Social Mobility: Ethnicity

\ Lucinda Platt: Migration, Ethnicity and Social Mobility

Platt argues that some minority groups have been more upwardly mobile than others.

• She used secondary data from the ONS to analyse social mobility between generations of minority ethnic groups

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She found that patterns of mobility between parents and children’s social class were highly differentiated by ethnic group:

• Indians did better than all other groups in terms of the absolute upwards mobility
• Caribbeans, Black Africans, Indians, Chinese, ad white migrants all obtained higher upward social mobility relative to white non-migrants.

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Platt argues that this was largely a ‘compensation’ for the inequality and discrimination which caused their parents downward mobility following migration.

• Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were less likely than white groups to achieve success
• Very clear evidence of barriers to social mobility for particular ethnic groups, notable Pakistanis and Bangladeshis

\ EVAL

:( Platt relied upon secondary data to track these longitudinal trends, therefore her research does not provide detailed insight (Vestehen) into the reasons for different groups’ opportunities for mobility

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