Mixedness in a British context. The concept of ‘between two cultures’ which preceded the theory of marginality (see section 1.5.1) l has lingered in the minds of many people in a British context (Xxxxxx and Phoenix, 2002). Such a concept was recently revived in Britain as former chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx, remarked that people of mixed ethnicities are ‘potentially disadvantaged, potentially vulnerable to, “identity stripping” (with children growing up marooned between communities) (Song, 2007, p. 5). Song (ibid.) points out that such a view is ‘rather typical of how some analysts and policy makers conceive of the ‘mixed’ population in Britain’. What is more, the problematic nature of mixedness has also filtered through to vernacular discourse with the construction of negative terminology such as ‘half-caste’. I will focus on two aspects of research which have been conducted in the British arena relating to ‘mixed race’. Firstly, I will focus on the problem of conceptualising mixedness which stems from the basic ethnic/racial categorisations used in the 2001 and 2011 Census for England and Wales. Secondly, I will focus on some specific researchers, Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx (2002); Ifekwunigwe (1999); Xxx (2003); Xxxxxxxx (2008) and Xxxxxxxx and Song (2013), who have researched mixedness within the British arena.
