What's really driving ethnic change — national trend, not local migration

Burnley’s ethnic change is not mainly about Burnley. It’s about Britain.

We decomposed the 2011–2021 White British decline in every local authority into three components: national trend, age structure, and local migration. In Burnley, the breakdown is:

• National effect: -6.6pp (86% of total change)
• Age structure: -0.5pp (7%)
• Local migration: -0.6pp (8%)

This means Burnley would have seen almost the same ethnic composition change even with zero local-level migration — because the national White British share fell from 80% to 73.4% across England and Wales.

The areas where local migration IS the dominant driver are London boroughs (Barking, Tower Hamlets, Newham) and specific university cities. For most of England, the national trend does the heavy lifting.

Data: Census 2011 KS201/DC2101 and Census 2021 TS021 via NOMIS API. Shift-share methodology following Franklin (2014, Population, Space and Place).