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Socio-cultural and ethnic origin can be a powerful predictor of social attitudes and behaviours but, unlike the situation in the classical countries of immigration such as Australia, Canada and the USA, there is no standard measure in Europe for measuring ethnic background. The paper reports a new measure and classification, developed for the ESS and trialled in the ESS wave 7 (2014/2015). It describes the underlying theoretical concepts, structure and classification criteria and reports a range of substantive findings. The paper shows that the new measure of ethnic origins has both criterion and predictive validity: it predicts whether respondents identify themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority and whether they feel that theirs is a group which is discriminated against. It also predicts strength of national identity and attitudes towards immigration. A particular strength of the new measure is that it identifies both indigenous and (sub)national minorities as well those with a migration background. The paper shows that in some countries subnational minorities are quite distinctive, for example in their feelings of being discriminated against and in their low levels of national attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing ethnic diversity of the UK has been mirrored by growing public awareness of multicultural issues, alongside developments in academic and government thinking. This paper explores the contested meanings around ethnic identity/ies in community settings, drawing on semi-structured interviews with staff from Children's Centres and allied agencies conducted for a research project that examined the relationship between identity and the participation of parents/carers in services in northeast England. The research found that respondents were unclear about, especially, white ethnic identities, and commonly referred to other social categorizations, such as age, nationality, and circumstances such as mobility, when discussing service users. While in some cases this may have reflected legitimate attempts to resist over-ethnicizing non-ethnic phenomena, such constructions coexisted with assumptions about ethnic difference and how it might translate into service needs. These findings raise important considerations for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds hold attitudes, values and beliefs surrounding health, illness and mental health issues that are not fully in harmony with Western approaches to health care. In particular, mental health services do not adequately meet the specific needs of CALD communities, a situation that is a violation of sound health care access and rights. A number of damning government reports highlight the inadequacies of the system. CALD groups that experience mental illness have the problem of dual vulnerabilities. They are disadvantaged on at least two fronts: The marginalization and stigmatization associated with mental illness and the access and utilization of services. This paper reviews the context of mental health service delivery in Australia. There is agreement that the needs of these people are only marginally being met at best despite individual and collective efforts to address the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass media have long been seen as an important mechanism in constructing and brokering relations between host and immigrant minorities. Their role has typically been portrayed as endorsing, if not, initiating racist imagery. New Zealand significantly altered its recruitment of immigrants in terms of source countries in 1986-87. The resulting superdiversity presents new challenges for the mainstream media. In the early phase of this recently enhanced cultural diversity, the mass media (here represented by the print media) contributed to a publically articulated racialisation. However, the growing engagement (embeddedness) of the media workers in the reality of this enhanced diversity was subsequently reflected in more nuanced and sympathetic reporting after 2000, thereby confounding classic approaches which stress the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of immigrants by the mass media. There remain important exceptions to this shift towards a broadly sympathetic representation of immigrants by the media; there is evidence of ongoing racist 'Othering' in news reporting and by particular journalists. This paper argues that there is evidence of a recent and partial transformation in the nature of media discourses concerning immigrants and immigration in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]