British Arabs

British Arabs are Arab people living or born in the United Kingdom.

Overview

Unlike Black British or Asian British, the term British Arab was not one of those employed in government ethnicity categorisations used in the 2001 UK Census and for national statistics. As a result, community members are believed to have been under-counted in previous population estimates according to the National Association of British Arabs (NABA). This absence of a separate "Arab" category in the UK census obliged many to select other ethnicity categories. In the late 2000s, the British government announced that an "Arab" ethnicity category would be added to the 2011 UK Census for the first time. The decision came at the request of the National Association of British Arabs and other Arab organizations, who lobbied for the inclusion of a separate "Arab" entry to accommodate under-reported groups from the Arab world. As a result, 240,545 British Arabs were reported in the 2011 Census in England and Wales. In NABA's report on the 2011 Census, it broke down answers from the Ethnic Write-In Responses that NABA classifies as Arab, namely "Arab", "African Arab", "White and Arab", "Moroccan", "North African", "Other Middle East", "Somali", "Somalilander" or "White and North African". It also notes that how many of the individual identities responded in the general "Arab" box is uncertain, so there may be some overlap in the numbers. This totaled 366,769 Arabs in England and Wales.