Ethnic minority groups break through the class barrier (13 Jan 2006)

13 Jan 2005 

The research study found that 56 per cent of people from Indian working class families ended up in professional and managerial posts, along with 45 per cent of those from Caribbean backgrounds.

In comparison, 43 per cent of  young people from white, non-migrant families entered highly paid careers.

But the study, based on surveys tracing children's progress over 30 years, finds that young people from the Pakistani community are an exception. Although their parents are heavily concentrated in the working class, they show less upward mobility than children from white manual workers' families.

Bangladeshis are similarly disadvantaged but unlike young Pakistanis, this can be more readily explained by education and other characteristics of their backgrounds.

Lucinda Platt, a Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Essex, analysed data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study on 140,000 children who grew up between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Her research showed that family background and class had an important influence on later employment: children whose parents were in the managerial or professional classes were more likely to end up in higher-status jobs, even after account was taken of differences in educational achievement. Coming from a more advantaged background also tended to reduce their chances of unemployment.

An expansion in professional and managerial occupations over the past 30 years has created more 'room at the top', giving rise to an increase in upward mobility. Even so, a comparison between children whose parents were born overseas and white children of parents born in the UK showed young people from many minority ethnic groups were making disproportionate progress.

According to the JRF study, the upward mobility among children from minority ethnic groups was due to their educational achievements. This suggested that migrant parents often encouraged and motivated their children to gain good qualifications.

The general picture did not apply to children of Pakistani migrants. Their class disadvantage, relative to young people from other ethnic groups, could not be explained by differences in family background, or differences in their education. However, these factors did help to explain the class disadvantage found among children of Bangladeshi migrants.

Looking at differences between religious groups, the study found that second-generation Jews and Hindus tended to be more upwardly mobile than their Christian counterparts. Muslims and Sikhs were less likely to have moved into higher paid employment than their migrant parents. These differences could not simply be explained by ethnic origin.

Lucinda Platt said: "This study shows that social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years in assisting young people to access the educational opportunities that help them into higher status jobs. Britain is still a long way from being a 'meritocracy' where social class no longer plays a part in determining children's chances of well-paid careers.

"There is good news to the extent that a disproportionate number of the young people who are upwardly mobile are the children of parents who came to this country as migrants. But their welcome progress is no cause for complacency – especially when it appears to be so much harder for young people from Pakistani or Bangladeshi families to get ahead. We need to do much more to understand why this is happening and the extent to which factors such as racial discrimination are involved."

Download JRF study