What Motivates Ethnic Conflict? Evidence from Ethnically Motivated Violence in the UK

出于种族动机的暴力和骚扰伤害了人民和社区。了解出于种族动机的暴力和骚扰背后的原因是设计政策以影响种族暴力和改善社区福祉的关键。种族暴力是针对一个人的暴力行为，因为他们的种族。有三种可能是社区内种族暴力的直接诱因：不喜欢不同的人，一个人仅仅因为和另一个种族的人住在同一个地区就会感到不快；争夺公共利益的控制权，例如，实施暴力是为了阻止另一个族裔群体影响当地社区的便利设施类型或社区的文化构成，包括商店和礼拜场所的类型；以及对可分割资源的竞争，例如，为了阻止其他族裔群体使用社会住房或在该地区就业，会实施种族暴力。我们试图更好地了解英国和其他地方种族暴力和骚扰的原因和动机。我们构建了一个经济模型，在这个模型中，个人既可以决定在哪里生活，也可以决定在多大程度上参与当地的种族冲突。在确定了种族暴力的可能动机之后，我们假设一个人根据这些不同的动机选择居住地以及他对当地其他种族群体的暴力和骚扰程度。在做决定时，个人也会考虑到不同的地方可能有不同的价值，例如一个地区可能有更多的工作或更好的住房。驱动种族暴力和骚扰的动机将影响特定地区的暴力和骚扰程度，以及种族暴力如何与各种种族群体的相对规模、工作供应、住房供应和该地区的财富等因素相互作用。通过这种方式，我们将使用经济框架来理解我们如何区分种族暴力的动机。例如，该框架将告诉我们，如果对可分割资源的竞争正在推动种族暴力，我们应该在一个多元化的社区中看到什么。我们将使用英国地方当局地区的种族暴力数据，每个地方当局地区的种族构成数据，以及经济资源数据（如就业供应和社会住房）来检查我们在英国社区所看到的情况。我们想了解，根据对经济框架的预测，我们在英国的数据中发现了什么。根据这些发现，我们希望确定能够提高社区福祉的潜在政策决定。

Ethnically motivated violence and harassment harm people and communities. Understanding the reasons behind ethnically motivated violence and harassment is key to designing policy to impact on ethnic violence and improve community wellbeing.Ethnic violence is violence perpetrated against a person because of their ethnicity. There are three possibilities which seem immediately obvious candidates as motivation for ethnic violence within a community: dislike of those who are different, where an individual gets displeasure simply from living in the same area as those from another ethnic group; competition over control of a public good, where, for instance, violence is perpetrated to dissuade another ethnic group from influencing the type of amenities in the local neighbourhood, or the cultural make-up of the neighbourhood, including types of shops and places of worship; and competition over divisible resources, where, for example, ethnic violence is perpetrated to dissuade other ethnic groups from using social housing or gaining employment in the area.We seek to better understand the causes of and motivation for ethnic violence and harassment, both in the UK and elsewhere. We construct an economic model in which individuals make decisions both about the local area in which to live and the extent to which they participate in ethnic conflict in their local area. Having established possible motivations for ethnic violence, we assume an individual chooses where to live and his level of violence and harassment against other ethnic groups in his local area based on these different motivations. The individual also takes into account the possibility that different local areas may have different values when making his decision, for example one area may have more jobs or better housing.Which motive is driving ethnic violence and harassment will affect the level of violence and harassment in a given area, as well as how ethnic violence interacts with factors such as the relative sizes of the various ethnic groups, job supply, housing supply and the wealth of an area. In this way we will use the economic framework to understand how we can tell one motivation for ethnic violence from another. For example, the framework will tell us what we should expect to see in a diverse community if competition over divisible resources is driving ethnic violence.We will use data on ethnic violence in the UK by local authority area, data on the ethnic composition of each local authority area, as well as data on economic resources (such as job supply and social housing) to examine what we see happening in communities in the UK. We want to understand what we find in our data on the UK in light of the predictions of the economic framework. In light of these findings we would hope to identify potential policy decisions capable of enhancing community wellbeing.