Work Package 4: National Case Studies of Challenges to Tolerance in Political Life ; The ACCEPT PLURALISM project (2010-2013) is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. (Call FP7-SSH-2009-A, Grant Agreement no: 243837). Coordinator: Prof. Anna Triandafyllidou, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.
This article offers an explanation for recent trends that indicate higher numbers of young British Pakistani men and women pursue higher education compared to their white peers. Our qualitative research provides evidence for shared norms and values amongst British Pakistani families, what we term 'ethnic capital'. However, our findings also highlight differences between families. The Bourdieuian notion of 'cultural capital' explains educational success among middle-class British Pakistani families. We argue, however, that insufficient attention has been given to the relation between education and ethnicity, and particularly the role of 'ethnic capital' in ameliorating social class disadvantage. Our research also recognizes the limitations of 'ethnic capital' and traces the interplay of ethnicity with gender and religion that produces differences between, and within, working-class British Pakistani families. We also emphasize how structural constraints, selective school systems and racialized labour markets, influence the effectiveness of 'ethnic capital' in promoting educational achievement and social mobility.
This qualitative study investigates the relationship between race and nation in an ethnically mixed neighbourhood in Glasgow, Scotland. It finds that Scottishness has a historically founded racialised referent at the level of the neighbourhood but that this referent is undermined in everyday life by syncretic codes of cultural belonging represented by signifiers such as accent, dress and mannerisms. However, these cultural signifiers that contest the racialised referent are, on occasions, themselves challenged by negative ascriptions such as terrorist and extremist which reinforce, though never completely, the original racialised referent of Scottishness as whiteness. We conclude that whiteness is an unstable identifier of Scottishness, and Scottishness is an unstable identifier of whiteness, such that a negative view of Islam as antithetical to imagined conceptions of Scottishness, cannot easily be sustained in areas of relatively high racialised minority settlement.
The paper addresses racism, discrimination, equal opportunities policies, institutional cultures, and the pressures of markets in influencing the position of minority ethnic groups in academia. The representation and position of minority ethnic groups among academic staff in UK higher education has previously been little studied. Data from the Higher Education Statistical Agency records and from new surveys are presented and analysed. Representation is low especially among some groups, but is growing among younger sections of academic staff, and is much higher in some academic subject areas than others. Analysis of terms of contract and of seniority by ethnic groups suggests that minorities are significantly less well placed within the profession. An important distinction is between British and non- British nationality in assessing ethnicity and academic posts; non- British staff may be seen as part of a global labour market, especially in fixed term contract research work. The evidence is evaluated alongside a re-exploration of principal models for explaining ethnic disadvantage in labour markets: closure, discrimination, equal opportunities, institutional racism and markets. The authors conclude that a combination of the last two models offers the best prospect of a full explanation.
