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

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.

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