British African-Caribbean people

British African-Caribbean people
Distribution by local authority in the 2011 census
Total population
United Kingdom: 628,296 – 0.9% (2021/22 Census)
England: 619,419 – 1.1% (2021)[1]
Scotland: 2,214 – 0.04% (2022)[a][2]
Wales: 3,700 – 0.1% (2021)[1]
Northern Ireland: 2,963 – 0.2% (2021)[b][3]
Regions with significant populations
Languages
British English · Caribbean English
Religion
Predominantly Christianity (69.1%);
minority follows other faiths (2.7%)[c] or are irreligious (18.6%)
2021 census, England and Wales only[4]
Related ethnic groups
African diaspora · African-Caribbean · Bahamian British · British Jamaicans · Guyanese British · Barbadian British · Grenadian British · Montserratian British · Trinidadian and Tobagonian British · Antiguan British

British African-Caribbean people or British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom.[5] They are British citizens or residents of recent Caribbean heritage who further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa. This includes multi-racial Afro-Caribbean people.

The earliest generations of Afro-Caribbean people to migrate to Britain trace their ancestry to a wide range of Afro-Caribbean ethnic groups,[6][7][8] who themselves descend from the disparate African ethnic groups transported to the colonial Caribbean as part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.[9][10][11] British African Caribbeans may also have ancestry from European and Asian settlers, as well as from various Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean.[12][13][14] The population includes those with origins in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, Belize, and elsewhere.

Arriving in port cities in small numbers across England and Wales since the mid-18th century, the most significant wave of migration came after World War II, coinciding with the decolonisation era and the dissolution of the British Empire. The governments of the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands promoted immigration to address domestic labour shortages.[15] Known as the Windrush generation, they had arrived as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKCs) in the 1950s and 1960s, owing to birth in the former British colonies of the Caribbean[16]. Those who settled in the UK prior to 1973 were granted either right of abode or indefinite leave to remain by the Immigration Act 1971, although a series of governmental policies in the 2000s and 2010s erroneously treated some as unlawfully residing in the UK. This subsequently became known as the Windrush scandal.[17]

In the 21st century, Afro-Caribbean communities are present throughout the United Kingdom's major cities. As there is no specific UK census category which comprehensively covers the community, population numbers remain somewhat ambiguous. According to the 2011 United Kingdom census, 594,825 Britons identified as "Black Caribbean" and 426,715 identified as "Mixed: White and Black Caribbean". Categories for other Caribbean heritages also exist.[18][19] Due to the complexities within African Caribbean peoplehood, some of those with a parent or grandparent of African-Caribbean ancestry may identify with, or be perceived as, white people in the United Kingdom.[d]

  1. ^ a b "Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
  2. ^ "Scotland's Census 2022 - Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion - Chart data". Scotland's Census. National Records of Scotland. 21 May 2024. Retrieved 21 May 2024. Alternative URL 'Search data by location' > 'All of Scotland' > 'Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion' > 'Ethnic Group'
  3. ^ "MS-B01: Ethnic group". Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. 22 September 2022. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  4. ^ "RM031 Ethnic group by religion". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
  5. ^ "List of ethnic groups". Ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  6. ^ Archives, The National. "The National Archives - Homepage". The National Archives. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  7. ^ "Windrush generation: Who are they and why are they facing problems?". BBC News. 24 November 2021. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  8. ^ "Forty-and-one years on: An overview of Afro-Caribbean migration to the United Kingdom" (PDF). Warwick University. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  9. ^ Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia (20 September 2019). "When the Slave Traders Were African". Wsj.com. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  10. ^ Kevin Sieff (30 January 2018) [2018-01-29]. "An African country reckons with its history of selling slaves". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference bbcjuly2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Derbyshire2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ a b Murray, Tanda; Beaty, Terri H.; Mathias, Rasika A.; Rafaels, Nicholas; Grant, Audrey Virginia; Faruque, Mezbah U.; Watson, Harold R.; Ruczinski, Ingo; Dunston, Georgia M.; Barnes, Kathleen C. (2010). "African and non-African admixture components in African Americans and an African Caribbean population". Genetic Epidemiology. 34 (6): 561–568. doi:10.1002/gepi.20512. PMC 3837693. PMID 20717976.
  14. ^ Parra, E. J.; Kittles, R. A.; Shriver, M. D. (November 2004). "Implications of correlations between skin color and genetic ancestry for biomedical research". Nature Genetics. 36 (11): S54 – S60. doi:10.1038/ng1440. ISSN 1546-1718. PMID 15508005. S2CID 13712615.
  15. ^ Cousins, Emily (8 June 2010). "The Notting Hill Riots (1958) •". Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  16. ^ Abbott, Diane (22 June 2025). "The Windrush generations were proudly British. Yet immigrants are still fighting to be seen that way". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 August 2025.
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference windrushreport2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference ONSdetailed was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference ONSwrite-in was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference davison2017-2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference goody2009-2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference graham2015-2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sawyer2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference McRae2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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