Academic study to explore religious discrimination in England and Wales

The £400,000 academic study will be led by the University of Derby over three years to investigate how attitudes and experiences of different religious and non-religious groups in England and Wales have evolved since 1999.

Derby has secured funding from the Religion and Society programme, which contributes to the multi-disciplinary Global Uncertainties Research Councils UK Programme.

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, and will include academics from the University of Oxford and the University of Manchester.

The study will build on previous research led by Derby and commissioned by the Home Office in 1999, which found evidence of unfair treatment especially in education, employment and media, particularly as reported by Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus.

Paul Weller, Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Derby, headed the original project and report and will be the principal investigator for the new study.

He said the new project would consider legal and policy developments on religion and human rights in which the category of ‘religious discrimination’ has become more widely accepted, while modified by reference to ‘belief’ and an emerging policy focus on shared values, social cohesion and 'Britishness'.

It will also take into account the ‘social policy shock’ of the 7/7 London bombings and their impact on the discourses, policies and practices of ‘multi-culturalism’, and consider the effects on these issues of the ‘preventing violent extremism’ initiatives to counter the threat of religiously justified terror.

“Put simply, the work and results of this project will go to the heart of debates about how to move forward with a multi-cultural and multi-faith society, and how challenges of social cohesion can be overcome," he said.

He will work with Dr Nazila Ghanea, Lecturer in International Human Rights Law and a Fellow of Kellogg College at the University of Oxford, and Dr Kingsley Purdam, Research Fellow in the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research at the University of Manchester.

Dr Ghanea said: “In a multi-cultural Britain, belief, discrimination and equality are at the top of the political agenda. My contribution to the study will see how developments in human rights and equality law address these issues.

"This project will ask whether new legal standards are indeed tackling discrimination in the area of religion or belief in England and Wales - an area that policy makers, community activists and lawyers are watching with interest.”

The new study starts in December and includes a postal questionnaire survey that will re-contact, but also go beyond, the national, regional and local faith organisations who responded to the original study. The project will also undertake a comprehensive review of relevant data from various sources such as the 2001 Census and the Home Office Citizenship Survey.

There will be qualitative case study research into the key geographic areas of the initial study: Blackburn, Cardiff, Leicester and Newham. The new study will include focus groups in these areas of people who understand themselves to be ‘non-religious’.

Norwich has also been chosen as a new area for study, to take account of the experience of areas with a more rural hinterland and which have been affected by recent developments such as the migration for work purposes of people from European Union accession countries, to the UK.

Professor Weller said: “When the previous study was undertaken, there was no law on discrimination or incitement to hatred on the grounds of religion the UK outside of Northern Ireland. Today, such laws are on the statute book but the issues they address are still debated, with either the appropriateness or the adequacy of the laws being questioned.

“With much tension surrounding such issues, the time is therefore ripe for a review of the initial study. We hope the results of this new project will inform the next decade of policy and practice in this vitally important area of society.”

As in the original project, the new one will ask respondents about any reported current experience they may have of unfair treatment on the basis of religion. It will assess the evidence around this in England and Wales and describe the patterns shown by this evidence, including its overall scale, main victims, main perpetrators, and the main ways in which the discrimination shows itself. It will then evaluate the extent to which religious discrimination overlaps with racial discrimination and identify the broad range of policy options for dealing with such discrimination.

In exploring these new questions, the project will also endeavour to take into account the experiences and perspectives of those who understand themselves to be of no religion or no particular religion.