mobility and ethnic minorities

Although there has been much researchon both ethnic minorities in the labourmarket and also social mobility

amongst the native British population, therehas been surprisingly little work done onintergenerational social mobility amongstethnic minorities in Britain. Heath and Ridge(1983), using data from 1972, looked at socialmobility amongst first-gener-ation male migrants, hypoth-esising that migrationweakens the close linkbetween father’s and son’sclass positions. They foundthat both non-white migrantsand white migrants from theRepublic of Ireland wereindeed less likely to maintain their parents’social status. In fact, they were more likely toexperience downward mobility than British-born white men.

The study put forward racial discrimina-tion as one possible explanation for thisdownward mobility; however, because of thesimilar nature of disadvantage experienced bywhite migrants as well as non-whites, Heathand Ridge also suggested other mechanismsthat might be at work. Among those dis-cussed were a lack of language fluency, a lackof local social contacts and connections shown

to be important in securing better jobs and alack of local qualifications accompanied byemployers possibly putting a lower value onforeign qualifications.

If these explanations were correct, how-ever, the experiences of second-generationethnic minority males – brought up in Britain,fluent in English, and most of whom have

obtained British qualificationsand most likely British con-tacts – should be very differ-ent to those of their fathers.

The aim of this article is toexamine both the levels ofintergenerational socialmobility amongst both first-and second-generation

migrants, and the role of intergenerationalsocial mobility within ethnic groups. It shouldbe noted that this article does not deal withsocial mobility within a generation or the life-time career mobility of ethnic minority men.

We have used data from General House-hold Surveys. The absolute and relativemeasures of social mobility use the GHSpooled from the years 1985-1992, the onlyperiod during which sufficient informationwas collected on the respondent’s father’ssocial class. Unfortunately the numbers ofsecond-generation ethnic minorities in the

199

Mobility andethnic minoritiesLevels of employment are greater cause

for concern than social immobility

ANTHONY HEATH &SHAWNA SMITH

Nuffield College, Oxford

1070-3535/03/040199 + 05 © 2003 IPPR

“Native birth bringsoccupational

improvement butdoes little to

mitigateunemployment”

200 NEW ECONOMY

pooled dataset are rather small, thus theconclusions of this article can only be viewedas rather tentative. Additionally, because ofthe small numbers, discussion of second-generation Pakistanis has been omitted. Ouranalysis uses GHS data pooled from theyears 1991-2000; more recent data can beused here because information on father’ssocial class is not required. Again, howev-er, sample size for second-generation ethnicminorities, overall, remains small, andanalysis for second-generation Pakistanis isnot available.

Absolute social mobility amongstethnic minority men

Absolute social mobility refers to the absoluteproportion of individuals from one socialclass who move into another social class – inother words, what proportion of men wereupwardly mobile (for example, moving frommanual labour to salaried occupations),downwardly mobile (from example fromsalaried occupations to manual labour), orremained within the same class.

Table 1 shows the absolute rates of inter-generational social mobility for males ofWhite British, Irish, Caribbean, Indian, andPakistani descent, for both first- and second-generations.

Overall, these results seem to contradict thepessimistic accounts of mobility amongstfirst-generation migrants. All but the first-gen-eration Pakistanis experienced overallupward mobility, with the large majorityremaining within a social class. These resultsespecially contradict the claim that ‘the firstgeneration of black migrants to Britain gen-erally experienced downward mobility’(Aldridge 2001). Our data show that first-gen-eration Caribbeans experienced more thantwice as much upward mobility (13 per cent)as downward mobility (6 per cent).

Across the generations, however, the datais much less encouraging. While an opti-mistic picture persists for the second-gener-ations of some ethnic minorities, theexperiences of other groups are less opti-mistic. Second-generation Irish and Indians,for example, are both experiencing net levels

Table 1 Absolute mobility rates for ethnic minority men in Britain, by generation

Stable Up into Down from Basesalaried occupations salaried occupations

White British 34 18 10 39,116

Irish

First generation 36 17 5 443

Second generation 30 24 5 364

Caribbean



Indian



Pakistani


Source: GHS 1985-1992

MOBILITY AND ETHNIC MINORITIES 201

of upward mobility. In contrast, second-gen-eration Caribbeans and first-generation Pak-istanis both experienced net levels ofdownward mobility, with five per cent mov-ing up into salaried occupations, and six percent moving down from salaried occupa-tions. Second-generation Pakistanis followeda similar pattern, with five per cent movinginto salaried work, and sevenper cent moving out.

Absolute rates of mobility,however, can be misleading inthat they will be affected byindividuals’ starting points. If,for example, the first genera-tion actually came from man-ual or farming backgrounds,there would be a great deal ofroom for upward mobility, andless for downward mobility.As it has been well-document-ed that first-generation ethnic minorities weremore likely to have working-class or farmingorigins than were British whites, higher levelsof social mobility may simply reflect lower start-ing points. Thus inorder to gain a moreaccurate under-standing of socialmobility amongstethnic minorities,these starting pointsneed to be taken intoaccount during ouranalysis.

Relative mobilityamongst ethnic

minoritiesExamining relativerates of mobility isone way of account-ing for different start-ing points, and alsoallows us to exam-ine social mobility

and class inequalities within each ethnic group.Relative rates of mobility, unlike absolute rates,are not measured in terms of percentages butrather measure mobility in terms of odds ratios– for example, the odds of a male from work-ing class origins gaining access to salariedwork within each ethnic group.

For ethnic minorities, relative rates ofmobility illustrate the role ofsocial class stratification with-in each ethnic group, and cantell us whether class originsoperate in the same way with-in each minority group asthey do among British-bornWhites. Are ethnic minoritymales as internally stratifiedby social class as WhiteBritish males, or is it possiblethat ethnic minority status(and perhaps the disadvan-

tage that come with this status) overridesclass, leading members of an ethnic minori-ty to experience similar occupational for-tunes irrespective of social class origins?

Table 2 Relative mobility rates for men, by generation

Salaried : working class Baseodds ratio

White British 5.5 25,038

Irish

First generation 10 219

Second generation 5 233

Caribbean



Indian



Pakistani



“Ethnic minoritygroups appear to be

as internallystratified as theWhite British...common ethnic

minority status doesnot appear to

dampen the effect ofsocial class origins”

202 NEW ECONOMY

Table 2 shows the odds ratios of a male ofworking class origin gaining access to salariedwork from each ethnic background. This dataprovides little evidence of ethnicity ‘trumping’class, as most of the odds ratios, especially oncethe 95 per cent confidence intervals are con-sidered, are not significantly different from theodds ratios for White British males. Ethnicminority groups appear to be as internallystratified as the White British. In other words,ethnic minority sons from salaried back-grounds have many of the same competitiveadvantages over their working class coethnicsas White British sons fromsalaried backgrounds haveover the White British workingclass. Overall, common ethnicminority status does notappear to dampen the effect ofsocial class origins.

Breen and Whelan (1999)found similar results in theirresearch on relative socialmobility amongst Catholicsand Protestants within North-ern Ireland. Given that within Northern Ire-land, religion functions in much the same wayas ethnicity does in Britain, this would appearto add further credence to the idea that evencommon identities associated with disad-vantage do not trump social class origins indetermining intergenerational mobility.

Nonetheless, the high odds for second-gen-eration Caribbeans and first-generation Pak-istanis show some cause for concern, as theyappear to indicate that lower working classmales find it particularly difficult to escapefrom disadvantage. With regard to the first-generation Pakistanis, there is little doubt atleast some of this disadvantage comes as aresults of the factors discussed earlier (lack ofEnglish fluency, British qualifications, socialnetworks and so on). Second-generation BlackCaribbean males, on the other hand, havebeen well-documented in their struggle toobtain higher levels of education as well as

in gaining and sustaining higher levels ofemployment and are clearly a sector of theethnic minority population disadvantagedwithin the labour market.

Assessing inequalities betweenethnic groups

While relative mobility rates tell us about theextent of class inequalities within each group,they do not tell us about inequalities of oppor-tunity between groups – or, in other words,they cannot tell us whether ethnic minoritieswith the same qualifications as their white

counterparts have the samechances of entering salariedwork. Our analysis, however,allows us to examine thiscomparison.

The first column of Table 3shows the coefficients for eth-nic minority access to salariedwork after controlling for age,educational attainment, andmarital status. Coefficientsindicate the log odds of an

individual attaining access to salaried workcompared to a similarly-qualified British-born white male. If there is no differencebetween the likelihoods of white and ethnicminority men, the coefficient would equalzero. Negative coefficients indicate a lowerlikelihood for the ethnic minority group. Sta-tistically significant results (figures that devi-ate from zero by a significant amount,considering the size of the sample analysed)are those shown in bold in the table.

Only two of the coefficients in the first col-umn of Table 3 are significant, indicating thatonly two groups – the first generation Indi-ans and the first generation Pakistanis andBangladeshis – were denied access to salariedjobs despite having qualifications at or abovethe level of salaried white British men. Eachof the second-generation minorities(Caribbeans, Indians and Irish) appeared tohave closed this gap.

“a programme ofaffirmative action inBritain may prove tobe worth considering

in attacking highlevels of

unemploymentamongst ethnic

minority groups”

MOBILITY AND ETHNIC MINORITIES 203

Again, the analysis shows a fairly opti-mistic picture for the second generation eth-nic minorities, and appears to corroborate thefindings of other researchers that second-generation ethnic minorities have been ableto close the gap with regard to access tosalaried work, as well as with regard to earn-ings, thus reducing so-called ‘ethnic penalties’in terms of occupational attainment.

The second column of Table 3 shows, how-ever, the coefficients for unemployment. Thispicture is much less sanguine than the pictureof economic optimism painted by the initialresults of this article. Compared to equallyqualified whites, second-generation Caribbeanand Indian men, as well as first-generationCaribbean, Indian, and Pakistani andBangladeshi men all have significantly higherchances of unemployment. This result echoesthe findings of various other research con-ducted on ethnic penalties, which indicate thatmany ethnic minorities, including second-gen-eration minorities, are still at a disadvantage inthe labour market when it comes to levels ofemployment. In fact, the unemployment ratesof ethnic minorities have been shown to be asmuch as twice the rates of similarly qualified

British-born whites.

Policyimplications

Both first and sec-ond-generation eth-nic minorities havecome from relative-ly disadvantagedbackgrounds com-pared to their whiteBritish-born coun-terparts, althoughfor relatively differ-ent reasons. First-g e n e r a t i o nminorities camefrom a higher pro-portion of farming

or self-employed backgrounds, reflecting dif-ferentials in the occupational structures of thecountries from which they migrated; second-generation minorities were typically morelikely to have working-class parents, per-haps reflecting the disadvantage their parentshad experienced within the British labourmarket.

Our findings, however, indicate that, withthe exception of second-generation Caribbeanmales, second-generation ethnic minoritieshave by and large been able to close the gapwith the white British in terms of absolutemobility and access to salaried employment.Our findings also show that, for both gener-ations, social class origins operated in muchthe same way among ethnic minorities asamong the white British, showing no sign thatmigration disrupted the process of intergen-erational social persistence.

Overall, and again with the exception of thesecond-generation Caribbean males, thesefindings present an optimistic picture of eth-nic minorities and their mobility within thelabour market, and replicate findings by oth-ers that have shown reduced ethnic penaltiesfor second-generation minorities. However,

Table 3 The chances of occupational destinations for ethnicminority men

Salaried occupation Unemployed

Irish

First generation -0.33 0.23

Second generation 0.14 0.31

Caribbean

First generation -0.48 0.60Second generation 0.04 0.69

Indian


Second generation 0.49 0.68

Pakistani/Bangladeshi



204 NEW ECONOMY

this optimism only applies to those ethnicminorities in work. As these findings havealso shown, nearly all second-generation eth-nic minority groups (with the exception of theIrish) are significantly more likely to be unem-ployed. This finding echoes other researchwhich has shown that even amongst second-generation minorities, substantial disadvan-tages still exist in regard to finding work.Looking at the overall picture our findingsappear to corroborate Model’s (1999) con-clusion that ‘Native birth brings occupation-al improvement but does little to mitigateunemployment’ for the children of immi-grants..

Drawing again on parallels between Britainand Northern Ireland, the level of second-generation ethnic minority unemployment inBritain is actually quite similar to that expe-rienced by Catholics in Northern Ireland.Borooah (1999) found that although Catholicswere similar to Protestants in respect to occu-pational attainment and wages, their unem-

ployment rates were nearly double those ofProtestants, just as ethnic minority unem-ployment rates tend to be double those ofwhites.

In order to rectify these high rates ofunemployment amongst Catholics, since1988 the Fair Employment Commission ofNorthern Ireland (now the Equality Com-mission) has undertaken a programme ofaffirmative action, reaching either legallyenforceable or voluntary agreements withemployers to increase the proportion of anunder-represented community within theirlabour force. Preliminary evaluation of thisprogramme will be published shortly, andit may prove to be the case that this kind ofaffirmative action is both acceptable toemployers and effective in increasing work-place integration. If so, a similar programmeof affirmative action in Britain may proveto be worth considering in attacking highlevels of unemployment amongst ethnicminority groups �

BOROOAH VK (1999)‘Is There a Penalty to Being a Catholic in NorthernIreland? An Econometric Analysis of theRelationship Between Religious Belief andOccupational Success’ European Journal of PoliticalEconomy 15

BREEN R AND WHELAN CT (1999) ‘Social mobility in Ireland: A comparative analysis’in Heath AF, Breen R and Whelan CT (eds) IrelandNorth and South: Perspectives from Social ScienceOxford University Press

FIELDING AJ (1995) ‘Migration and social change: a longitudinal studyof the social mobility of immigrants in England andWales’ European Journal of Population 11

HEATH AF AND RIDGE JM (1983) ‘Social mobility of ethnic minorities’ Journal ofBiosocial Science Supplement 8

MODEL S (1999) ‘Ethnic inequality in England: An analysis based onthe 1991 Census’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 22

mobility and ethnic minorities

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