The Social Class of Catholics in Scotland

Abstract

The social status of people brought up as Catholics in Scotland, as measured by their occupational class, is analysed by using cross-sectional survey data gathered in 1997. The main ®nding is that Catholics have probably risen in social status to a greater extent than non-Catholics. The experience of Scottish Catholics seems to be distinctive, because no such patterns are found for England, and indeed in this respect Scottish Catholics more closely resemble members of non-Christian religions in England than they do English Catholics. The most likely explanation is the particular role which state-funded Catholic schools have played in Scotland, especially the system of comprehensive secondary schools that was set up after 1965. However, the analysis is suggestive rather than de®nitive and needs to be replicated on cohort data with larger sample sizes.

Accounting for Irish Catholic ill health in Scotland: a qualitative exploration of some links between ‘religion’, class and health

“…The focus is on comparing Catholic and Protestant experiences of leaving jobs: the rationale for comparing by religious background is outlined later. There are a number of reasons for the focus on work: quantitative work has shown that people of Catholic background in west Scotland are more likely than non‐Catholics to be in manual work, especially at older ages (Paterson 2000b, Williams and Walls 2000), and there are indications that Catholic careers falter in mid‐life (Williams and Walls 2000). It has also been suggested that the neglected area of examining experiences within organisations might give some insight into the lack of mobility of Catholics and their career progress over time (Payne et al 1979).…”

“…The authors suggested that there were, ‘processes within society which operate outside education to perpetuate the class disadvantages of the Catholic population’ (Payne and Ford 1977: 97). Later work by Paterson (2000b), using data from the 1990s, made a more positive analysis of the effects of education on Catholic achievement of non‐manual occupations from the 1970s onward. In this analysis, higher educational qualifications appeared to account for an equalisation of opportunities for Catholics in the younger generation, mainly through jobs obtained in the public sector, though in the older cohort Paterson noted, like Payne and Ford, that, ‘Catholics’ higher education qualifications have not always been fully rewarded in the labour market’ (Paterson 2000b: 374).…”

Religion, social mobility and education in Scotland

“…We investigate the effect of our having information only on current religion in two ways. The Scottish Election Survey of 1997 did ask about both current religion and religion of upbringing, and also gathered information that allows origin and destination class to be derived (Paterson 2000b). The sample size is, however, much smaller than would be desirable for this kind of analysis (a total of 882 respondents), and so it is not reliable to calculate rates of movement between religions for all combinations of religion of origin, current religion, and origin and destination class.…”

“…Because analysis of opportunity tends to be based on survey and census data, and therefore to be more amenable to consensual debate than the analysis of ideology, the range of conclusions reached by recent researchers on such matters is in fact quite small, stretching essentially from those who maintain that labour market discrimination has ended (Bruce et al. 2004; Paterson 2000a,b) to those who conclude that the persistence of such legacies allows for the possibility that more widespread discrimination could be resurrected (Williams and Walls 2000).…”

“…Previous empirical investigation of the relationship among religion, education and social mobility has been hampered by the absence of any survey data with the full range of relevant information and with adequate sample sizes. For example, both Paterson (2000b) and Williams and Walls (2000) use the 1997 Scottish Election Survey, but, because the sample size was only 882, reliable inferences could be drawn only at the expense of dichotomizing measures of social class and of age. Devine (2000: 262) calls this sample size 'pitifully small' in comparison to what is needed.…”