An interesting set of stats posted on the SM news tab talks about workforce participation amongst South Asians in the UK –
Six million Britons are living in households where nobody works – costing the taxpayer almost £13 billion a year in benefits alone, a spending watchdog report reveals today.
…The problem is concentrated in cities including inner London – where one in four households are workless – Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and is worse among some ethnic groups. Pakistani and Bangladeshi households are the most likely to be workless at 22.3 per cent, while Indian households are the least likely, at 6.8 per cent.
Internationally Britain has one of the worst rates of worklessness. Around 13.5 per cent of the UK population live in workless households, compared with compared with 11 per cent in France, five per cent in the United States and less than 3 per cent in Japan.
For next door neighbors to be both the worst and the first on this sort of distribution is pretty interesting. Anyone (Razib?) know what diffs in immigration patterns b/t Pakistani & Bangladeshi’s vs. Indian’s to the UK might be?
what about the tamils and sri lankans?
i am rather surprised by the indian vs. pakistani/bangladeshi stats. also, i wonder how they count those who did come over before partition – if for instance, they were already in the UK, while their families back home found themselves living in the new nations of bangladesh and pakistan – are they considered indians in GB? nevertheless, though i have no support for this, i suspect it might have a lot to do with the amount of time these nationals have spent in the UK – indians have been there the longest, so presumably they have had a few generations to build businesses etc., whereas those who have been in the UK for a generation or so, or less, might have to start from the bottom and remain unemployed for some time upon their arrival. not to mention the employability advantage that comes with having almost a centurty of UK-educated indians. perhaps, then, this statistic will even out within a few generations.
This past school year I was a ‘reading partner’/ lunch hour volunteer deal,once a week,in Tower Hamlets. From the News Article Vinod linked “the Problem is concentrated in cities including inner London where one in four households are workless”.Tower Hamlets is one of the most underdeveloped areas, it’s just a stones throw form Canary Wharf where many of the worlds Multinational IB’s are headquartered, we had a couple of field trips to financialinstitutions etc to expose the kids to career possibilities.
My reading partner was a perfect little gentleman [Bangladeshi], but that was the exception,many of my co-volunteers weren’t so lucky. The school &borough is predominately Asian, but there were also English and Afro-Caribbean kids as well. The term ‘acting white’ as an indictment against school performance is not used here (not used in the US ‘ghetto’ either if the truth were known). [Its called anti-education culture” when it occurs in majority population]
I’ve done a similar volunteer /tutor mentor thing in an American(read black)project in the US. Does anyone, Camille(?) know of “legitimate” (nothing from VDARE etc thanks please) theories /studies on “outsider perception and performance” as it relates to size of minority population? or perception in majority population to “predecessors” of minority population, & impact of current group members to live up to/enforce that norm?— yeah I know that’s and ugly sentence but I hope its understandable.
It’s not a difference in immigration patterns. I think it’s got social, cultural, and also (the elephant in the room) religious factors behind it.
People tend to lump the whole subcontinent as one when its obviously not. In Vancouver, BC..most of the Indian are sikh jatts and are not your model minority. I was reading White racist Stormfront forums one day, and one of the posters was describing how the Indians there are tall, huge with muscles. Rest of the posters were laughing at him…and were telling him that indians are short and look like Apu. However, the fact is that that Indians in vancouver tend to be bigger than the average. Similarly, in cities in North America where you had influx of H1 workers, the indians tended to look like telugu speaking gultis….and their children tended to be the smarter kids in high school.
The islamic subcontinent people do not assimilate well in western society and tend not to do well. Whether its the rigidity of Islam…or whatever, that’s another huge flame laced debate that doesn’t have any meaning ful outcome.
Until Razib shows up, here is one difference to think about. No idea as to how reliable the link is and if the difference relates to unemployment stats in any ways.
Consanguinity is usually defined as marriage between second cousins or closer.
Hey dilettante, there have been a few studies about “cultural differences” in perceptions and achievement.
But to take it back, there are substantial differences in time and location of regional settlement. As ak mentioned, it’s hard to distinguish who was an “Indian national” vs. “Pakistani national” in the first post-Partition cohort. That said, the peak years of immigration (from the subcontinent) were the 60s and 70s, when the UK Parliament passed a series of restrictive immigration policies to limit subcontinental entry. Migration was predominantly Indian (in pure #’s, and as a share of total immigration), which makes sense given the vast difference in country populations. Pakistan overtook India in the 70s, ostensibly in part because of the Bangladeshi War of Independence. Bangladeshi migration (non-refugee based) started to increase in the mid- to late-80s.
I think there’s a huge difference in regionality. If you control for earlier cohorts, there were still unemployment differences of up to 18 percentage points between Indians and Pakistanis. While many like to point to “religion and culture” as the source for this, I personally think there are two other overarching and historic barriers:
I would be curious to see if there is a large gender skew as well. That is, are there more women opting out of the labor force in Pakistani homes than in Indian homes. Is this historic, or is it contemporary? How may that play a feature? Also, is there a difference in family reunification? It could be that some of these individuals are not unemployed, but rather extended family/elders who have been brought to the UK by their children.
I think it’s really dangerous to assume that the difference is that Indians have some intrinsically better capacity. It’s easy to look at statistics and ask what’s wrong with Bangla/Pakistani communities instead of taking into account all the other factors. I do think there are social issues at play, particularly when it comes to religion and education. That said, there may be other, more practical, explanations for this divide.
My guess is that lot of original immigrants from Pakistan & B’desh were during 70s and as mill workers (employees) but the immigrants from India were mostly entrepreneurs (Gujarati etc?). When the steel & clothing industry collapsed in 80s, the mill workers didn’t have jobs and that continued where as entrepreneurs thrived?
This link is quite indepth on Pakistanis situation in UK http://humanists.net/alisina/pakistnis_in_uk.htm
They have the highest unemployment rate, five times more than the British average; and crime rate is higher among them than in any other community. Fully 2 percent of the prisoners rotting in British jails are Pakistanis, the highest for any one community.
Unemployment is the cause of alienation and crime among them. Aggressive organizations like Hizb al-Tahrir and al-Muhajirun have come up by exploiting the unrest among the British Pakistani unemployed. There is discrimination in the UK against them and, as always, it is based on how ‘different’ the Pakistanis are from other citizens. The speaker gave no comparative figures but it was obvious that Muslims were less easily employed because of their namaz timings, fasting timings and conflicting Eid days, requiring the employers to make special arrangements. In the case of Muslim women, hijab came in the way of employment. After repeated experience, the employers simply refuse when they are faced by a Muslim or a Pakistani applicant without confirming whether he would insist on namaz exemptions or not. Pakistani Christians are however more readily accepted in the market. [This is also true of the private sector in Pakistan where Muslim employees usually lean on namaz for general absenteeism.]
No good future prospects: Another figure which is comparable to Pakistan is the remarkable superiority of educational performance among girls. In the 5-plus category of grades, there were 41 percent girls compared to 21 percent boys. [In 1994, this figure was 22 percent girls and 20 percent boys, which means that the crisis of integration is of recent origin.] Girls didn’t mind getting married to Pakistani boys in Britain but increasingly resisted being married off to boys in the family back in Pakistan. British Pakistani boys (5 percent) did not marry British whites to the same extent as the blacks, and girls (1.4 percent) hardly married whites, thus pointing to the limits of integration of the Pakistani community. Another factor standing in the way of integration is the community’s involvement (around 75 percent) in Pakistan’s politics back home. Since Pakistani politics has become more and more religious, it is difficult for a British Pakistani to try consciously to participate in Britain’s secular politics. In terms of proportion, the community should have 8 members in the House of Commons instead of the one there now. Staying out of the competition for rights, the Pakistani community has also been hit hard by the death of Britain’s textile industry. Fully 20 percent of the community had been involved in this sector.
Prof Muhammad Anwar predicted that in the next ten years the Pakistani community in the UK will suffer further decline in integration and prosperity. He said that the community’s Islamic and Pakistani identity will become stronger, which clearly means that there would be less integration. This will lead to more discrimination against them by a society coming under the influence of what he called Islamophobia.
You can read more at the link http://humanists.net/alisina/pakistnis_in_uk.htm
This is factually incorrect. Aside from the 1970s refugees, Pakistanis and Indians who migrated had EQUAL QUALIFICATIONS, particularly around education, etc. Additionally, both Indians and Pakistanis went into “self-owned businesses” (e.g. taxi-wallas, cornershops) largely because employers were too racist to hire them as employees. It is not that Pakistanis are brute workers and some hot shot Gujarati entrepreneurs came over and took the country by storm. They were all highly educated, and they were all discriminated against. If you look at the unemployment levels by region, they are largely comparable (i.e. Indian unemployment and Pakistani unemployment are within 1-2 percentage points of one another in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, etc.). There has been a huge divergence in the second and third generation, and many point to the continuing religious discrimination against Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. While the UK has made strong attempts to get a handle on racial discrimination, religion is used as a proxy to continue propagating completely racist hiring and firing decisions in companies and organizations, particularly if one is “visibly Muslim.”
As venkat mentioned, these high levels of unemployment are also seen as catalysts for criminal activity and radicalism. They were, paired with police violence, the catalyst for a number of race “riots” from the 1970s through mid-1990s. I try not to be an economic determinist, but if you exclude people from the work force, they’re going to turn their frustrations somewhere.
Given that the Pakistani’s are mosltly Mirpuri Kashmiri’s, should a true Indian patriot claim that “Indians from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir” and Bangladeshis are doing poorly?
I think we’ve gone over the differences beween Mirpuri Britons, Sylheti Britons (most British B-deshis are from Sylhet) and Indo-Britons, and the differences between all of them and Indo-Canadians. Look up the old comment threads.
See here for a list of papers on mirpur by British ethnographer Roger ballard. In particular an ethnography of British Mirpuris and British Jullundharis. If anyone has seen anything on the Sylhetis, I’d love to read it.
Also, here’s a piece by Stanley Kurtz in the NRO reviewing Ballard’s work. I don’t endorse Kurtz’ conclusions, but he did his doctoral work on colonial india, and is usually worth reading on this topic.
Kurtz says whereas Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus must marry outside of the patri-clan, Punjabi Muslims prefer to marry fellow clan members  especially first cousins. One effect of this difference is that the wives of Jullunduri Sikh immigrants have long been more eager than the wives of Mirpuri Muslim immigrants to join their husbands in Britain. Here’s why.
Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs marry outside the clan, but they must also marry inside the caste. In Punjab, members of a patrilineal clan tend to live together in the same village. This means that eligible marriage partners of the same caste, but a different clan, can only be found in another village. So the rule of clan exogamy forces Punjabi Hindu and Sikh brides to leave their home villages to move in with husbands who live elsewhere. Hindu and Sikh brides therefore enter their husband’s joint family as strangers. The early years of married life for a Hindu or Sikh bride are thus famously stressful, since she is not only living with and learning the ways of strangers, but also works under the difficult and unfamiliar authority of her new mother-in-law. Over time, Hindu and Sikh brides often press their husbands to leave the joint family and strike out on their own.
What do mutineers with insight to to ther “punjabi mind” think?
(Kurtz overreaches when he assumes that Punjabi marriage practices are universal among all Muslims in the world. Even in South Asia I don’t think Muslim Bengalis or Muslim Keralans have the same practices as Punjabis.)
I think it’s got social, cultural, and also (the elephant in the room) religious factors behind it.
How does the religion play a part?
The sad thing is that Britain has done better integrating immigrants than rest of Europe. Nevertheless, it’s no coincidence that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, for the most part, are Muslims, and Muslims, in general, are having a hard time overall both in Britain and in Europe.
The problems are manifold, I suppose. Discrimination is a factor, but I also believe that there significant number of Muslims, esepcially recent immigrants, who do not want to integrate or assimilate and this, of course, will cause economic and social problems.
There may be some valid reason for discrepency amongst the achievement level between religious population in Britain (however, I tend to thing that the ‘Blue Collar’ percentage amongst the hindu and moslem is the same). That said, the immigration demographics between the hindus and moslems in to the US is the same, yet hindus perform much better than muslims (There were detailed statistics on this on Arthur Hu’s website). I would go on to say that if one were to dissect the statistics further, South indian Hindus would do much better than North Indian hindus. We can bury our head in the sand all we want about this, but different groups have different capabilities. Some are better at one thing…others do well at being gangsters.
We can bury our head in the sand all we want about this, but different groups have different capabilities. Some are better at one thing…others do well at being gangsters.
What an astute observation. Thanks for the laugh.
I don’t mean to be posting ad-nauseum, but this was so jarring:
Vic, why don’t you go bury your racist assumptions elsewhere? One of the most ridiculous forms of statistical analysis is to take a difference in means and then try to attribute causation accordingly. I’m not Pakistani, nor am I Muslim, but way to be totally offensive and worse, completely prejudiced in your illogic.
Ikram, on marriage: I have no idea what the differences are between Mirpuri and Sylheti Muslims, etc., etc., or even for Punjabi Muslims. I can’t speak for all Punjabis, but among most of those I know (so this is Amritsar/Lahore/Jalandhar) the characterization is correct — there is a strong push to marry out of one’s clan. This may vary by socioeconomics/caste, and I can’t speak to that at all. But, there is definitely the belief that marrying into your own family is not a good idea.
one of the joys of the net; we are often confronted with pearls of wisdom such as this…more coming up for sure
While we are at it, might as well state that us desi’s are inherently smellier than the goreys.
Not so sure about that actually. Read this article a while back and thus don’t remember if it was scientific or speculatory but it ‘claimed’ that body odor depends a lot on food habits and that a meat based diet results in what are perceived as fouler body odors.
lol. A ‘true Indian Kashmiri’ would tell you that Mirpuris are not Koshur, but rather ethnically Punjabi tribes just like the vast majority of the population of the Azad Kashmir area in Pakistan.
Venkat wrote:
Does ‘integration’ necessarily have to involve marrying into other races/cultures? I mean obviously that’s the most overt form of integration, but surely integration works in other ways as well (befriending neighbors and not limiting your social interactions to other S. Asians)
the UK census is a great site, i recommend it for those digging for data: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
here is an interesting point: Even after allowances for education and residential area, Pakistani Muslims are three times more likely to be jobless than Hindus are. Indian Muslims are twice as likely to be unemployed than Indian Hindus are.
Yet the study warns against concluding that religion necessarily causes economic disadvantage, but notes that “the odds of being unemployed do vary significantly with religion”. Hindus, for example, are significantly more successful in the jobs market than Sikhs.
“Far more is in play than just religious effects,” the report says. Among South Asians, Indian Muslims do better than Muslims from Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds – and better than Sikhs.
the point in cutting & pasting is that the issues here are complicated. as previous posters have noted, the categorizations of “indian,” “pakistani” and “bangladeshi” hide as much as they reveal. the last two groups are regionally extremely focused. i have relatives in the UK, but they are way outside the bangladeshi mainstream because they are not from sylhet. within the indian group you have sikhs, hindus and muslims, and the difference between refugees from east africa and those who came directly from indian. the east africans often bring a lot of social and monetary capital with them (many of the successful indian muslims are ismailis from east africa). i think there is definitely something to the hypothesis that islam is playing a role in social segregation, but i think there is some path dependence here, as the effect is weak to non-existent in the USA. why? i’ve outlined the reasons before, the american muslim community is diverse (so there’s less synergy between religion & race), educationally well off & economically middle class.
This trend of workless ness is catching up in Canada too. BTW, why anyone wants to work when Government reward one being Lazy with cash on each child. These benefits are usually for destitute and disables but some M@$#@ F^&&%* misuse the system and find an excuse to be lazy.
here is an analysis of educational performance of various groups in the UK: http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/003749.html
employment data by group (UK Census) Those most likely to be employed in managerial or professional occupations were from the Chinese, Indian, White Irish, and other non-British White groups (between 32 and 38 per cent). White British people had lower rates of people working in managerial or professional occupations (27 per cent) than those groups. The groups with the lowest proportions of managers or professionals were the Black Caribbeans, Black Africans and Bangladeshis (between 19 per cent and 22 per cent).
Looking at particular jobs, one in seven Pakistani men in employment was a taxi driver, cab driver or chauffeur, compared with 1 in 100 White British men. Over a quarter of Bangladeshi men were chefs, cooks or waiters compared with 1 in 100 White British men. The proportion of Indian men working as medical practitioners, at 4 per cent, was around 10 times higher than the rate for White British men.
education (UK Census) In 2004 people from the Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean and Pakistani groups were less likely than White British people to have a degree (or equivalent). Among men, Bangladeshis and Black Caribbeans were the least likely to have a degree (11 per cent for each group). Among women, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis were the least likely to have a degree, 5 and 10 per cent respectively.
The groups most likely to have degrees were Chinese (31 per cent), Indian (25 per cent) and White Irish (24 per cent). These compared with 17 per cent of White British people. However, a relatively high proportion of Chinese people had no qualifications – 20 per cent, compared with 15 per cent of White British people.
Bangladeshis and Pakistanis were the most likely to be unqualified. Five in ten (49 per cent) Bangladeshi women and four in ten (40 per cent) Bangladeshi men had no qualifications. Among Pakistanis, 35 per cent of women and 29 per cent of men had no qualifications.
Tamils are an ethnic/linguistic group, “Sri Lankan” is a nationality. You meant to say Sinhalese. Sri Lankan Sinalese & Tamils are a small part of the UK “Asian” community. My observation is that the Sinhalese are largely professional and well integrated. Ditto for Sri Lankan Tamils who came before the 1980s and used to be the dominant professional class in Sri Lanka. The refugee Tamils who started coming in the 1980s are dealing with a number of issues, e.g. dislocation, lower education levels, violent extortionist Tamil gangs, and are not doing well.
Anyway, back to the thread. I would be interested in knowing the rates of self employment between Pakistanis & Indians. Could it be that Indians with urban origins who faced job discrimination were better able to become small scale entrepreneurs than rural Pakistanis ? I don’t completely understand the proximity to London argument, when the economy returned and London started to thrive again you had to be a professional to take part in a meaningful way
pakistanis likely to be self-employed (UK census) In 2004 people in employment from Pakistani, Chinese and White Irish groups were more likely to be self-employed than those in other ethnic groups in Great Britain. One in five Pakistanis in employment were self-employed (21 per cent), as were just under one in six Chinese (16 per cent) and White Irish (15 per cent) people. This compared with around one in ten (12 per cent) White British people and fewer than one in ten people from a Mixed or Black ethnic group.
I used to work at a car dealership in LA for a brief period and made some ethnographic deductions based on credit records and FICO scores of different communities. Amazingly after a while of working in that environment it was easy for a good salesman to understand where his bread and butter came from. You knew from a glance where a top dollar (multi pounder) sale was coming from. For example if an Persian prospect walked in you ran away because he had unreal prospects, bad or no credit ,no cosigner and usually wanted to buy a car for a price that no dealer would sell him a car. His or hers bargaining strategy was usually offer an unrealistic amount based on “my cousin bought it at that price.” An educated Indian specially a South Indian or Urban Indian city dweller (religion not a factor) with a convent education was usually a sale at a mini($50 to the salesperson)because he had done his research, gotten his financing from a net bank and usually had a FICO of 750 and above. Usually not the same with Punjabis in the San Fernando Valley who followed the Persian Principle but could be sold with a good commission to the salesman with the comment “You probably cannot afford it-let me show you something cheaper” (also called the takeaway). An ABCD was a prospect usually appearing that he/she wants to be white and afraid of showing his ethnic roots by bargaining-“oh mama stop bargaining this is America not Hyderabad”, usually had great credit and if they needed a car it was a sale. A Pakistani from the San Fernando Valley in LA usually had a score of 550 with champagne taste and “I’m waiting for my money to be wired in-how long can you hold my check” attitude.
Hindus are the least likely of all the religious groups to have been born in the UK, followed by Muslims and Buddhists. (UK census) Less than four in ten Hindus (37 per cent) who were living in Great Britain in 2001 had been born in the UK. A similar proportion had been born in Asia (39 per cent), predominantly India (30 per cent), and 6 per cent had been born in Sri Lanka. A further 21 per cent of Hindus had been born in Africa, reflecting the 1970s migration to the UK of East African Asians, in particular from Kenya (10 per cent) and Uganda (4 per cent).
In 2001, Indians were the most likely of any of the different ethnic groups to own their own homes (76 per cent) in Great Britain. White British and Pakistani households were next most likely to do so (70 per cent and 67 per cent respectively)…Black African, Other Black and Bangladeshi households were the least likely to own their own homes. (UK census)
Ouch. Any discussion on welfare/govt assistance/employment/education always brings out the worst in people who take it as an open invitation to vent.
Canadian unemployment (especially among new immigrants) and Canadian govt assistance are complex issues–cannot be boiled down to pat “laziness.” A little bit more nuance would be appreciated, please.
Child Tax Credit is different from Disability Assistance and so on. Please don’t lump everything together. Just so you can sleep better tonight, here is some information. The sky is not falling.
LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT RATE SLIPS TO RECORD LOW IN 2004 National –Further improvement as jobs rise again Provincial – Improvement in eight provinces in 2004 Major cities – Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Kitchener CMAs have the lowest rates
Above from:
one last thing: i think it is important to emphasize that there might not be one overwhelming predictor for between group differences in SES outcomes. e.g., “the difference in religion explains it.” or, “racism predicts it.” the relative inoculation of indian muslims, many of whom are east african ismailis (though not the majority from what i gather), so thats islam itself alone can’t predict this (the relative affluence of american muslims also tends to argue against this). similarly, the average sikh or pakistani are of the same general ethnic group, at least in terms of outside perception, so i don’t think that different levels of racism can explain the difference. i think a good analogy might be a series of nested ecosystems, and what are you seeing in the pakistani community in particular (the bangladeshis are more recent and more foreign born) are multiplier effects due to a host of various dynamics dependent on endogenous and exogenous factors.
You need to chill. Its obvious that my ‘gangster’ reference was tongue in cheek (considering I belong to a group that is itself cosidered “gangsta”…i.e the jatts). Being prejudiced means..that you are judging before the evidence is in…I have seen the evidence, and I am postjudiced…if there is such a thing. You threw accusations of ‘racist’ word around. Last time I checked…desis were considered all the same race. Its cultural, and regional upbringing that makes us different. You can call me ‘culturist’ or ‘regionalist’…but racist? Come on now?
don’t get the wrong side of kommissar camille, you here?
Razib, I hope you will continue to contribute as time permits. The issue merits deeper exploration. I would normally expect a sentence such as this when an academic is throwing up his hands and saying ‘I don’t know!’.
One relatively minor, but still relevant point – being ‘workless’ and ‘unemployed’ are different things in terms of how statistics are collected. To be officially ‘unemployed’ you have to be part of the labor market and ‘work-ready’, and be continuously looking for a job in the last ‘N’ weeks. ‘Workless’ can include people who long ago stopped looking, are disabled, otherwise ‘unemployable’, etc. The ‘workless’ category is always larger, since nobody has the patience to keep on looking week after week if it’s not getting you anywhere. So people shouldn’t be mentally comparing the 23% UK figure with a 5% US figure and drawing conclusions from there. The ‘unemployment rate’ is an index of economic slack – of how many more people would be employed if only the economy were ‘stronger’. The UK ‘workless’ figure points to the extent of a deeper systemic, social or individual problem, and should be compared to similar indices elsewhere.
Vic, racism is a term that varies with context. If you prefer to be known as a bigot or a regionalist, by all means, go ahead with that. And, for clarification, it was not obvious that your “gangsta” reference was tongue in cheek — it came across rude, inflammatory, and bigoted, and I am not alone in reading it that way.
louciecypher, the London economy did benefit professionals quite a bit, but the general increase in economic life in the area also helped facilitate increased commerce. If things are going well, consumption in the region increases, and if you’re a taxi driver, this can help (or be a blight, depending on how the system is set up). Meanwhile, if you are living in B’ham, you haven’t got much going for you. I brought it up to highlight the urban/rural divide that we see across communities. I think the most analogous example of this in the U.S. are all the old New England mill towns/cities that are depressed and economically inert/lagging.
I mean, ultimately I’m with razib on this — there are a lot of different things going on. I was trying to shed a little light on the historical context behind some of this divergence. With respect to Sikhs and Pakistanis, I don’t think the issue is so much race as it is visible difference. I have a feeling that if you look at Sikhs who are “visibly Sikh,” they’re not doing as well as their “non-visible” counterparts (I see this all the time within my own fam in the UK).
The UK census site is fabulous, as are some of the graphs available on the British Library site.
Thanks, razib =P
chachaji, I think your distinction is important, and I think it’s important to ask what the demographics of the “workless” category are. As I mentioned above, are statisticians including elderly parents? Stay at home mothers? Is this actually dire, or does it speak to larger family networks?
Camille…I’m really interested in your knowledge about all things South Asian with regards to Britain. Pray tell what your background is?
Sorry, Shalu, I don’t mean to pass myself off as an expert. The plethora of immigration/economics data is mostly from stuff I compiled from the UK Home Office, et al., for my senior honors thesis when I was an undergrad. My thesis was on race, class, and political identity in the context of the anti-racist movement, but my “focus communities” were British Asians and British Afro-Caribbeans.
I’m just your standard social science researcher — my academic training is in political economy (so interdisciplinary), my minor was in African American Studies/Creative Writing, and my areas of professional experience are in youth (criminal) justice, civil rights, economic development (regional focus: Africa), minority communities in “first world” countries, and political/economic philosophy.
Me@#3
Razib #33
I agree that there must be many factors, but the “outside perception” is not consistent,granted I’m moving one level of the onion outward (racially). I both love and loath this publication, The Economist. Closing Time at the Corner Shop– Poverty and ethnicity:
The struggle to escape poverty begins with a big decision: whether to seek paid employment or work for oneself. Historically there has been a strong ethnic divide. South Asian and Chinese immigrants have been quick to set up businesses, whereas black Africans and Caribbeans have worked for others…..Educational achievement makes an especially big difference in Britain, where graduates snootily consider self-employment a last resort for dimwits—unlike in America, where plenty of big brains make big bucks starting their own firms. ….If this is true, it is not surprising that Indians and Chinese are beginning to turn away from self-employment. Whizzes at exams, young and increasingly likely to have been born in Britain, the latest generation is more apt to become doctors and lawyers than restaurateurs. Black Africans and Caribbeans, meanwhile, still lag behind at school and as a group are slightly older, which may explain their swerve into business.
I may, of course, be ” overly sensitive”, but I took on board that an outsider, I will assume ‘the economist’ is neither black, nor asian, comes up with two different reasons for different groups to do the SAME thing,[both in the UK context]: go into businesses for themselves. 1) Asians did it in the past to get out of poverty… excelling in education now allows them to move into professions 2) Afro Briton’s are going into business NOW: NOT to get out of poverty, not due to entrepreneurial spirit , no influence from ‘American’ ideals -which are prevelent/projected all over the world, the idea of being the boss, its because they do badly at school?
.
If you do not thing that culture or regional upbringing affects in how we adapt in foreign culture, then you are rather naive or/and have blinders on. You seem to throw the term ‘Racist’ or ‘Bigoted’ around rather freely on those who seem to differ in their opinion. Its sort of a reverse McCarthysism and mentally lazy. Throw the word ‘racism’ and all argumemnts are won. I will throw a word of my own around…Hypocrite…as i doubt I will see you walking around in Downtown Detroit at midnight. By your argument if you avoid downtown Detroit, you are prejudging the people of Detroit. There is something known as ideal world and reality. Throwing terms like racist and bigoted freely only illuminates the wide chasm between your thinking and reality.
Back to the arguments instead of name calling. As for giving reason for high unemployment in certain section of population because they live in high unemployment areas….those people can move. I have personally done this. Its hard to relocate, but I believe being unemployed might be harder. The stigma of being unemployed differs in many community…..and in mine it about as bad as it can get.
Are their lots of jatts in Downtown Detroit? Something I love about the UK is no one can take anything for granted here- so you can say someone is from a “ housing estate†eg the projects, with out a perceived idea of who (color), lives there. People do not wonder around tower hamlests at night either.
Vic wrote:
There’s so much wrong in this statement. There are so many factors that effect why the poor just don’t get up and move to an area that has a higher employment rate. Poverty is often a cycle that’s complicated by a myriad of confounding factors.
Camille wrote:
Nothing to apologize for, you’re obviously quite well-versed and educated on the topic at hand. =) Cool stuff!
Oh, and dilettante, there are a few sociologists who posit that desis went into self-owned businesses largely because they COULD NOT get employment elsewhere. I’ll see if I can dig up my bibliography. I take issue with some of the methodology/arguments, but overall I think there’s an interesting dialogue happening around this. If the general assumption is that the difference was start up capital, then I wonder what drove those differences.
Vic, I rarely call people racist or bigoted — you have a distinct “honor” in that respect –, but I do call out statements for what they are. It’s convenient to say I didn’t address the issue you brought up; the only way to get to that conclusion would be to ignore the four other posts I’ve written on this thread already discussing different facets of economic and social integration among different British Asian subcommunities, and two of the factors I addressed included variant treatment (by identity/region) or possible differences in family/community structure (by cultural group or identity group). I took issue with your offensive and mentally lazy argument that “some groups are naturally inclined to be successful while other groups are naturally inclined to be gangstas” (paraphrased).
Furthermore, you have no idea who I am or what my life history is. You don’t know if I grew up in the ghetto or in the suburbs, so please withhold your judgments for another day. I have no interest in continuing this conversation with you, but I hope you take a moment to go back, reflect on what you wrote, and then think about how someone without malicious intent could “misread” your statement (if it was indeed tongue-in-cheek) in order to avoid something like this in the future.
Camille thanks for your feedback. I’ve had heard that explanation;Desi’s, (as well as some Caribbeans), qualifications etc were not recognized in the UK so they had to turn to entrepreneurship, I get that. My dig was at what I perceived as The Economist spin a) blacks ‘traditionally worked for others b) I’m making the bold assertion that today’s racism is < than yesteryears, so working for someone else is still an option. So why is the conclusion that academic lack the reason blacks are now going into business for themselves? It just seemed to be a leap is all. Anyway enough sideways thread jacking from me. Back to brown:, from the same article.
The puzzle is Pakistanis. Though they share some characteristics with Indians and Chinese—including improved education levels and a youthful profile—they are moving the other way. “Relative to their qualifications, they seem to get lower returns on paid employment than other groups,†says Mr Drinkwater. That they persist in self-employment may be due to a lack of more rewarding alternatives. Why don’t they find well-paid jobs as easily as others? “Discrimination is the thing we assume is left,†says Mr Clark. But there are other factors: the concentration of Pakistanis in depressed textile towns makes it harder to find employment, and unwillingness to move away compounds this. Lack of English is often a bigger problem than it is for Indians, many of whom have been longer in Britain and came from more sophisticated backgrounds in the first place. Religion may also play its part. Interestingly, white Muslims seem to experience the same labour-market disadvantages as black and Asian ones.
should read:I’m making the bold assertion that today’s racism is LESS THAN yesteryears
The basic reason is the quality of indians migrating to the UK. Being a londoner (working in the city) you can see many indians working in professional jobs, largely due to the good educational system in India compared to our south asian neighbours. More likely migrants were for white collar than blue collar jobs. When blue collar jobs migrated out of britain other south asians were left jobless, but the generous pension scheme helps them live.
You can see loads of idling bangladeshi youth hanging around in Bricklane, Whitechapel and other areas.
Follow your own rules before throwing words around. Have a nice life.