Make Your Way 6, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM

Modern Britain – a rich mix?! Multicultural Britain Modern Britain – a rich mix?! The second generation A racist society? A black and white world Becoming familiar with … People are often encouraged to move to another country. There are many reasons for this. Working in small groups, write a list of as many reasons as you can think of for people to move to another country. 1 Now read the text about the many cultures of Britain and compare your list of reasons for moving to another country with those given in the text. 2 What is British culture? How is it that for the football World Cup there isn’t a ‘British’ team, but four national teams – English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish? In today’s Britain, these four groups, which were separate kingdoms in medieval times, combine to form the basis of British culture. But a visitor to any of the big cities will soon realise that many other cultures are represented. (1) And their diversity enriches all aspects of British life. Britain’s history has been one of continuous “foreign” influences, through conquest, trade, migration, travel, asylum and empire. Many of those who settled in Britain stayed in the cities. (2) London is home to at least 50 different ethnic groups each of which numbers more than 12,000 people, making it the most cosmopolitan city in the world. (3) The various groups in the capital tend to live in clusters and form ethnic “villages”. However, unlike the United States’ ghettos where almost everybody is of one ethnic group and where practically everyone belonging to that group lives, London’s ethnic communities are much more integrated. (4) London’s ethnic minority population is 31% of the city’s total population. The largest single group originates from the Indian sub-continent. Around 6.6% of London’s population – nearly 500,000 people – are Indian; a further 4.7% are from Bangladesh and Pakistan. (5) People from the Indian sub-continent and other parts of the former British Empire regarded England as the mother country and were able to move freely to Britain until immigration rules changed. The black Caribbean group is London’s next biggest – 4.6% of the population. Many people came to Britain in the 1950s from the Caribbean to work in low-paid jobs. The Irish community, which forms nearly 4%, settled in Britain for many reasons, including hunger, when the potato harvest failed in Ireland in the 19 th century. Other groups include Chinese, African, Middle Eastern, Australian, Japanese and Hungarian. Their reasons for coming to Britain are many: from a flight from poverty or persecution to a search for riches. More recently, immigrants have come from war-torn countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. There are shops catering for all these groups, as well as restaurants, temples and community centres, and a ride on a tube train will almost always be in the company of people from many diverse cultures. 76 4 N r zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv