Virinder S. Kalra

Routes into education and employment for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in the UK

The article examines the educational and employment experiences and aspirations of young Pakistani and Bangladeshi people living in Oldham, in Great Manchester. Many young people demonstrated high aspirations and high levels of participation, particularly in relation to the educational and occupational level of their parents. Explanatory factors include the cultural value of education among Asian groups, the desire by parents to ensure success for their children and the ethnic penalty which these young people incur in the labour market. However, not all Pakistani and Bangladeshi young people have these aspirations. Girls who wished to continue their education faced a more complex situation than boys; for girls it was important to avoid jeopardizing the family honour. Nonetheless, national statistics show a marked increase in the numbers of young Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in full-time undergraduate courses in recent years. Women with degree level qualifications showed considerable determination to combine paid employment with family life.

The Labour Market Prospects for Pakistani and Bangladeshi Women

This paper examines change and diversity in the lives of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women using qualitative interviews based in Oldham and secondary analysis of the Fourth National Ethnic Minority Survey. There was clear evidence of change across generations. Most of the older women had not been born in the UK and many were limited in their ability to speak English. This, together with a lack of formal qualifications, posed a considerable barrier to seeking paid work outside the home. In addition, many women had heavy family responsibilities that were compounded by material hardship. However, younger women who had been educated in the UK and had no language barrier saw paid work as a means to independence and self-esteem. Multivariate models showed that women with higher qualifications were much more likely to be economically active than women without qualifications or with overseas qualifications. However, the presence of dependent children had a strong negative effect. These factors also influenced the economic activity of white women but with much smaller differentials. Even with higher-level qualifications, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women experience considerable barriers to employment and have high levels of unemployment. Whilst most women subscribed strongly to the centrality of the family, it is clear that the majority will follow very different routes through the life-course from their mothers. Adherence to the lslamic faith was not, of itself, seen as a deterrent to womens participation in the labour market.

Interrogating Segregation, Integration and the Community Cohesion Agenda

The notion of segregation in its current application in British social policy confuses rather than illuminates social processes. While its historical roots lie in a discriminatory practice that was legally instilled in the US, current usage implies the self-segregation of minority ethnic groups. This paper examines the historical legacy of segregation in the US and UK to argue that a shift has occurred in the discourse surrounding the integration of ethnic minority groups, particularly British Muslims. Any attempt to advocate desegregation as a way to promote material equality has been replaced by its use to promote the removal of cultural difference. Contemporary British social policy has taken this further by advocating the necessity of social capital as a means to achieve community cohesion and shared values, further shifting emphasis away from material difference.

Ethnography as politics: A critical review of British studies of racialized minorities

Abstract Ethnographies of British racialized minorities have come under a great deal of scrutiny especially since the critique of ethnographic writing in anthropology surfaced in the mid-1980s. However, much of this criticism has focused on the issue of the construction of essentially bounded ethnic groups rather than on the immediate issues that faced these groups. Drawing on a particular activist academic trajectory that is mainly present in the US, this article1 reviews a number of studies of political mobilization and activism against racism and immigration controls in Britain and Europe. In so doing the role of ethnography in enabling or illuminating particular struggles is examined. The question of whether ethnography is a useful or relevant tool for the study of political change is also explored.

A new deal for young people from minority ethnic communities in the UK

The New Deal for Young People is central to the British Governments labour market policy and their programme of welfare reform. Previous initiatives which were aimed at tackling youth unemployment failed to cater for the needs of one of the most disadvantaged populations in Britain: minority ethnic youth. This paper reports upon research conducted in Oldham (North-West of England), and examines the experiences of 75 young people, mainly from minority ethnic communities. This qualitative longitudinal study of New Deal participants explores the extent to which the New Deal meets their needs and expectations. We find that, despite the evidence of negative views towards training schemes in the past, the experiences of minority ethnic young people in Oldham have been encouraging and seem to match those of white people, both in Oldham and elsewhere. In particular, benefits in relation to employability were recognised by many young people. Participants perceived increased levels of confidence and the development of new skills. However, those avoiding or dropping out of the New Deal are much more critical, and there is a danger that the New Deal is helping only those young people who are best able to help themselves.

Critical Consumers Run Riot in Manchester

This article attempts to unpack the manner in which the “shopping riots” narrative – a narrative of consumerism gone awry which became increasingly prominent in the popular characterisation of the 2011 riots – was operationalized. In doing so, we look to uncover the political saliences of the riots which this discursive terrain conceals. Whilst it is unsurprising that the violence which the riots staged met ritual denunciation, the historical significance of this rebuke lies in its discrediting of the riots as putatively lacking in any protest motive or grievance. The considerable stress laid on the imagery of looting alongside explanatory motifs of nihilism, vulgar materialism and gratuitous criminality all foregrounded a hubristic consumerist drive absent of an intelligible political subjectivity. Through specific reference to the riots as they transpired in Manchester, four related points of discussion will be adopted in critically assessing this portrayal of the riots as apolitical consumerism. We ask: (a) how does this framing result in the eliding of institutional and structural circumstances (e.g. police relations and labour market factors); (b) to what extent does such a characterisation of crass materialism borrows from already established racialised mappings of urban pathology; (c) what is the ideological status of the policy response which this characterisation licences; (d) and finally, how might we consider the political legitimacy of the riots from within the interpretative terrain of consumerism itself.

How new is the New Deal? A qualitative study of the New Deal for young people on minority ethnic groups in Oldham

Despite a clear commitment to equality of opportunity under the New Deal, some have questioned whether the New Deal for Young People has served ethnic minority communities as well as the white population. This research is based primarily on a qualitative longitudinal study of ethnic minority New Deal participants (and non-participants) in Oldham in Greater Manchester, and also on analysis of the New Deal Evaluation Database. We fin d that objective outcomes, particularly employment, can be problematic, but that there is strong evidence of positive impacts on employability, especially through work experience. In these terms the NDYP clearly represents a departure from the YTS and has had a generally positive reception from participants. However, our research emphasizes the fact that participants are a self-selected section of young unemployed people, and that there are major differences between participants and ‘avoiders’. Most notably, non-participants were much more disaffected with the labour market and more negative about the New Deal.

Introduction: The State of Race

As the turn of the twenty-first century marked a significant shift in geopolitical frameworks, namely from communism to Islamism as the targeted enemy of the West, together with the advancement of neolib eralism on a global level, so the politics of racisms in Britain entered a new moment. Shortly following the 2001 riots in the northern towns of Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, the 9/11 attacks on the US came to denote a defining moment for the re-framing of race-relations policy in Britain. Just as the label ‘mugging’ came to symbolise, represent and thus mobilise a whole referential context of black ghettos, urban crime, drug addiction and related criminalisation, and a decline in ‘law and order’ in the 1960s and 1970s (Hall et al. 1978), so in 2001 the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ came into play on new levels to mobilise the cultural context of panic and fear of the suicide bomber, of endless war on our doorstop anytime, anyplace, and of a barbarian, backward, premodern, uncivilised culture threatening ‘our’ way of life. This phantasm, a threat imagined, has justified an associated escalation of state militarisation and securitisation for the purposes of retaining ‘law and order’. The shift from mugger to terrorist equated to a shift from the ‘criminal’ to the ‘unlawful enemy combatant’, a shift from an object whose crime could be dealt with within the law to an object that ultimately required suspension of the law (or its extension) in order to curtail legal rights and freedoms.