This paper addresses how attitudes toward political involvement and institutions among ethnic minorities in Britain have changed between 1997 and 2010. We make use of two similar surveys of ethnic minorities in Britain to create quasi-cohorts, allowing us to isolate changes in attitudes which result from compositional changes (resulting from different migration flows and changes in relative migrant generation sizes), and those which reflect changes in attitudes at the individual level (in response to political events or life cycle changes). We can therefore test whether convergence with white British attitudes happens over time within the same migrant generation, as well as across generations. We also ask whether Muslims in particular have become less trusting and more dissatisfied since 1997 as a result of increased Islamophobia, two overseas wars in Muslim countries, and the impact of anti-terror legislation.
