population of 300,000. It also has an Irish population of about 10,000 – three times the national average. Many Irish people came to Coventry to escape from the potato famine in the 19th century.
Sources: Office for National Statistics, Commission for Racial Equality
