Demographics of Isselmere-Nieland
The population of United Kingdom of Isselmere-Nieland is diverse and changing. Most Isselmere-Nielanders (89.1 per cent) reside in urbanised areas, a trend that is increasing with every year. Despite agricultural subsidies intended to keep rural communities intact and to maintain farm production, economic successes and the rapid increase of mechanised farming techniques since 1908 have contributed the decline of rural populations.
Sex, gender, and marriage
Like their Continental co-religionists — the Calvinist Netherlands, Lutheran Scandinavia, and Catholic Spain, Italy and France — Isselmere-Nieland takes a practical view regarding matters of (biological) sex, gender, sexual preference, and transsexuality. As in those countries, not all Isselmere-Nielanders approve of the official governmental opinion, but tolerance if not out-and-out acceptance is by far the norm.
Within the United Kingdom, there are 0.95 males on average to every female, with an approximately equivalent male-to-female birth ratio. Females have a lower infant mortality rate than males (2.87 per thousand as opposed to 3.1 for males) and live on average about 6.2 years longer.
In matters of sex and the law, the State has striven towards equality of treatment. The year 1885 saw the first female barrister. Women across Isselmere-Nieland received the vote in 1917 in an effort to bolster wavering support for involvement in World War I. Until 2006, both men and women were subject to National Service. Sexual selection of foetuses is strictly prohibited by law as is their genetic modification unless such is to correct a known defect.
Sexual freedoms and reproductive rights have slowly expanded throughout the twentieth-century. In 1923, the government made contraceptive devices available to the public, although only for married couples and a doctor's prescription was required. By 1945, the marriage requirement and that for a doctor's prescription were rescinded; an age restriction was instituted instead. Abortions, with the exception of terminations determined to be necessary to safeguard the mother's survival, were illegal until 1959, following outrage against the decision in R. v. Haunslow. Even then, a physician or surgeon's recommendation for the procedure was required until the introduction of the Abortion Act, 1971. Since then, abortions or terminations became legal and either performed within hospitals or clinics. These matters are now governed by the Reproductive Rights and Technologies Act.
Since 2004, homosexual and transsexual civil marriages (marriages conducted by civil rather than religious authorities) are considered on equal terms with heterosexual marriages. With the Disestablishment Act, 2003, the State admitted that it cannot oblige any religious institution to perform homosexual marriages owing to the rather rigid separation of Church and State outlined by that statute. HRH Prince Edmund, brother of King Henry V, married his longtime lover shortly after the passage of the Disestablishment Act. Polygamy, whether polygyny or polyandry, is still illegal.
The State officially recognises yet does not fund sex change operations, termed sexual reconfiguration in government literature. Sexual reconfiguration, which includes elective cosmetic surgery on sexual characteristics (i.e. breast implants), is open only to persons who have attained the age of majority and whom are deemed to have sufficient mental capacity to understand the certain changes and potential risks involved in such surgery. Since this policy was introduced in 2001, there have only been two instances wherein the State has challenged an individual's right to sexual reconfiguration.
According to the last census, 1.72 per cent of the population has undergone full sexual reconfiguration, a further 0.14 per cent are awaiting the operation or are considering it, another 9.46 per cent are homosexual, 5.53 per cent are bisexual, and 1.49 per cent are avowedly asexual, including members of the clergy and religious orders.
Ethnicity
Isselmere-Nieland is a multicultural society that prides itself on tolerance. Consequently, ethnicity is a difficult topic to contend with in the United Kingdom. Broadly, the population according to the latest census (2001) falls into the following general categories:
- White: 82.7%
- Black: 6.2%
- East Asian ancestry: 5.9%
- South Asian ancestry: 5.2%
The lines between the White, Black, and Asian ethnic groups are vague owing to the degree of inter-marriage between the groups, as will be evident below, with the census either reflecting self-identification by the respondents or the opinion of the census-taker. Most people within Isselmere-Nieland identify themselves either as Isselmere-Nielanders or with their region of birth or residence.
The comparative absence of ethnic diversity found in many other states has been attributed to the weather.[1] Indeed, Isselmere-Nielanders tend to holiday elsewhere, particularly in Sarzonia and other warm sunny climes, whenever possible.
White Isselmere-Nielanders comprise a diverse group from all over the European peninsula and islands, the Near East and North Africa, the Americas, Oceania (i.e., Australia, etc.), and from such nations as Sarzonia in more recent times. This category also includes descendents from Northern peoples such as native Greenlanders and Inuit peoples. Intermarriage between these subgroups as well as the other three ethnic groups is common.
Black Isselmere-Nielanders began arriving with the United Kingdom's involvement with the slave trade from the mid-seventeenth- to the late-eighteenth-centuries. Slave owning within Isselmere-Nieland was not common. The United Kingdom served mostly as a depot for British and American vessels returning from the Caribbean and North America, but some servants of African descent did establish themselves within Isselmere-Nieland, occasionally with great success, of whom Stuart Kendall is the foremost example. Slavery, and indentured servitude for all groups, ended in 1793.
Voluntary Black immigration to Isselmere-Nieland began with a trickle starting in the late nineteenth-century that became a steady but light flow in the 1960s, mostly from Britain's former empire in the Caribbean and Africa. This influx of new settlers did spark racialist tensions within cities (Cottersfield Riots) that King Robert V and the government of the day were swift to denounce. With the steady improvement of the economy, an ambitious educational plan (that some critics have argued is avowedly assimilationist), immigration from other more developed countries, and intermarriage with the predominant White as well as the Asian communities, inter-community strife has declined to negligible levels.
East and South Asian immigration has typically followed that of Black Isselmere-Nielanders. Immigration to Isselmere-Nieland by Chinese, Korean, and some Japanese settlers began at the turn of the twentieth-century. Declarations against a Yellow Peril by several political parties, notably the Conservatives and Labour, led to a brief cessation of East Asian immigration from 1904-1933. Japan's war with China from 1932-1945 changed opinions towards Chinese immigration, as did the Korean War for Korean immigration in the 1950s. Inter-marriage has played a significant role in the East Asian communities, leading to the diminution of the small Japanese- and larger Korean-Isselmere-Nielander communities to almost nought. The older and much larger Chinese-Isselmere-Nielander community has maintained some of its identity, although some Chinese-Isselmere-Nielanders feel its retention has been at the cost of becoming a museum culture or tourist attraction. From 1970, most East Asian immigrants came from Hong Kong, South Korea, and other more developed economies.
Settlers of South Asian descent from the Indian sub-continent as well as Britain's imperial holdings in Africa and the Pacific have likewise become an essential part of Isselmere-Nielander culture and the United Kingdom's economic success. Immigration began in force in the early twentieth-century, tailing off during and between the two World Wars before recommencing at some pace following the division of British India into Pakistan and India. Since 1980, immigration has mostly been from other developed and more developed countries, although emigration from the sub-continent continues. Inter-marriage between South Asians and the other ethnic categories is quite common nowadays, especially within the urban burghs.
Education as assimilation
The Union, regional, and provincial governments of Isselmere-Nieland have been accused on several occasions of using education to assimilate and homogenise the population, something which the respective governments ardently deny. Some instances of an assimilationist policy are, however, hard to ignore.
Until the Constitution Act, 1986, the Union government frowned on education in languages other than English and — albeit only in Nieland — Nielandic, including local languages like Anguistian and Isselmerian as well as the Chinese languages. Since 1986, language education has been liberalised, leading to a decrease in divisions between resident ethnic groups. This unforeseen result has sparked various nationalist groups to demand that the Union and regional governments rigorously enforce existing official national and regional language policy.
Gearing students towards conscription following secondary education was another means by which assimilation was advanced. The termination of national service with the Deactivation Act, 2006 has culminated in a net decrease of national (i.e., Isselmere-Nielander) identity with a commensurate rise of ethnic and/or regional identity.
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