Class Matters: A Study of Minority and Majority Social Mobility in Britain, 1982–2011

Abstract

This article asks whether standard accounts of class reproduction apply among migrants and their descendants as among the majority group, whether there is a process of assimilation across generations toward the overall (British) pattern of class reproduction, whether the trends over time in absolute and relative mobility among the majority population are mirrored among migrants and their descendants, and whether trends in class reproduction are mirrored in trends in ethnic stratification. Using national representative surveys covering four decades, the authors find a major generational shift, with the first generation experiencing a notable social decline but the second generation having a clear advancement. Relative mobility rates among migrants and their descendants are close to those of the majority group and exhibit similar trends over time. Ethnic stratification also appears to be slowly declining, although the persistence of unemployment among the second generation qualifies the optimistic story of ethnic socioeconomic assimilation.

Employment and earning differences in the early career of ethnic minority British graduates: the importance of university career, parental background and area characteristics

“…Li and Heath 2016;Platt 2005;Zuccotti 2015). Ethnic minority graduates in the U.K. are more likely to come from a lower socio-economic background than white British graduates.…”

“…Minorities' higher drive to higher education might mean that working class ethnic minorities are less self-selected compared to their white British counterparts. If this is the case, parental class could have a larger impact on the transition to the labour market among minorities than among the majority (Jackson 2012;Li and Heath 2016;Modood 2005;Zuccotti 2015). Similarly, if information on job opportunities is shared more along ethnic lines than between them (Patacchini and Zenou 2012), it is possible that the characteristics of the local co-ethnic community affect minorities more than the majority.…”

“…This could be because minorities attend worse universities, obtain worse degree classifications or study less valued subjects. Second, ethnic minority graduates may not have access to the same resources in terms of parental socio-economic background as white British, and this may put them at a disadvantage (Li and Heath 2016;Zuccotti 2015). Third, there are important differences between minorities and the majority in the economic and demographic conditions of the area where graduates were living before entering university.…”

The Socio-Economic Integration of Ethnic Minorities

“…The relative lack of socio-cultural-economic resources, deficient language skills, and direct or indirect discrimination by employers (Wood, Hales, Purdon, Sejersen, & Hayllar, 2009) all combined to produce disadvantages in employment, occupation and earnings for the first generation. But even the second generation who were born and educated in the destination country and who had better education than the majority group may still be disadvantaged in gaining employment opportunities (Li & Heath, 2016), a phenomenon aptly termed 'ethnic penalty' (Heath & Cheung, 2006). What about the third and fourth generations?…”

Social Stratification of Education by Ethnic Minority Groups over Generations in the UK

“…Of course, many members of visible and nonvisible ethnic minority origins such as Chinese and Eastern and Western Europeans did not come in groups in the same manner as the (mostly) post-colonial groups above, but individually, later joined by families. Some of these groups have been in the country for a very long time (Castles & Miller, 2009;Cheng, 1994;Cheung & Heath, 2007;Lessard-Phillips, Fleischmann, & van Elsas, 2014;Li & Heath, 2016). A considerable proportion of the visible minorities came at a quite young age, and a signifi-cant and a growing portion were born in the country, being second or even third generation at the current time (see Lessard-Phillips, Galandini, de Valk, & Fibbi, 2015, for details on the terminology).…”