http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/0545.asp
Migration and social mobility: the life chances of Britain's minority ethnic communities
A study examining the class position in 2001 of those growing up in the 1960s-80s in England and Wales shows that family background remains important in achieving occupational success and avoiding unemployment, but that there are differences across ethnic groups. The study, by Lucinda Platt of the University of Essex, was based on the ONS Longitudinal Study.
It found:
Background remains important. The children of parents in higher social classes are more likely to end up in higher social classes themselves. This is the case even when taking account of individual educational achievement.
Most minority ethnic groups show high levels of children moving into a higher class than their parents. This is consistent with the idea that their parents suffered downward mobility on arrival in Britain.
For some minority groups (Caribbeans, Black Africans, Indians, Chinese and other) children with working-class parents are more likely to end up in professional/managerial class families than white British people from similar origins. This can be explained by educational achievement.
Pakistanis in the sample were the exception to this pattern. Despite their parents being very heavily concentrated in the working-class, they show lower levels of upward mobility than their white British counterparts, even when taking account of their educational levels.
Bangladeshis also show some of this disproportionate disadvantage. But, for them, more is explained through their backgrounds and educational achievements.
Having parents from a higher social class tends to protect children against ending up in an unemployed household in adulthood.
However, even when taking account of parents' social class, those from minority ethnic groups are at greater risk of unemployment than their white British counterparts from similar backgrounds. This is particularly true of Caribbeans.
Exploring differences between religious groups reveals that, controlling for their backgrounds and other characteristics, Jews and Hindus are more likely to end up in a higher social class than their Christian counterparts; Muslims and Sikhs have lower chances.
This is not just an effect of ethnicity (i.e. the fact that most Muslims are from the already disadvantaged Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities). Differences within the Indian ethnic group show that Hindus (and, to a lesser extent, Christians) are much more 'successful' than Sikhs and Muslims.
For the minority groups shown, those in the professional and managerial classes predominantly come from working-class backgrounds. By contrast, in the white non-migrant group, fewer than half of those in the professional/managerial classes have higher class backgrounds.
Figure 1 also illustrates the differences between minority groups. Far smaller proportions of Pakistanis and far higher proportions of Indians ended up in the professional/managerial classes.
These different patterns have been put down to differences in background across the groups, including not only parents' class position but also their economic assets and educational qualifications. However, the analysis showed that these do not account for differences between groups.
When controlling for background, most of the minority groups (Caribbeans, Black Africans, Indians, Chinese and other, and white migrants) were more likely to end up in the professional/managerial class than their white non-migrant counterparts. This is consistent with the arguments that migrants experience downward mobility on entering Britain and that they have particular aspirations for their children, which can be part of their rationale for migrating.
Factoring in the children's own educational achievement at 2001, shows that children's upward mobility is due to education. This suggests that migrant parents may have motivated their children to achieve through supporting them in gaining qualifications.
This picture was not entirely true, however, for the Bangladeshis in the sample and was completely different for the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis were less likely to end up in professional/managerial families even when taking their backgrounds and their own educational level into account. Thus both their class disadvantage and their disadvantage relative to other minority groups cannot be put down either to differences in background or to differences in educational achievement. Indeed, this group could expect to have better outcomes than the white non-migrants on the strength of their characteristics and backgrounds.
This was not true of the Bangladeshis, whose characteristics partly explain their class disadvantage. (The full report highlights important differences between these two groups as well as revealing some of the better known comparability between them in their generally disadvantaged position.)