Perceptions of employability among London’s low-paid: ‘Self-determination’ or ethnicity?

Abstract

This article investigates how ethnicity, gender and other characteristics affect low-paid workers' perceptions of their employability in London's labour market, examining self-efficacy, ethnic and dual labour market theories. The authors find that perceptions vary considerably, both between genders and ethnicities and in the extent to which they are 'justified' by human capital attributes. Optimism varies between genders and ethnic groups but individuals' perceptions vary to an even greater extent within genders and ethnic groups. Hence, individual-level 'self-determination' explanations of these perceptions appear to have greatest explanatory power in this specific context, although ethnic theories also have utility.

Food consumption and diet quality choices of Roma in Romania: a counterfactual analysis

“…The unexplained gap estimated with the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is usually attributed to discrimination in the labour literature (e.g., Drydakis 2012;Croucher et al 2018). However, a direct association between discrimination and the Roma diet diversity is difficult to identify.…”

“…To do this we apply a modified Blinder-Oaxaca (Blinder 1973;Oaxaca 1973) framework. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique has been predominantly used in labour economics literature to study gaps in wages and employment, mostly across ethnic groups and gender (e.g., Drydakis 2012;Croucher et al 2018). Recently, this method has also been applied in the field of public health literature to explore differences in obesity across racial groups, gender, and regions in North America (e.g., Sen 2014).…”

“…Similar interpretation holds for the Bcoefficient effect^(C) component, where the differences in coefficients are weighted by group B's predictor levels. That is, the C component captures the expected change in group B's mean diet diversity if group B received group A's coefficients (Croucher et al 2018). …”

“…A limitation identified in the approaches proposed by Neumark (1988) and Oaxaca and Ransom (1994) is that some of the unexplained part of the diet diversity differential might be improperly transferred into the explained part. To avoid this problem in our analyses, we considered a group indicator in the pooled model as an additional covariate (Croucher et al 2018). …”

Exploring Employability Constructions of Migrants in Sweden and Potential Consequences for Labour Market Entrance Recommendations

“…Previous research using quantitative measures has shown that men, highly educated, and older people tend to interpret their employability as higher than women, people with lower education, and younger people (e.g., Berntson 2008;Berntson et al 2006;Mäkikangas et al 2013). Croucher et al (2018) investigated employability perceptions among low-paid workers of different ethnicities in London, and found that education and work experience had a positive relationship with favourable employability constructions, but they also found great variability within different ethnic groups and lesser diversity across groups. These results resonate with Vertovec (2007) notion of Britain's (and particularly London's) superdiversity, which entails a high level of complexity among diversifying dimensions such as country of origin, gender and educational background.…”