nfpPublic Minority Ethnic Lead, Leiyuan Tian, writes:
Over the years, charities have become better at working with minoritised ethnic communities in the UK. What we are still often missing is that these diverse communities are anything but homogenous and they are evolving faster than the language used to describe them.
As we prepare to launch this year's nfpPublic Minority Ethnic research, I've been thinking about my own experience as a Chinese migrant in the UK. I came to London to study my master's and stayed on to work. On paper, I'm one of those who tick the 'Chinese' box in a survey question about ethnicity. In reality, I find myself navigating different identities and communities, many of which I don't feel personally connected to or comfortable claiming.
One place where this diversity manifests is London's Chinatown. When I visit some of the oldest businesses there, I sometimes feel like I've entered an alternate universe. Some grocery stores sell goods that look so nostalgic that they could well be from 1950s Hong Kong. Karaoke machines have the most popular songs from my parents' generation on the front page. Restaurants serve Chinese takeaway dishes that I've not seen or tasted before. There, versions of the past were kept and evolved in a different time and space, creating a spectacle that feels both familiar and strange to me.
Moreover, the different communities here who are classified as ethnically Chinese are diverse from the start: the heritages they carry come from different places and cultures that have also changed over time. In Chinatown, you can often hear Cantonese being spoken, as many of the restaurants are run by migrants originally from Hong Kong. Meanwhile, in many of the newer Asian supermarkets, you are more likely to hear Mandarin being spoken by mostly mainland Chinese, many of whom came to the UK more recently, like me.
Without going into the depths of sociological theories of migration, one can already imagine how these generational and community dynamics have been shaping the ways in which different Chinese or Chinese British individuals engage with civil society. For example, older generations might prefer causes related to their Chinese heritage while British-born Chinese tend to engage more with mainstream British organisations, as this 2019 report by the Chinese Welfare Trust suggests. This difference is probably unsurprising – I can imagine people born and raised here growing up seeing charity adverts and taking part in school fundraising events every year. Supporting mainstream charities becomes part of their socialisation process from a young age and brand loyalty is built through such continuous exposure and engagement.
As a recent migrant, my story with charities looks different. Growing up in China, I remember participating in school-organised giving that was usually a one-off response to crises or emergencies, which felt closer to crowdfunding than raising money for intermediary organisations. When I moved here, my first points of contact with UK charities were at university: a resources leaflet where names like Samaritans and Turn2Us came up and a volunteering fair where many who first arrived as students like me started engaging with charities. Since volunteering is seen as a way to gain work experience and get to know British society better, many of us feel more motivated to give our time than money (especially on a tight student budget). That said, engagement at the student stage might turn into giving once we enter the workforce: having volunteered at a food hub, I set up my first direct debit to a food charity the year I started earning my salary in pounds.
It is thus safe to say that treating "the Chinese community" as a homogenous or static group completely overlooks the evolving needs and wants of different audiences within this categorisation. I also don't think this is unique to Chinese and Chinese British communities. Every minoritised ethnic community in the UK tells a version of this story: different waves and generations, different dreams and aspirations, different understandings of who they are and where they belong, different relationships to charitable causes and civil society.
This is why we need research that keeps up and tracks changes over time, rather than research that captures a single snapshot and assumes it'll still hold true years later. As an important part of UK society, minoritised ethnic communities remain under-researched and under-served by charities and civil society organisations. Without genuine and continuous efforts to understand their evolving role in society, organisations risk building their work on assumptions and further reinforcing existing inequalities.
At nfpResearch, I've been working with my colleague Bijal on improving our approach to researching minoritised ethnic audiences. This year, we are moving from one aggregated non-White sample to two dedicated samples: Asian/Asian British and Asian Mixed communities and Black/Black British and Black Mixed communities. We will report results separately and explore community dynamics within each sample, while investing in sample quality to reach the people usually missed in fieldwork. We also offer interview options for organisations who would like a qualitative deep dive into these communities, to develop actionable insights grounded in lived experiences.
If you'd like to find out more or discuss whether this research is right for your organisation, please get in touch.