Ethnic Classification in Global Perspective: A Cross-National Survey of the 2000 Census Round

Counting Ethnicity in Malaysia: The Complexity of Measuring Diversity

“…Thus, data on ethnicity in Malaysia are important not just for social analysis and policy, as for example in New Zealand (Callister 2006 ;Callister et al 2006 ), but also for economic and political analysis and policy. This is in sharp contrast to countries like France where even the potential use of offi cial ethnic classifi cation has seen strong debate (Morning 2008 ).…”

“…Other surveys and censuses may use any of these terms. Across the world, population censuses have used a variety of terms: ethnicity, nationality, tribe, indigenous group, race (Morning 2008 ). The United Nations Statistics Division ( 2003 ) concludes that based on the current wording of the ethnicity question in the census, which includes dialect group in the defi nition, language is the principal criteria for measuring ethnicity in Malaysia.…”

“…Since just one category is provided for, there is therefore no provision to capture those who belong to more than one ethnic group, as for example, children of mixed marriages. A number of countries which capture information on ethnicity have moved to allowing respondents to check more than one category (for example, Canada, United States of America and New Zealand), allowing generic mixed ethnic group responses (for example, Anguilla, Guyana and Zimbabwe) or providing specifi c mixed ethnic group combinations (for example, United Kingdom, Cook Islands and Bermuda) (Morning 2008 ). Furthermore, ethnicity as measured in Malaysian censuses captures basically whatever the respondent answers to the question, that is, what he or she perceives ethnicity to be.…”

‘Inside Out’: The Politics of Enumerating the Nation by Ethnicity

“…Arel's ( 2002 ) analysis of census-taking in the post-Soviet states demonstrates how the distinction between mother tongue and everyday language became infused with political meaning, bound up with claims to ethnic nationality and territory. Morning ( 2008 ) notes these parochial perturbations, but argues that the diversity of ethnic indicators should not dissuade from the identifi cation and analysis of cross-national similarities. Her innovative comparative research has shown that much of the diverse nomenclature used to describe collective identities (e.g., ethnicity, race, ancestry, and indigeneity) is underpinned by the common concept of descent.…”

Ethnic group

“…Despite the serious conflict on ethnic/class lines in the deprived suburbs of Paris in 2005, the furore generated by the adoption of the veil by many young Muslim women (and the subsequent banning by the state), and the strong following of Jean Marie Le Pen's Front Nationale, an openly anti-immigrant and racist party, there remains no official recognition of ethnic/'racial' inequality or inter-communal tensions. Many other countries also take the view that to collect such data might be divisive: others do so but under the label 'race' and/or ancestry (see Morning, 2008).…”