Ethnicity and Economy: Race and Class Revisited

Ethnicity and Economy ‘Race and Class’ Revisited Edited by Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley Ethnicity and Economy E...

Author: Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

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Ethnicity and Economy ‘Race and Class’ Revisited

Edited by Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

Ethnicity and Economy

Ethnicity and Economy ‘Race and Class’ Revisited Edited by

Steve Fenton Department of Sociology University of Bristol

and

Harriet Bradley Department of Sociology University of Bristol

Selection and editorial matter, Introduction and Chapter 1 © Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley, 2002. Chapters 2–10 © Palgrave Publishers Ltd, 2002. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0-333-79301-3 hardcover This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethnicity and economy: “race and class” revisited/[edited by] Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–79301–3 1. Race relations–Economic aspects. 2. Ethnicity–Economic aspects. 3. Race discrimination–Economic aspects. 4. Social classes. I. Fenton, Steve, 1942– II. Bradley, Harriet. HT1531 .E84 2002 305.8–dc21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Jenny and Irving

Contents Notes on the Contributors

ix

Introduction Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

1

Part I

7

Theoretical Interventions

1 Ethnicity, Economy and Class: Towards the Middle Ground Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

9

2 Race, Ethnicity and Class in Different Political and Intellectual Conjunctures John Rex

31

3 Racism, Sexuality and Political Economy: Marxism/Foucault/‘Postmodernism’ Ali Rattansi

42

4 Gender, Ethnicity and Social Stratification: Rethinking Inequalities Floya Anthias

64

5 Muslim Voices: Class, Economic Restructuring and the Formation of Political Identity Pandeli M. Glavanis

80

6 Ethnicity and Class as Competing Interpretations: The Socio-economic Mobility of Asian Americans Deborah Woo

98

Part II

Empirical Explorations

119

7 The Ugandan Asians in Sweden – Twenty-five Years after the Expulsion Charles Westin vii

121

viii Contents

8 Social Exclusion and Young Turkish-speaking People’s Future Prospects: Economic Deprivation and the Culturalization of Ethnicity Pinar Enneli

142

9 Migrant Workers in the Construction Industry: The Experience of Tunisians in Modena Faycel Daly

160

10 ‘Not Just Lucky White Heather and Clothes Pegs’: Putting European Gypsy and Traveller Economic Niches in Context Colin Clark

183

Bibliography

199

Index

219

Notes on the Contributors Floya Anthias is Professor of Sociology and Head of Sociology at the University of Greenwich. She has published extensively in the areas of gender, ethnicity and class, and also in the area of migration. She has recently completed research on identity and exclusion amongst youngsters from Cypriot and South Asian backgrounds, as well as on selfemployment practices and citizenship policies with regard to minorities and women in the United Kingdom. Harriet Bradley is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol, having previously worked at the Universities of Durham and Sunderland. Her publications include Fractured Identities, Gender and Power in the Workplace and Myths at Work (with Mark Erickson, Carol Stephenson and Steve Williams). Her research interests include women’s employment, trade unions and social inequalities. Currently, she is working with Steve Fenton and other colleagues on a study of young adults’ labour market trajectories in Bristol, and with Geraldine Healy on ethnic minority women in trade unions. Colin Clark is Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. As well as teaching Romani Studies, he has conducted research and writes about the contemporary situation of Gypsies and other Travellers in the UK and Europe. He is a member of the Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare and Civil Rights and author (with Donald Kenrick) of Moving On: the Gypsies and Travellers of Britain. Faycel Daly is employed at the Institut Supérieur des Études Technologiques, in Gafsa, Tunisia. He has written extensively on Italian migration with particular focus on Tunisian migrants. His publications include The Double Passage: Tunisian Migration to the South and North of Italy; The Impact of Trade Union Education and Training in Health and Safety on the Workplace Activity of Health and Safety Representatives; and Economic Migration and Social Exclusion: The Case of Tunisians in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s. Pinar Enneli gained a PhD in Sociology from Bristol University in 2001. She has presented a number of papers at various international conferences. Her general interests are ethnic minorities, with specific reference ix

x Notes on the Contributors

to the Turkish-speaking communities in Europe; and second-generation young people’s economic and social integration/segregation/exclusion. She is currently working on a project involving Turkish-speaking and Bangladeshi young people’s transition to adulthood in London. Steve Fenton is Professor in Sociology at the University of Bristol. He graduated in sociology and law at Hull University before completing his PhD at Duke University, North Carolina and taking up a post at Bristol. He is the author of Durkheim and Modern Sociology and Ethnicity: Social Structure, Culture, Identity; and joint editor (with Rohit Barot and Harriet Bradley) of Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change. He has researched and published extensively on ethnicity, health and illness, and is currently a co-researcher with Harriet Bradley on a study of young adults’ labour market trajectories in Bristol. Pandeli M. Glavanis is Professor and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Northumbria. His current research is focused on globalization and the politics of the European Union, and the effects of structural adjustment with regard to the prospects for governance in developing societies. He is also directing a Europeanfunded project on The Experience of Racism in the New Europe, which is being carried out in five European states, and completing a manuscript from a European-funded project (in eight European countries) entitled Muslim Voices in the New Europe. Recent publications include Patterns of Social Inequality (edited with Hugh Beynon) and Adjustment, Civil Society and the State: A Comparative Debate (edited with Paulo Ortez). Ali Rattansi is Professor of Sociology at City University, London. Amongst his books are Marx and the Division of Labour; Postmodernism and Society; ‘Race’, Culture and Difference; and Racism, Modernity and Identity. John Rex is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on sociological theory and on migration, race relations and ethnicity. Since his arrival in England from South Africa in 1949, he has played a major part in developing the study of race relations and ethnicity in Britain. Charles Westin is Professor of Migration and Ethnicity Studies at Stockholm University and Director of the Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations. He has recently coedited (with Kjell Goldman and Ulf Hannerz) Nationalism and Internationalism in the Post-Cold War Era.

Notes on the Contributors xi

Deborah Woo is a Professor in the Community Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a sociologist, she has been concerned with how the claim to ‘institutional objectivity’ can divert attention away from attitudinal and procedural biases. Her book Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans: the New Face of Workplace Barriers examines the artificial barriers facing scientists and engineers in a high-tech government organization.

Introduction Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

One of the most notable features of social science research in the 1980s and 1990s has been the increased interest in the study of ethnicity, in terms of both empirical research and theoretical debate. Such work has reflected an increasing awareness of the multiplicity of ethnicities and the complexity of ethnic identification. There are many reasons for this development, which reflects key changes in global political and economic relationships. The break-up of the Soviet Union brought to our notice new or transforming ethnic conflicts in many Eastern and Asian societies, while an increasingly global economy has produced new patterns of migration and altered the flow of peoples between the more and less developed nations. In the Western societies ethnic hierarchies are also changing as economies transform, with some ethnic minorities benefiting from opportunities for upward mobility while others suffer from heightened exclusion and marginalization. New ethnic patterns of ‘winning and losing’ may be the result (Wrench and Modood 2001). There were also intellectual reasons for the increased interest in ethnicity, at least in British sociology. The study of class became unfashionable and the collapse of the Soviet bloc was seen as invalidating the Marxist project. Some approaches to gender and ethnicity established themselves within the framework of class analysis; others increasingly departed from or disavowed this framework altogether. Second, the ‘cultural turn’ in sociology promoted new interests in the analysis of culture, religion, lifestyles and identity, rather than the previous preoccupation with material aspects of social difference. For example, different forms of racism and of political mobilization which are under study are no longer being linked to issues of class or class consciousness. Indeed, recent studies of ethnicity are as likely to 1

2 Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

display a concern with gender issues as with class. The flight from class has gone far enough to make some students and researchers not only unenthused, but even embarrassed by it. At the University of Bristol a series of biennial conferences explored these developments and focused on different aspects of ethnicity. One conference, held in 1997, was entitled Economy, Ethnicity and Social Change. A major concern was to restore a proper balance in terms of the relative importance of economic and cultural issues. Some of us at Bristol felt there was a growing need to revisit economic aspects of ethnic difference and in particular to explore again the relationship between the economy, ethnicity and the class structure, while still accepting the importance of culture, meaning and identity. Some of the chapters presented in this volume are developed from papers presented at that conference; others are contributed by scholars in the field of ethnicity. The contributors reflect upon past approaches to the study of ‘race and class’, their strengths and limitations, and offer ideas about how to rethink the economic context of ethnic relations and the relationship between ethnicity and class. They are, however, sensitive to the significance of cultural aspects of ethnicity as well as material aspects. The aim is to seek out the ‘middle ground’ in two senses: in looking for a balance of materialist and culturalist understanding; and in neither assuming that class analysis is the sole road to truth, nor in attempting to think class out of existence.

Rethinking ethnicity and class: the middle ground Most sociologists would now argue that a theory of racism and of ethnic identities cannot be reduced to the theory of class, class formation and class-situated forms of political and social consciousness. It is, however, important to acknowledge that a ‘class’ orientation has informed the theorization of racism and ethnicity at several key junctures. Significant changes in the economy give rise to social, cultural and institutional changes which are a fundamental part of the agenda of a broad sociological imagination. Within a Marxist frame of reference these social, cultural and institutional orderings of societies can be seen as ‘ultimately’ traceable to an economic substrate; or it may be conceded, as revisionist Marxists have argued, that they have a certain ‘autonomy’. In a non-Marxist frame this autonomy of the social and cultural order is readily accepted or taken for granted. At the same time, it is important to consider the interconnectedness of the economic and the sociocultural without seeing one as reducible to the other. In practice, these

Introduction 3

differences of theoretical stance, often seen as fundamentally divergent points of departure, may matter less than has sometimes been imagined, especially when undertaking empirical research. Between two extremes – a Marxist political economy which remains true to its 150-year-old roots, and a ‘culturalist’ sociological frame which seemingly abandons the material in favour of the symbolic – there is a central terrain, a ‘middle ground’, which both acknowledges the importance of economic formations which are in part socio-culturally apprehended, and recognizes the sui generis status of the sociocultural order, without abandoning an interest in the material order. The sociology of ethnicity and racism, and of gender, has provided key contexts within which the methodological, empirical and theoretical exploration of this middle ground has taken place. Many examples could be given; just a few will illustrate the point. It is clear that racism, as a form of inchoate social consciousness and of relatively systematic political ideology, has both narrowly ‘class’ and more broadly economic coordinates. As Balibar and Wallerstein (1991) have argued, there is a kind of tug-of-war in capitalism between universalism and particularism – with racism and sexism being seen as forms of particularism. The tendency towards universalism in capitalism is expressed as the wish or need to treat all alike – as labour, as customers and as interchangeable units in an economic system. Particularism may be seen as the impetus to treat people differently, casting some as super-exploited, cheaper labour or as unwanted labour. This difference is then frequently expressed as natural difference between black and white, and between men and women. Similarly there are, in specific phases of economic change, winners and losers, and losers frequently perceive their loss not merely as economic but also as social and symbolic. Thus the politics of redistribution cannot be simply disentangled from the politics of recognition. Such a sense of loss (both material and symbolic) among people described by Wieviorka (1994a) as exhibiting the mentality of the ‘poor white’ is readily translated into racism, not in a simple and mechanical way, but with enough repetition and pattern to indicate a tendency reproduced in a number of different societal contexts. In related fashion, the sense of nostalgia for a world we have lost may be politically converted into a racism or nationalism which constructs an included ‘we’, and simultaneously constructs the ‘other’ as a threat and as unwanted. Much of the politics which is antiEuropean Union and anti-immigrant takes this form. It is also evident that in many societies there are significant intersections of class and ethnic structures and of class and ethnic identities.


These intersections rarely constitute a perfect match – although the ‘New World’ fusion of the slave condition and African origin approximated this for a time – but none the less form complex but visible clusters and concentrations, either in fact or in the social imagination, or in both. The identification of Chinese Malaysians with business enterprise is one such. On a smaller scale in Britain there is a close identification of Bangladeshis and Chinese with the restaurant and catering trades. In all such cases there are both ‘purely’ economic and sociocultural tendencies at work; the way in which the growth of super- and hyper-markets undermines the business viability of the small shopkeeper is no respecter of persons. On the other hand, there are ethnic, familial and cultural reasons which account in part for the success of particular groups within the small entrepreneurial economy. For this reason the study of ethnicity and business enterprise has constituted a singularly fruitful and interesting sphere of sociological enquiry. At the same time the attempts by successive generations, within ethnically defined groups, to break with traditions of the family business promote changes in the ethnic communities themselves, not least within the sphere of gender relations. This example illustrates the way particular ethnic groups come to predominate in particular niches in a market economy. From such grounded examples, we can begin to develop an account of how relations of class, ethnicity and gender contribute to the formation of specific hierarchies both within national economies and in the global division of labour, along with an understanding of the way racism and sexism inform the development of those hierarchies. This is a key aim of our book, which contributes to the expanding exploration of ethnicity in a global context. We aim to further the reconceptualizing of the relationship between ethnicity and class, from the stance of the ‘middle ground’, where the realities of class and ethnicity are not lost in the super-abstractions of ungrounded theory.

Theory and research: the structure of the book The first six chapters are primarily theoretical or analytical, in the sense that they explore how the intersection of ethnicity and economy can be addressed. They speculate but they are not merely speculative. The chapters locate their discussion in relation to particular contexts, issues or debates. The various authors avoid the abstraction of some recent sociological theorizing by backing conceptual arguments with concrete examples and emphasizing the specificity of intersections of ethnicity while pointing to some general guidelines for analysis.

Introduction 5

In chapter 1 we, the editors, set out a rationale and framework for rethinking the relationship between ethnicity and class. We develop an account to help explain the different patterns of the formation and mobilization of ethnic identities within economic structures. In chapters 2–3, John Rex and Ali Rattansi respectively revisit in more detail the ‘race and class’ debate. Rex draws on the case of South Africa to explore changing perspectives, and concludes that such theories need to be context-specific. Rattansi dissects Sivanandan’s classic article ‘Race, Class and the State: the Black Experience in Britain’ (1976) as a prime example of the ‘race and class’ problematic, highlighting its limitations, and then proposes a ‘postmodern framing’ of the class/ ethnicity relationship. In chapter 4 Floya Anthias explores many of the intricacies of the intersection of gender with ethnicity and class. Whilst stressing the constructed and contingent nature of social difference, she proposes some general principles of analysis which set out to unify disparate strands in the study of all three. Pandeli Glavanis in chapter 5 deals specifically with globalization and its effects in terms of the marginalization of some ethnic groups and inclusion of others, focusing particularly on the political and social identities of Muslim groups in Europe. In chapter 6, Deborah Woo critically explores the dominant cultural explanations for the success of some Asian groups in the United States and points to the importance of economic factors in explaining the ‘Asian miracle’. This proves to be a site for a grounded theorization of culture and economy. Part II consists of four chapters which present extended case studies illustrating concretely some of the issues discussed in Part I. Charles Westin addresses the theme of Asian success and social mobility in relation to the evolving position of migrants expelled from East Africa within the Swedish economy. Like Woo, he points to the importance of class origins in accounting for the differential success of particular ethnic groups. In chapter 8 Pinar Enneli deals with a less studied minority group, Turkish-speaking people in London. Her research explores the position of different Turkish-speaking groups and the forces that trap some of them within a narrowly defined sphere of opportunities. Chapter 9 presents findings from Faycel Daly’s fieldwork among Tunisian migrant workers in Modena. He explores the economic and cultural factors which contribute to their disadvantaged position in the construction industry and argues that they constitute an emerging ‘underclass’. Finally, in chapter 10, Colin Clark considers the particular economic niches occupied by Gypsy minorities in Britain, and explores the way that Romanies utilize majority perceptions of


Gypsies and exploit aspects of their ethnic identity for economic advantage. In these four case studies economic structures, ethnic identities and the fates of particular groups are analysed in very specific contexts. There is within sociology and in the popular imagination a ‘discourse of race’ and a ‘discourse of ethnicity’ (Fenton 1999). However, we have not sought to impose a uniform terminology on the contributors. In any case these discourses are situated in particular places and traditions. American sociologists no doubt appreciate precisely the sense in which the concept of race is discredited; but they live in a society where the discourse of race is extremely powerful. At the same time, whilst the discourses of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ cover much the same ground, there are unquestionably important differences of emphasis and tone. More difficult to understand is the widespread retreat from class analysis. If earlier theorizing, particularly in Europe, sought to frame the analysis of ethnicity primarily in class terms, contemporary interests, seeing ethnicity as primarily cultural, concerned with identity and with the drawing of social and symbolic boundaries, have run determinedly in the opposite direction. In looking for ways forward in the analysis of class and ethnicity, this volume seeks to restore some balance. Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley University of Bristol 2002

Part I Theoretical Interventions

1 Ethnicity, Economy and Class: Towards the Middle Ground Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley

Introduction In the past three decades a remarkable shift has occurred, even an inversion, within the sociological agenda. In the 1970s no self-respecting British sociologist could ignore the concept of class: class analysis was a major concern, if not the key concern of British empirical sociology. At this time the sociology of ‘race relations’, as it was characteristically called, was a relatively marginal sociological specialism; and even within that specialism much theoretical work was devoted to the relation between ‘race and class’. As Ali Rattansi’s dissection of the neo-Marxist position in chapter 3 of this volume shows, among Marxists there was a tendency to reduce race to a ‘subset’ of class, even to see it as an obfuscation of ‘real’ class relations; or at the least, to see class as ‘determinant in the last instance’. While the leading neo-Weberian, John Rex, who revisits some of his earlier work in chapter 2, outlined the specificity of a ‘race relations situation’ (Rex 1970), his framing of ‘race relations’ was principally in relation to class contexts and social and political power. The task of breaking free of this modernist preoccupation with class as the central dimension of social differentiation was all the harder because of the strength and sophistication of the classical models of the accounts of class and social divisions offered by Marx and Weber. But thirty years on there have been dramatic changes. Class has vacated the centre-stage, written out of the scripts of poststructuralism, postmodernism and the ‘turn to culture’. Not yet actually dead (Pakulski and Waters 1996), it lurks in the wings hoping for a comeback, its afficionados mounting spirited defences of its continued relevance (for example, Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992; Marshall 1997; Bradley et al. 2000). But it is certainly of diminishing interest to many 9


in the profession and it would be quite possible in 2002 to take an undergraduate degree in sociology without learning anything about class theory. By contrast, there has been a boom in the study of ethnicity (the term now commonly favoured over ‘race’). A wealth of books, new journals, postgraduate and undergraduate courses, and dissertations are devoted to aspects of ethnicity, these in turn reflecting the newer angles favoured by the cultural turn: identities, cultural representations, ethno-nationalism, imperial and postcolonial cultures, the politics of racism, citizenship and multiculturalism. This academic boom has been encouraged by public debates about national identity in Britain and other European states, debates which are allied to the politics of minorities, and of immigration and racism. At the same time, equal opportunities and multicultural solutions are both proposed and bitterly opposed. Academically, it is fostered by a fragmentation of the sociological agenda in which no particular theories, topics or issues can claim pride of place. We here commend a new balance, a reintegration of the study of the economic and the cultural, class and ethnicity and the linkage between them. In advocating such a reintegration, we are not calling for a return to the old ‘race and class’ frameworks. We are aware of the limitations of the older theoretical perspectives; with hindsight many such modernist frameworks appear too monolithic, inflexible, exclusionary and thus unable to deal adequately with the complexities and multiplicity of ‘the social’.1 Moreover, most of the older perspectives are vitiated by their connections with evolutionary theories of social development and ‘progress’, now viewed with suspicion following the postmodern deconstructions of nineteenth-century scientistic thought (Foucault 1972; Lyotard 1984). We have highlighted these limitations in our earlier work (Barot, Bradley and Fenton 1999; Bradley and Fenton 1999). Nor do we accept uncritically the whole package of ‘post’-thinking, although we acknowledge its commendable stress on the variability and fluidity of social relations and its insistence on the multidimensional nature of social difference. However, as we have previously argued (Bradley and Fenton 1999), we are concerned by postmodernist theorists’ overemphasis on culture and choice and their neglect of the economic dimension, of material constraints and disparities of power. There is a great deal of fruitless abstraction in much postmodern work; insightful sociological analysis needs to be grounded within specific contexts and propelled by a sufficient measure of empirical curiosity. We argue for a ‘middle ground’ in which social phenomena such as

Ethnicity, Economy and Class 11

ethnicity and class are seen as possessing both economic and cultural aspects. While wary of any modernist accounts which impute an unwarranted fixity to relations of difference (ethnicity, class, gender or sexuality), we also want to highlight the persistence and relative temporal stability of these relationships, distancing ourselves from any idea of social identities as detached and free-floating. Our exploration of the ‘middle ground’ starts with a general discussion around concepts of economy and culture and the interconnections between them. Here we stress that both class and ethnicity have economic and cultural (meaningful) aspects (Aronowitz and DiFazio 1994). In the latter sections of this chapter we move to a more specific account of the relations between ethnicity and class in contemporary societies. Like Rex in chapter 2, we reject the possibility of a general theory of class, ethnicity and racism that could explain their manifestations in any place or epoch. The relationship between different axes of social differentiation must be considered to be variable and context-specific. None the less, we do seek to establish some sociological guidelines – typologies and concepts – for an understanding of class and ethnicity and their place in the divisions and hierarchies of contemporary economies.

Ethnicity, economy and culture: social structure and social action We start by considering formulations of economy and culture before relating them to ethnicity. The question of the articulation of ethnicity and economy can be understood only in part as a specific instance of the articulation of culture and economy; the question of culture and economy is a considerably wider one than that of ethnicity and economy. And whilst ethnicity has a clear link to culture, the concept of ethnicity cannot be equated with the concept of culture. To put it more starkly, ethnic groups cannot be simply considered as cultural groups or ‘culture communities’. The wider question of ‘culture and economy’ – since it has such well-known antecedents – must, however, be considered first. It constitutes the point of departure for the more specific question of ethnicity and economic activity or economic ‘processes’. We will address ‘culture and economy’ by identifying four strands of social thought – Marxist, Weberian, postmodernist and anthropological – although we do not promise to give all equal weight. Marxist thought may be seen as incorporating, within its dominantly materialist methodology, a central paradigm of base and superstructure. In this


paradigm, ideas and ‘culture’ were viewed as products, as superstructural phenomena whose emergence, nature and type could be traced to the function they served in justifying a regime of relations of production and a system of class relations. Cultural and institutional ‘products’ formed a superstructure which could be related to class relations themselves – for example, in constituting the ideas of property and the legal individual, and in forming the apparatus of courts which sustain these ideas and relations. Or they could be ‘produced’ in the form of more narrowly defined political ideas which influenced the development of class-political consciousness. Here we might consider ideas about the naturalness of market relations which purport to justify the relations of capital and wage labour or ‘nation’ as a loyalty to compete with class. Weberian sociology was conducted as a debate with the historicist methodology and materialist philosophy of Marxism. Forms of class consciousness which Marx considered ‘inevitable’ were seen by Weber to be merely ‘possible’, thus building open-endedness into his sociology and his propositions about change. Furthermore, Weber allowed a much greater play to the meanings of human action, viewed as independent factors in the shaping of social outcomes. Thus, in some important respects, human actors were viewed as individuals facing choices, and their choices were seen to be guided by certain typical meanings. These meanings, and the choices that flowed from them, were ‘patterned’ and so social action need not be regarded as hopelessly in flux, incapable of being simplified by analytical tools of understanding and explanation, the famously differentiated phases of sociological study. Thus in Weber’s account, capitalism was an important category of analysis since it constituted an historically specific set of institutions, an order of social classes and a typical basis for the distribution of wealth and power. But added to this was a view of capitalism as a type of modern culture, incorporating within it sets of attitudes to the past and the future, to work and vocation, to the accumulation of wealth and the use and enjoyment of it. His thesis about Protestantism argued that Protestant values and ideas were peculiarly congruent with capitalist philosophy in the historical phase where capitalism as modernity came to disrupt and overwhelm traditional modes of action and thought. Thus Weber’s thought can be commended as grappling with both economic and cultural aspects of capitalism as a social phenomenon (see Weber 1926, 1938). In the late twentieth century and new millennium one of the most pre-eminent postures within social thought has been the elaboration of the argument that all modern or modernist sociologies have made


indefensible assumptions about social determinacy, both substantively and theoretically. That is, the substantive categories of analysis – class, state, families, ethnic groups – have been viewed as much less ‘real’, substantial or fixed and therefore are not seen as being amenable to rational analysis in the way that predecessor sociologies had believed. Theoretically, poststructuralism abandoned ‘social structure’ as the boldest embodiment of the modernist theoretical claims and with it the notion of sociological determinacy. Ideas of unpredictability, fragility, shifting identities, interruptions and disruptions tilted at the hubris of sociology in both its Marxist and non-Marxist analytical modes. Although modernist and postmodernist frames could scarcely be typified by a brief and uniform characterization, it is certain that the influence of postmodernity has been accompanied by a pronounced shift in sociological attention towards the concept of ‘culture’, the so-called cultural turn in sociology, and indeed in many related disciplines. This new form of attention has been ‘critical’, both politically and intellectually, in so far as it stimulates the constant rethinking of both social and sociological categories. This would in part explain the appeal of postmodernist frames to students and writers who are critically engaged with sexuality, gender and ethnicity. At another moment postmodernity takes on a profoundly conservative character in the celebration of irrationality, the debunking of planned and sought-for social change, and the denial of the possibility of, or at the very least a shift away from, the analytical exposure of social realities, including the temporal persistence of material inequalities. An alternative view is to see postmodernity as being absorbed into a new consensus in sociology which allows for the observation of pattern, social change and reproduction in social life, whilst incorporating the heightened attention to symbol and meaning, and the assumption of open-ended agency and relative indeterminacy. In anthropology the same sorts of intellectual movement can be observed, a prime difference being that ‘culture’ has always been the dominant concept in anthropology, and anthropologists have long been able to claim expert status in the interpretation of meaning and symbol. Anthropologists also have a long tradition of interrogating the relationship between observer and observed, both as a moral and as an intellectual question. They have, as we shall discuss later, a special place in the history of the concept of ethnic group. Before considering the import of these tendencies in sociology for the understanding of ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘ethnicity’ we should essay some conclusions about where we now stand in relation to the sociological


enterprise. The first step is to acknowledge that the kind of historical determinacies associated with nineteenth- and twentieth-century sociologies – Marxist and non-Marxist – are not now sustainable. The idea that societies evolve as organisms cannot be supported, not least because the idea of ‘society’ as the unit of sociological analysis has rightly come to be seen as problematic. The particular Marxist version of evolutionary sociology – the historical movement towards a rational society organized on a socialist model – took a singularly hard blow from the late twentieth-century collapse of Soviet and East European regimes. The idea of history being at an end – as if nothing were left to be contested – may be fanciful, but so too is the idea that history is moving in response to discernible motors that drive it forward in ways largely beyond the grasp of human agents. A kind of sociological attention which gives much greater space to choice, tactics and strategy in human action has gained in confidence even whilst we should recognize that a view of social outcomes as ‘simply’ the consequences of actors’ choices is naïve. In particular, we reject the idea that it is not possible to detect the contours of ‘structuration’ in social systems, which form contexts of action which individuals do not choose, even if they do choose how to act in these contexts. If one accepts the idea – as we do – that the specification of pattern and of structured context remains an essential element of the sociological imagination, and we accept that these structured contexts are not simply material or ideal but are simultaneously material and ideal, then we should take a few steps in identifying how these contexts are constituted. In doing so, we will continue to draw upon some modernist concepts informed by Marxist and non-Marxist sociology which we believe cannot be abandoned.

Modernism’s legacy: social class, globalization and individualism Despite the continued speculation about its demise, social class is certain to remain a key element of the sociological imagination for three overwhelmingly important reasons. The first is that whilst classes change so that a distinction between proletarian and bourgeois per se becomes less compelling, at the same time property, wealth, classbased power and the class determination of life-chances remain evident wherever we choose to look (in, for example, studies of class and health or class origins and social mobility). Thus it seems that only whim or the movement of sociological fashion could cause us to look


resolutely elsewhere or imagine that, somehow, class societies had disappeared. Any consideration of modern Britain, for example, would have to account for class change both in the shape of the replacement of traditional forms of proletarian work with new forms of employment and the increasingly important role of the socially excluded underclass. Second, the movement away from a social order based on class struggle as understood in Marxist and neo-Marxist theory has in no way undermined the powerful salience of class cultures. In the celebration of the concept of culture, the notion of class culture must continue to take ground close to the centre. This does not mean that old class cultures simply persist or that class in its sense closer to Weber’s status groups continues to underpin the status order. Both of these may be partly true. But studying class culture more roundly means attuning ourselves to those nuances of social sensibility, of meaning and habits of thought which are rooted in the first instance in experiences and expectations which can properly be called class-based. Such meanings and habits are crucial in maintaining the structures of class disadvantage; for example, in hampering young working-class men and women from attaining the university education which has become a ‘normal expectation’ for their middle-class compeers.2 Equally, those who have acquired the right kind of cultural capital draw on it throughout their lives to solidify their class advantages. Third, a great deal of post-Marxist sociology has eschewed class understanding because class is seen to have obscured or pre-empted proper discussion of ethnicity and gender. This is entirely the wrong emphasis. The difficult – but necessary – part is how, in a post-Marxist mood, the social observer can reconcile and blend the understanding of class experience and class cultures with the intersecting experience and cultures of gender and ethnicity. Such an endeavour is the correct way to develop a proper understanding of the processes of social differentiation in any given society, and the multiple positioning of individuals within these processes (Bradley 2000). Unlike class, globalization is a favoured concept of both materialists and postmodernist ‘culturalists’, constituting a set of propositions about global economic change and new modes of cultural transmission and reflexivity. We do not propose to assess these claims, respectively assessed by, for example, Held and McGrew (2000), Featherstone (1990), Robertson (1992). But we instance ‘globalization’ simply to signal that, however precisely it is understood, there is widespread agreement that a contemporary sociology has to understand the


transnational movement of people, ideas, capital and images. ‘Local’ micro-social orders are connected to these global movements in important ways. National economies are globally shaped and so local and national political consciousness are shaped by both the material importance of global events – such as the Asian economic crises – and globally communicated reflexive awareness of them and cultural representations of their effects on our lives. Furthermore, however much, as a sociological methodology and as a political faith, Marxism may be pronounced dead, it is through the understanding of globalization that some of the arguments connected with Marxism may be seen to have renewed resonance. International capitalist organizations behave precisely as capital is expected to behave, that is, in the ruthless pursuit of profit in which ‘national’ or more pertinently nation-state boundaries are irrelevant or ignored. Similarly, the movement of labour transnationally, or its alternative, the endless movement of capital in search of cheap and manageable labour, is indicative of the tendencies of capitalism on a global scale, as is the instantaneous transmission of messages and images in the hands of globally operative corporations, whose motives and resources are responsible for creating and sending them. What is seen to be a global magnification of culture, symbol, image and message is typically a global capitalist magnification of culture tied to consumption. Finally, just as state systems of regulation reinforce the conditions under which capitalism works in particular countries, so the new global mechanisms of control – the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization and related bodies – are the instruments of enforcement of global capitalism, frequently hardening rather than reversing the gap between rich and poor countries. Globalization is, in short, part of a new cultural agenda which is based on consumerism and individualism; but it is also linked to the revival, with some new dimensions, of earlier agendas of political economy. Indeed, individualism is the third dimension of the modern world that we focus on in order to exemplify the benefit of tracing ‘pattern’ and ‘structured contexts’ in the contemporary world, contexts which constitute a setting within which meanings are elaborated. There is within Weber a hint of the meaning of individuality in modern culture when he explicates the way in which Protestantism sets the individual alone in face of God and bestows on the individual this burden of responsibility and duty. This individualizing of moral character and the person was entailed in Protestantism and, as is well known, was seen to be especially suited to the temper of capitalist work and enterprise. At


the same time the puritan elements of Protestantism enjoined the careful use of wealth and warned against pleasure and indulgence. As Weber observed, the motive and ideal forces necessary to foster capitalism may not be the same as those needed to sustain it. In late capitalism the production of goods and services continues to be supremely rationally organized, but in rich countries at least the success of many enterprises depends on persuading large numbers of people to spend, enjoy and ‘fulfil themselves’, a curiously modern consumers’ version of vocation. As a consequence much of contemporary promotion of goods and services precisely depends on the inculcation of individualism in the form of the individual who chooses – or ‘needs’ or has a ‘right to expect’ – his or her ‘special’ goods, travel and delights of all kinds. It was, however, Durkheim who made the analysis of individualism the centrepiece of his sociology. Here we can find a reconciliation of the progress of individualism as institutional change and as moral and cultural change. Aware that individualism could be seen as the moral evil of the age – as ‘excessive individualism’ – he also wanted to show that the partial detachment of individuals from traditional social milieux was a necessary accompaniment of modernity and social differentiation. This social differentiation brought with it an increased regard for the individual as a social value, a valuation reflected in the retreat from and abhorrence of violations of the individual person (see Fenton 1984). A regard for the sacredness of the individual and his or her right to be protected against arbitrariness becomes part of the moral culture of modern societies, even if it is frequently breached; and this is a moral culture which is formed by sociological change, that is a change in the way in which individuals are related and obligated to others, and in the moral binding force which makes a highly differentiated and individualized society possible. Thus Durkheim had, in his sociological imagination if not in fact, reconciled the individualization characteristic of modernity with the continued need for moral order. If we put together the two sources of sociological speculation about ‘individualism’, it is possible to catch sight of the edges of a profound moral and cultural dilemma and contradiction in modernity. Individuality as a cultural force is partly driven forward by the significance attached to choice and fulfilment in the consumption of commodities as both ‘products’ and ‘services’. At the same time, individualism has two consequences which are disruptive socially and disturbing at the level of the person. The first is that individualism frequently does represent, as Durkheim feared, a breaking up of forms of attachment and obligation which isolate individuals as much as


liberate them. The second is that, for several and different reasons, the stimulated wishes of the individual cannot always be fulfilled and almost certainly cannot be a source of self-realization. One of the reasons is that, as Merton (1968) long ago argued, wants may be created whilst the means to satisfy those wants and the rules governing their pursuit, are unevenly distributed or poorly inculcated. Under these circumstances the pursuit of individual satisfaction becomes a breeding ground for personal and class- and ethnicity-grounded ressentiment. We can see this exemplified in the hostility to mainstream ‘white’ society and the construction of counter values and meanings on the part of young African Americans and Latinos in the ghettoized areas of North American cities (Bourgois 1995; Anderson 1999). In addition, the gap between desire and the distribution of rewards, frequently accompanied by a diffuse and powerful sense of guilt or moral repulsion, allows for the revival of politicized ‘fundamentalist’ moralities. These moralities lash out at the absence of restraint in society at large, the corruption of the privileged and the politically powerful, and the amorality of the pursuit of wealth and power. In some Islamic countries and in the Moral Right of the United States one can see this contradiction of individualism worked out in the reactionary politics of morality.

Culture and ethnicity: a complex relationship This, then, is an exemplification of some of the ways in which sociology has attempted to imagine the relationship of economy and culture; it is also an attempt to draw out some of these imaginings beyond the bounds in which they were originally stated. If the ethnicity/economy intersection is to be explored, it must partake of some of these wider understandings. The first thing to point out is that culture and ethnicity cannot be wholly equated since, as we suggested, ethnic groups are not merely ‘culture communities’. The argument that ethnic groups are not definable by reference to culture is most notably associated with the anthropologist Barth’s (1969) argument that cultural commonality was not the hallmark of ethnic identity. Rather, ethnic groups were constituted by a process of formation and sustaining of social boundaries. These defining lines of the limits of membership and exclusion were the actual way of establishing the existence of ethnic groups, rather than the ‘cultural stuff’ contained within these boundaries. Ever since Barth’s well-known essay, sociologists and anthropologists alike have hesitated to describe ethnic groups as groups marked by cultural difference. The pendulum against ‘culture’ may have swung too far.


Ethnic identities are commonly asserted by reference to claims about cultural difference even if these culture claims are problematic. So whilst the cultural difference asserted by way of boundary maintenance (we are the people who do this, they are the people …) may be more or less ‘authentic’, none the less culture remains closely associated with ideas of ethnicity. The second reason for placing some distance between ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ is that ethnic group memberships, however lightly or ‘thinly’ sustained, may be marked as much by the associations or networks which are formed as by the celebration of shared culture. So ethnic groups may be conceived as ‘networks’ in addition to or rather than being conceived as culture communities. Third, a persistent strand in the analysis of ethnicity has been an emphasis on ethnic identity and political purpose. Thus, under some circumstances, ethnic identity may appear to be much more a matter of a collective political goal than a case of cultural commonality. What has been identified as ‘instrumental ethnicity’ has been contrasted with a so-called primordial view of ethnicity, the former being a purposeful or even ‘opportunistic’ mobilization of ethnic symbols for political purposes, the latter an ingrained and unreflective sense of community. These three formulations of ethnicity and culture, as a boundary process, as network and as instrumental, are integral to an exploration of some typical intersections of ethnicity and economy.

Intersections of ethnicity and economy: class, globalization and individualism There are two principal ways in which class and ethnicity have come to occupy the same or adjacent social space. The first is the prolonged occupation of excluded, restricted or segregated social positions by groups indigenous to, or long resident in, a country or region. The second is the social re-formation of ethnicities through migration, frequently as labour migration. In the first instance – which would include Jews and Romanies within Europe – ethnic identity is shaped around a sense of shared ancestry and cultural distinctiveness. But ethnic identity is also strengthened by the experience of a pariah or excluded minority status enforced by a majority population. This majority population is responsible for drawing the boundaries of ethnicity – including, for example, exclusion from key economic and political roles – whether the ‘members’ want it or not. In such cases ethnicity becomes the basis of


occupational specialization, characteristic of both Jews and Romanies, where both the occupation(s) and the majority ethnic stereotypes which accompany it – such as the ‘horse trader’ or ‘money lender’ – are partly taken out of the hands of the minority status group. A central question, in this instance, of ethnicity and economy, is how minority groups either manage this occupational specialization to their own advantage, or escape from it (see Colin Clark’s discussion of the economic roles of the Roma in chapter 10). Another type of long-resident or indigenous ethnic group arises from the formation of ethnic identity around dispossession of land and submerging and suppressing of culture, especially language. This is a common consequence of colonial settlement as in the case of the impoverishment and social exclusion of aboriginal groups by European settlers (for example, the Maori in New Zealand, Inuit in Canada). In Europe itself the Sami people of northern Scandinavia are a native people whose economy has been undermined by modernizing encroachments. The second context of ethnic identity, the migration of labour and occupational groups, is to be found in virtually all regions of the earth – and over very long periods of time. The migration of people now known as ‘Pontic Greeks’, for example, extended over hundreds of years during which time peoples from Greece have moved into the regions surrounding the Black Sea, maintained their Orthodox faith though not always their speaking of Greek, and made a variety of economic adaptations to their new environments. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Empire are substantial numbers of Pontic Greeks seeking reincorporation into modern Greece. Movements of labour to the ‘New World’ are also long-standing, but these were quite different in character. An estimated 10–20 million Africans were traded as slaves mostly from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and in most of the destinations they have remained as black or African minorities. Other migrations are relatively recent and constitute a typical socialhistorical context for the emergence of economically framed ethnic identities. Such has been the settlement in colonial societies of imported labouring groups alongside indigenous populations. These populations are found throughout South East Asia (the Chinese in Malaysia, Indonesia), the Caribbean (Indians in Trinidad) and the Pacific (Indians in Fiji). Especially where migrant groups are – or become – business and trader classes, class and economic activity have two characteristic links with ethnicity. The first is that ethnicity is a means for facilitating economic transactions. Where a trader class shares language and ancestry, the commonality, identity and social


networks become a way of carrying out business. Indeed, the common trading occupation may itself be a reason for sustaining ethnic ties, which diminish when group members take up new occupations. The second economic linkage is that a business class which is ethnically identifiable can become, and frequently does become, a target for the economic resentments of others who see themselves as relatively less favoured. The pogroms against Chinese in Indonesia at the fall of the Suharto regime are a ‘classic’ example, or the expulsion of Asians from East Africa discussed by Charles Westin in chapter 7. In Trinidad, Malaysia, Fiji, Indonesia and other postcolonial societies ethnically differentiated groups have performed typically (but not wholly) different economic functions; the Indian-descent population in Fiji have been largely cane-workers and small farmers, the Indians in Malaysia were largely plantation workers. In those societies they have also sustained a measure of social and cultural encapsulation, in part influenced by religious difference from an indigenous population – for example, the Muslim Malays and Christian Fijians. In the United States in its nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigrations, the great drive was towards ‘Americanization’, the social and cultural assimilation of its new populations. The massive exception to this was a much longer-standing in-migrant population, who had also been, from their arrival, highly concentrated as an ethnic group and as a class. Africans in America were almost exclusively, from the early seventeenth century to 1865, confined to plantation slave labour and excluded from civic rights. This led to an all-encompassing binary ethnicity of ‘white’ and ‘black’. A deep-rooted discourse of race and a caste-like system of social and economic segregation ran through the length and breadth of American institutions. In the post-slavery period there developed a small middle class which specialized in services for the mass of the black population. This was simultaneously a system of class structure and a system of ethnic relations. Few black families escaped the overwhelming concentration among the rural poor and the poor and low-paid urban workers. Those who did remained within the boundaries of ethnic exclusion. This system has been modified, but only modestly by the enlargement of the black middle class in new and expanding professional occupations. Those who were immigrants and minorities, but white, were subject to periods of discriminatory treatment but the overwhelming tendency was for the long-term absorption into the white ‘mainstream’. Other non-white immigrants, from China, Japan, Korea and other Asian countries, have been treated as less than full citizens (Lyman, in


Hughey 1998). Because some of these newer migrants, those who came from the 1980s onwards, have been relatively successful, they have been taken to be exemplars of the American success narrative, tacitly compared with African Americans. They are seen to be ‘culturally suited’ to striving in the American system, an argument with profound ideological functions as is brilliantly demonstrated by Deborah Woo in chapter 6. Cutting right across these themes of class and ethnicity are the dimensions of globalization and individualism. We need only add a few thoughts about these dimensions since many of the pertinent points are entailed in what has preceded. The migration of labour is a global phenomenon in which people move with speed though not always with ease within and across continents. Labour migration is not new, whether on a local or global scale. But the enrichment of multiple centres of economic development – Asia, Europe, the Middle East and America – the interconnectedness of world economies, global communications and the speed of travel have all globalized labour migration in new ways. Poor South Asians and Filipinas form ethnically distinct domestic labour in the oil-rich countries (Anderson 2000). East European women are sex workers in Germany, impoverished Indonesians seek work in Malaysia (the men as plantation workers and women as maids) and Indians supply computer industry and software specialists to California. We can see the possibility of migrant professionals and business people imagining themselves as settled in no particular country, retaining some links with co-ethnic friends, colleagues and family on a global scale, but situating themselves where the pro tem opportunities are best. Instantaneous global communication also has an effect on the limits of the imagined community, extending a sense of community across the whole world in train of the daily transmission of news and images. Web-sites in India protest at the celebration of Portuguese voyages of ‘discovery’ since they heralded the beginning of colonization and expropriation. Portuguese citizens and Roman Catholics react immediately to the repression of Timorese Catholics in the wake of the collapse of Suharto’s dictatorship. Economic movements of people, goods and capital have long had global dimensions, and now do so on an ever-increasing scale; at the same time global communications allows for the simultaneous movements of symbols of affiliation of an ethnic, national and religious origin. Finally, we can make one last comment about individualism. In virtually every global movement of people, workers, business men and


women, and professionals are leaving one social order for another where the first is substantially more ‘traditional’ in family norms and gender expectations than is the second, the country of destination. Movement repeatedly raises the question of the extent to which collective norms can survive in a highly individualized environment. In so many cases of ethnic differentiation, or of minority–majority convergence, the key questions surround the priorities of family life, the ordering of husband–wife relations especially with regard to economic participation, and the expectations of sons and daughters. In this way some of the contradictions and dilemmas of ‘morality’ in a highly individualistic culture are worked with special sharpness in ethnically differentiated groups.

Ethnicity and class structure; the specificity of contexts The above discussion has pointed to three major configurations of ethnic economic positioning: the marginalization of indigenous groups after conquest and occupation; long-standing labour migration often linked to colonialism; and new patterns of migration and employment arising from globalization. These are the bases of typologies of ethnicity (see Eriksen 1993) developed in economic and political contexts by Fenton (1999). Within such broad patterns of structuration there are immense variations according to the specific context, as shown in some of the examples given above. Here we consider some of the factors affecting the way in which different ethnic groups are originally positioned within the economy and also the way in which ethnic locations may subsequently change. One consistency is that most economies past and contemporary are marked by some measure of ethnicization of the class structure. Migrant groups assume and are given the character of ‘ethnic minorities’ and their distinctiveness is marked both culturally and by their specific positions in the social class hierarchy. This class positioning is influenced by the patterns and timing of particular migrationary movements (when and why they occurred, their extent and pace); the jobs initially occupied by incoming migrants; their previous occupational status and class position in the countries from which they migrated; the stage of economic development in the host nation and its subsequent trajectory; the previous history of colonial relationships. As we have seen, one pattern of migration involves labour shortages in immigrant-receiving countries3 and demands for particular types of labour. In the colonial epoch, for example, migrant labour was often


used for agricultural work, especially in plantation systems. The heavy and dangerous mining work was another area often allocated to migrant workers forced and voluntary.4 In the postcolonial era this pattern continued. For example, migration from the Caribbean colonies into Britain was in response to labour shortages in the reconstructed economy: men were recruited specifically for the transport system and women as nurses. In all these examples, migrants entered into a cultural context heavily shaped by colonial feelings and ideologies of racial superiority which played a part in the assignment of particular low-level, unskilled jobs on the basis of ethnicity. This made it very difficult for the migrants to work their way up into better jobs. We may contrast this with recent developments in Britain, where crises in the public services have led to overseas recruitment of nurses and teachers from a diversity of sources, including Australia, Sweden, South Africa, the Middle East and India. In America, shortages of skilled computer specialists have encouraged a wave of highly qualified young Indian males to take jobs in California’s Silicon Valley. In these latter examples a context of democratic neoliberalism and a commitment to the values of multiculturalism is likely to shape the prospects of the migrants in a different way, allowing them more prospects of mobility and freeing them from ethnic ghettoization. Those, like the Indian graduates, who enter professional employment are clearly in a very different ethnic/class positioning from that of Britain’s postwar African-Caribbean communities. The above examples are all cases where migration has been encouraged for economic reasons by the host state. A very different picture arises where migrant groups are uninvited, fleeing, for example, from persecution in their own countries or the ravages of civil war. While some groups, such as the Jews and Roma discussed above, have become adept survivors in hostile and racist environments, other refugee groups may be among the worst sufferers of ethnic marginalization. Such, for example, is currently the plight of Kurds, Kosovans and Albanians within many European states. Refugee ethnic groups are likely to be disadvantaged by lack of language skills and qualifications; they may be shocked and psychologically damaged by their experiences; they have often been forced to abandon savings and assets, arriving without capital in an alien environment; and they may well have been bereft of family and kin support, lacking the social capital for successful integration into the economy. Such groups are frequently confined to the lowest tiers of the class structure, joining the excluded ‘underclass’, forced into illegal work or the informal economy, and at best finding their ways into the lowest paid and least skilled jobs.


The position migrants occupied in their countries of origin is also a crucial issue. Class advantages can transfer across the ethnic divide. Woo (chapter 6) shows this to be a key factor in the success of Asian groups in America. Class origins are important in the differing fortunes of different ethnic groups in Britain as argued in the Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (Modood et al. 1997). Many Bangladeshi and Pakistani migrants came from rural areas with experience only of peasant farming or unskilled labour. By contrast, Indians, especially those from East Asia, were often middle-class, having held professional or business posts. Although most of these latter migrants lost their class advantages on arrival, with many being forced into manual work or low-level clerical jobs, they succeeded in using their cultural and social capital to slowly recoup their class position, holding out prospects of middle-class lifestyles to second- and third-generation members. Colonial history has also played its part, affecting the disposition of ethnic groups in different societies. Thus, while Britain and America have substantial populations of sub-Saharan African origin, this is much less common in many European societies. Ethnic minority groupings in France, for example, are largely from North Africa, while the Netherlands has a substantial community from its former colonies in the Far East. By contrast, European countries with less developed colonial histories may encourage migration from the poorer countries of the Mediterranean fringe: such is the case of Germany with its Italian and Turkish Gastarbeiter. Finally, gender plays some part in the way ethnicity intersects with class, particularly in the way ethnic relations are consolidated in any particular setting. As Yuval-Davis (1997) argues, gender is a very important marker of ethnic boundaries. Economic and political migrants (and, of course, indigenous groupings) can be of both sexes, but in the case of labour shortages it is common for exclusively men or exclusively women to be targeted. For example, the current situation of de-industrialization and the switch to service-sector employment in Western societies has led to substantial female migration: influxes into Europe of sex workers from Eastern Europe and Africa, and of maids and hotel workers from the Philippines, Indonesia and Latin America. The process of family reunification after initial immigration is a very important step in the consolidation of minority ethnicities. It may also be the stepping stone to class mobility. The establishment of trader economies and the setting up of small businesses is often dependent on the employment of female family and kin members within the enterprise. Recent research has focused on the crucial role of women in


holding communities together in the face of exclusion and marginalization (Yuval-Davis 1997; Newman 2000). As guardians of ethnic tradition and respectability, women play a crucial role in both the cultural and economic welfare of minority ethnic groupings (Barot, Bradley and Fenton 1999). The above illustrates some of the ways in which class and ethnicity intersect without implying that the resultant positionings are fixed or immutable. As economies develop and class relations change, so too does the class/ethnicity relationship evolve and change. Nor do individuals passively accept or conform to the structured contexts in which they find themselves. A few instances will illustrate this process. We have already touched on some of the ways in which ethnic positioning changes after initial migration. A classic example is the status recovery of the Asian professionals and business people resettled after the East African expulsions (see the account in chapter 7). Similarly, second- and third-generation members of settled migrant communities may well throw off many of the initial disadvantages suffered by their parents. In her study of Turkish-speaking groups Pinar Enneli (chapter 8) illustrates the economic differences between longer-settled migrants and recent incomers, such as the Kurdish refugees. The situation of young South Asians and African Caribbeans in the United Kingdom illustrates both the possibilities of upward mobility and the complexities of ethnic positioning. Many young Asian and African-Caribbean women, in particular, have taken advantage of the education system to reach for middle-class occupations, especially in the professions. On the other hand, young African-Caribbean men have fared less well, with a considerable number appearing to become disillusioned with the racism of the education and employment systems and subsequently removing themselves from competition within the mainstream economy. Such contrary tendencies often lead to a greater class dispersion across a particular ethnic population as its stay in its country of settlement lengthens, as is illustrated in the series of PSI reports on ethnicity in Britain. However, recent work highlighting ethnic economic diversity in Britain by Wrench and Modood shows that even the best qualified people suffer from an ethnic penalty in achieving economic success (Wrench and Modood 2001: 1). At the same time, their parents’ class inheritance from countries of origin helps young people to grasp new opportunities more successfully as the parents can offer them economic, social and cultural capital to aid them in their education and labour market careers. As Woo shows (chapter 6), this is a key issue in the American ‘Asian


success’ story. Moreover incoming ethnic groups with a history of operating in trader economies may establish their own ethnic niches which, as discussed in the next section, provide a base for upward mobility. In all these ways individuals from minorities may improve their class positioning. Both the United Kingdom and the United States, in different ways, have seen the expansion of a black middle class. Change is also the result of shifts in the global economy and in the sectoral composition of labour markets within a national economy. Globalization destroys some openings and creates others. De-industrialization in Britain and America weighed heavily on black men, who lost jobs in the car industry and other areas of skilled manual labour which they had characteristically occupied, leading many into long-term unemployment. The spread of global tourism has created a tranche of low-level service jobs (in hotels, bars, restaurants, leisure attractions and brothels) which have been filled by women migrants from poorer countries. But it has also created a wealth of jobs in the ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ economy (in computer software and systems, web-site design, research and technology, communications and media, marketing and public relations). Young ethnic minority graduates in the advanced societies or similarly well-qualified young people from the developing world are well placed to compete for such jobs, employing their bilingual or multilingual skills and their often cannily chosen credentials. In at least the latter half of the twentieth century the position of minorities, defined by ethnicity and gender, has been the subject of policy interventions. America and other Western societies have formed equal opportunities or even affirmative action programmes, designed to remove the obstacles of prejudice, discrimination and institutional racism. There is no agreement over the efficacy and desirability of such programmes, but, especially in public sector organizations, they do help to raise awareness of racial discrimination and contribute to a ‘climate of equality’ (Bradley 1999). In Britain the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence has been a trigger for stepping up anti-racist policy and a focus for political activism for ethnic lobbyists. For example, the TUC has set up a Stephen Lawrence task force to help constituent unions examine their own policies and practices and promote better opportunities for black workers in the areas they organize. Universities, colleges, police forces and other public bodies have been instructed to adopt frameworks for equal opportunities. ‘Race for Opportunity’ and other partnership arrangements between employers, unions and state and voluntary agencies offer a more sincere attempt to tackle the blockages to minority ethnic employees’ success.


Structures and agents of ethnicity and class We have thus far sought to emphasize the variations in the patterning of class and ethnicity. Many of these patterns are historically established. In examining contemporary and possible future configurations we set out three illustrative scenarios; in doing so we are looking for a balance between models of structure and models of agency. The first might be described as a scenario of ethnic specialization. We have already explored the ways in which people of particular ethnic origins may be recruited and deployed in very specific occupations. It is possible, here, for ethnic minority members to actively develop such ethnic niches or indeed identify other occupational slots which may be appropriated in this way. The concentration of firstgeneration Chinese migrants to America and Britain in restaurants and laundries is a good example. Ethnic niches have many positive aspects: they offer protected employment opportunities, provide a degree of security and are a base for ethnic solidarism; they may serve as a vehicle for upward class mobility. For example, in Britain many young black and Asian adults have started out on a course of professionalism by finding jobs within agencies dealing with ethnic issues and servicing ethnic communities. Wrench and Modood also suggest that small ethnic businesses may act as an ‘intergenerational springboard’ for the next generation’s successful entry to high-status professional work (Wrench and Modood 2001: 17). Ethnic niches may also be important in the initial phases of developing a fullblown ethnic economy such as is found in many larger and more prosperous cities in Europe. One such is Leicester. Since the arrival of the expelled East African Asians in 1973, Leicester has witnessed the steady growth of a mature ethnic economy. This provides Leicester’s Asian communities with the whole range of products, services and agencies they need within the Belgrave area of the city: sweet marts, restaurants, sari shops, cinemas, supermarkets, travel agents, entertainment facilities, religious edifices and community centres. At this level of sophistication, Leicester’s ethnic economy bears something of the character of an ethnic enclave: a parallel but separate set of key institutions and enterprises which offers the promise of ethnic selfsufficiency and independence, within a framework of segmentation such as that posited within the ‘plural society’ thesis (see chapter 2). But the key issue here is that the Asians themselves have been the central and active agents in the construction of ethnic economies and enclaves.


A second pattern is that of ethnic marginalization: some ethnic groups remain confined in the lowest and most unwanted parts of the occupational and class hierarchy where they may be said to constitute an underclass (Murray 1990; Morris 1994) or surplus labour population (Bradley 1996) of permanently marginalized and excluded people. William Wilson’s (1993) account of the ‘ghetto underclass’ is well known and is based on the plight of African Americans and Hispanics in the ‘projects’ (public housing estates) of North American cities. There are heated disputes over the validity of the concept of ‘underclass’ as well as empirical contestation as to its existence and the causes of its development. However, there is little disagreement about the high levels of unemployment among many ethnic minorities which is characteristic of most Western societies: high levels of long-term employment, lack of job opportunities in deprived inner-city or outer suburban areas; the disillusion and alienation of youth in such areas which may lead them to drop out of the formal economy, engaging in crime, the black economy and other forms of ‘anti-social’ behaviour such as vandalism or drug-taking are seen to be key factors in the formation of the underclass. Finally, a possible trend, although one which in most countries is at a low level of development, is that of ethnic integration. This is a utopian vision: the distribution of ethnic minority citizens throughout the class structure in proportion to their representation among the population as a whole. We are a long way from the achievement of this anti-ethnic humanist Utopia. Despite equality and diversity policies, the persistence of discrimination, of cultural values of white superiority and of deeply embedded institutional racism militate against it. But some of the developments discussed above (the recouping of lost class position, upward social mobility among second and third settler generations, the development of a ‘black bourgeoisie’) could be seen as the first steps along the road to an ethnically integrated economy in which the old patterns of social differentiation are dismantled and dissolved.

Conclusion In this chapter we have sketched out a ‘middle ground’ for the analysis of the relationship between ethnicity and class, which represents a blending of some aspects of modernist and postmodernist thinking. While sensitive to variety and diversity we have insisted on the continuance of patterning and of structured contexts. We showed how some key structuring contexts from modernist theory – class processes, globalization and


individualism – shape the positioning of ethnic groups, minority and majority, within the economy. Using these ideas, we delineated some specific patternings of ethnicity within economic structures. Picking up issues of variability and change, we showed that these are not totally arbitrary, but are shaped by the structured contexts of migration in different times and locations. Finally, we explored some scenarios of current ethnic/class positionings in the economy, suggesting possible trends: ethnic specialization; ethnic marginalization or ethnic integration. Our ‘middle ground’ analysis draws on some of the insights of modernist structural theories (such as those of Marx, Weber and Durkheim) while bearing in mind the postmodern attention to agency and choice. Our approach avoids determinacy, while insisting on the importance of patterning. It avoids fixity, while stressing the temporal persistence of intersections of ethnicity and class. It acknowledges variability and change while relating this to the structured contexts in which changes occur and variations evolve. In doing so, we seek to elaborate a sociology of social differentiation which asserts that all social relationships have both material/economic aspects and cultural/meaningful aspects. Within such a framework, also, it is possible to develop an analysis of social identities round the notion of multiple positioning. This is to acknowledge that individuals are socially located – they are located in class contexts, cultures and social hierarchies. But if individuals are socially located their lives are not finally determined by these positions. It is not just a case of emphasizing a more intricate understanding of class and cultural context. It is also a matter of emphasizing, in a way that a more deterministic sociology did not, that people may reshape their own destinies and simultaneously rework their social and cultural frameworks of living.

Notes 1. We would, however, exempt the work of Max Weber from this general stricture against modernist tendencies. 2. Some of the richest and most interesting recent work on class is focused on class cultures: for example, Skeggs (1997); Charlesworth (2000). 3. See Daly’s discussion of shortages of unskilled labour in chapter 9. 4. See Rex (chapter 2) on the deployment of African labour by the white rulers in South Africa.

2 Race, Ethnicity and Class in Different Political and Intellectual Conjunctures John Rex

One of the primary ways in which the relationship between the sphere of ‘the economic’ and the sphere of ‘the ethnic and cultural’ has been discussed has been through debates about race (or ethnicity) and class. These debates have surfaced in a number of ways since the early 1950s, when the world was recovering from the Second World War and was on the brink of a momentous period of decolonization. In this chapter I will reflect on four key moments or variations in these debates, all of which persist into the present period. It is important to recognize that the problem of the relation between the terms race, ethnicity and class has arisen in a series of quite different political and ideological contexts. Equally varied are the academic and intellectual contexts of this question. Indeed, I shall raise the question as to whether there can be any ‘final’ answer to understanding the relationship between class and race or ethnicity as against considering a number of different foci according to the countries, regions and historical junctures at which it has appeared. In other words, ethnicity and race in their relation to class are always defined by context (Fenton 1999). In what follows I will examine the historical argument concerning ‘race and class’ in South Africa; the debate about the concept ‘plural society’; discussions of the very meaning of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ starting with the attempts to define them prompted by UNESCO; and finally the arguments about race, class and ethnicity in Britain and Western Europe. This, of course, leaves out large areas of the world where the problem is posed in different ways, especially the former Communist countries. 31

32 John Rex

Race and class in South Africa Theories deriving from orthodox and revisionist Marxism have played an important part in thinking by academics in South Africa. The most significant figure here has been the South African communist scholar, Harold Wolpe. Wolpe has dealt with two sets of problems: the position of the white working class; and the intersection of two modes of production. In dealing with the white working class Wolpe’s work is related to that of another Marxist, Carchedi (Carchedi 1977; Wolpe 1972). Clearly, there is no unity of the working class across colour lines in South Africa. Famously, the Third International had used the slogan ‘Workers of the World Unite for a White South Africa’. Within the context of Marxist theory this has to be explained not merely in general terms of the differing relations of black and white workers to the means of production, but more narrowly in terms of the differing control of surplus value. On the other hand, Wolpe recognizes that there are two distinct modes of production in South Africa, a capitalist one to be found in urban industrial contexts, and a pre-capitalist one to be found in what were called the native reserves. This argument is situated in the argument about different modes of production (for which see, inter alia, Foster-Carter 1978; Hindess and Hirst 1975).1 According to Wolpe, however, the capitalism in South Africa is distinctly different from that found in Europe in that its reproductive costs are kept low because some of them, such as the breeding of new workers and their support when they return from urban migration, are met by their kin and fellow tribesmen in the reserves. My own contribution to this debate was to suggest that the overall capitalist system in South Africa was based upon three essential institutions for the exploitation of black labour: the mining compound, the urban location and the native reserves. Black migrant workers in the mines lived in a kind of bachelor barracks outside their working hours cut off from kin behind barbed wire. Other workers in the city lived in locations where they were controlled by the pass laws, where their sojourn was regarded as temporary and where they were tightly policed. While there were other black workers in the city, the migrant worker was the modal type, and the class position of the blacks was essentially that of migrant workers. On the other question, the position of the black and white working classes, I suggested in my contribution to the UNESCO volume Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (Rex 1980)

Race, Ethnicity and Class in Different Political and Intellectual Conjunctures 33

that the actual relation to the means of production of the white working class was determined by the fact that they controlled the political system, whereas that of black workers rested upon the fact that they exercised no such political control, but were themselves controlled by the police. It seemed to me that a Marxist approach failed to recognize the political element involved in this situation and I argued for a more complex analysis derived from Max Weber (Bendix 1962; Weber 1968), an argument supported by Stuart Hall (1980). The whole argument, of course, referred to the period of white political domination, usually referred to misleadingly by the term ‘apartheid’. Clearly, it changed when white domination was overthrown. The African National Congress, which had led the liberation movement, defined its own position in universalist terms. It saw all workers, black and white, as belonging to a single class and within the black group it refused to recognize ethnic or tribal differences. As time went on, however, distinctions amongst blacks, most notably that between Zulus and the other groups, were recognized and these distinctions, which were clearly not based upon colour or race, were described as ethnic. Moreover post-apartheid society seemed to involve class differences amongst blacks, with a minority sharing in what had been white privileges. Finally, one has to recognize that it is an oversimplification to speak about South Africa in terms of white and black alone. During both the period of white domination and after the political change coloured people and Indians had different degrees of privilege and power, and within these groups there were many differences of ethnicity, language and religion. One of the assumptions made in this section is that we are concerned to develop concepts of groups whose members can be thought of as acting together in a meaningful way rather than looking simply at the attributes of individuals as a purely empiricist sociology might do. This observation is also relevant in each of the sections which follow.

The plural society debate Whereas South Africa was the site for race–class debates, the plural societies debate focused primarily on South East Asia and the Caribbean. This important theoretical development in sociology has portrayed colonial societies as ‘plural’, in contrast to the unitary societies in metropolitan centres. When one looks at studies conceived in these terms, however, one finds that they rest upon concepts of class, race and ethnicity. Here I shall consider the theorization of the plural society as it has been developed by J.S. Furnivall and M.G. Smith.

34 John Rex

Furnivall wrote particularly about Indonesia but, in his study Netherlands India (1944) as well as in his subsequent work Colonial Policy and Practice (1948), he set out a general sociology of colonial societies. According to his account, in Netherlands India members of culturally and ethnically closed groups meet members of other groups only in the marketplace. Within each group there is a strong sense of belonging as well as a set of institutions binding members together, but in the marketplace, where individuals deal with members of other groups, there is no common will. This is a harsh type of society with none of the characteristics of what Durkheim called organic solidarity which was capable of holding people together despite the individualism of modern society (Durkheim 1933). It was in fact the pure form of a society, based upon what Marx and Engels described in the Communist Manifesto as the callous cash nexus. Furnivall did not go beyond discussing a marketplace of individuals to talk about class formation and class conflict, but it is easy to see that such conflicts having nothing to do with how ethnicity might develop. Nor does he explore the possibility that ethnic groups might operate as classes as the marketplace develops. Ethnic groups conceived in this way would be very different from the separate ethnic retreats, which he describes as removed from the marketplace altogether. Furnivall always discusses groups in what is really a Weberian way (see Weber 1968) as resulting from the action orientation of theoretically conceived individuals. This perspective is maintained in his second book, Colonial Policy and Practice, in which he discusses the reaction of ethnic groups to colonialism. Here they seem much more like ethnic classes. His position is methodologically individualist in the way that Weber’s was, rather than in the empiricist sense of looking at the observable and quantifiable characteristics of individuals. M.G. Smith studies Grenada, but just as Furnivall’s account of Indonesia provides a general theory of colonial society, so Smith’s theory (in The Plural Society in the British West Indies, 1965) is an attempt to set out a similarly general theory. As a matter of theoretical convenience Smith contrasts colonial societies with the pure form of a functionally integrated society as developed by Talcott Parsons, in The Social System (1951). In colonial society there are a number of interacting ethnic groups, each of which has a nearly complete set of social institutions. Pluralism, he tells us, is a condition in which each of the different ethnic groups has a basic institutional system which embraces kinship, education, religion, property and economy, recreation and certain sodalities. What these groups lack, however, is a shared system


of government. The institution of government brings all the separate ethnic groups together and in colonial times the institution of government is in the hands of the colonial power. This view contrasts with Furnivall’s, who sees the total society as held together by market forces. For Smith the binding together of groups is a political rather than an economic matter.2 A new problem arises in these societies when the colonial power is overthrown. When this occurs the danger arises that the colonial society will break up into a number of discrete societies each developing its own government and politically independent. This may indeed occur. The other possibility is that a struggle for political control will break out between the different ethnic groups, or that one of them may take over the reins of power by itself. There is a whole range of possibilities here, as can be seen from the postcolonial history of Guyana or of Malaysia. The forms of conflict between ethnic groups in these two countries and their different possible resolutions are well discussed by Horowitz (1985). Smith also addresses the question of the position of black Americans in US society. As he sees it, the United States is heterogeneous without becoming plural. Ethnic groups are bound to the society by far more than the institution of government alone, and the various binding institutions are strong enough to allow for some degree of cultural differentiation amongst the underprivileged minority or amongst immigrant groups. Conversely, most such groups in the United States are not ‘institutionally complete’ in anything like the sense that Furnivall and Smith applied to other groups. This is true even though the period of segregation in America forced the creation of ‘parallel’ institutions in schools, churches and voluntary associations. Thus, the term plural in Smith’s sense should not be applied to multicultural societies, which I shall discuss in a later section. While the various constituent segments of a plural colonial society as well as minorities in a heterogeneous society are commonly distinguished by their culture, they can also be distinguished by their physical appearance or phenotype. Colour thus plays an important role in the Caribbean, and Smith is happy even to speak of races when differences of phenotype are the crucial distinguishing marks between groups. The whole argument about plural and heterogeneous societies has been developed in many complex ways by other writers and notably by Smith with Leo Kuper (1969) and by Pierre van den Berghe (1967). Independently, I have tried to develop the theory in a way that, while recognizing the importance of the political, as Smith’s

36 John Rex

does, also seeks to do justice to relevant Marxist ideas (Rex 1981, 1983). 3 Here I insist upon the notion of different forms of exploitation as characterizing different colonial societies, but I recognize that political institutions are also important. A crucial concept here is that of ‘estate’. I believe that colonial plural societies are bound together in ways very similar to the estate system of medieval Europe. I also give my own account of a movement from colonial to postcolonial society which considers political independence, economic liberalization, relations to alternative metropolitan centres, incorporation into a global economy and the development of new patterns of revolution of the types represented by Franz Fanon and Che Guevara. Moreover, I argue that while changes occur at the colonial end in the new international economy, so also the nature of metropolitan society is transformed by the arrival of postcolonial immigrants.4

UNESCO statements on race After the Second World War UNESCO addressed the problems created by the misuse of the concept of race by the Nazis, and, especially, their notions of an Aryan race and their treating Jews as a race. It therefore arranged four successive conferences in subsequent years during which the focus tended to move from the single case of the persecution of Jews as a race to White/Black relations (see Montagu 1981). The first three conferences were attended by biologists and the main conclusions of the third were: 1) race was a classificatory concept of limited usefulness; there was considerable overlap between the populations so classified; 2) the basis of these classifications related to physical appearance or phenotype; 3) if the concept was properly used, it had no implications for psychological or cultural characteristics and certainly not for the allocation of individuals to different groups of unequal rights. Before the end of the Second World War, Ruth Benedict (1983) had suggested that it was still useful for classificatory purposes to recognize three major racial groups, namely Negroid, Mongoloid and Nordic, based upon physical characteristics, although Benedict too emphasized that the distinctions rested purely upon physical characteristics. If, however, one was looking at genetic inheritance, the most that geneticists were prepared to say was that there were small, distinct local populations who, because they did not mate outside the group, had a limited gene pool. Again, this did not imply the existence of genes for psychological and cultural characteristics. The problem which these


discussions amongst biologists posed was that of the difference between scientific and popular usage of the term race. Clearly the popular belief was that a wide range of groups were races, and it was this notion which was most usual in political discussion. The task for the social scientists and psychologists who participated in the second UNESCO meeting was to explain why this disparity existed. Generally, the sociologists saw it as arising from colonialism, but all agreed that the real problem was to explain the phenomena of racism and race prejudice. Surprisingly, sociologists had had little to say on this, and I thought it necessary to set out my own views in Race Relations in Sociology Theory (Rex 1970). There I spoke of ‘race relations situations’ as existing when severe social conflict, exploitation and oppression occur, where such conflict was not between individuals but between groups, and where the dominant groups justified the inter-group situation in terms of some sort of deterministic theory, the most usual being a biological or genetic one. I did, however, recognize that cultural or ethnic differences could be seen as deterministic in this sense. Guillaumin (1980) saw the crucial element in racist theories as lying in the representation of inter-group differences as given in nature. My own work in this period explicitly rejected the notion of race as an explanatory variable (although Miles [1993] mistakenly believed it advocated it) and made clear that the problem was not ‘race’ but ‘racism’. When the British Social Science Research Council set up a number of research units to engage in underdeveloped areas of research it called one of its units the Research Unit on Race Relations. Very soon, however, the members of the Unit rejected the use of the term and changed the Unit’s name to the Research Unit on Ethnic Relations. This reflected a widespread rejection of race as a social category and a concentration instead upon the study of ethnicity. Race was seen as a biological term; ethnicity as a cultural one. This was even more true in continental Europe where the use of the term race had become discredited by the experience of Nazism. Ethnicity has become the basis of the study of inter-group differences and it is generally thought that if differences are ethnic the behaviour of members of the groups involved is flexible and can change, thus contrasting with the notion of ‘fixity’ associated with race. Ethnic groups are not natural in Guillaumin’s sense. It should be noted that purely empiricist social science is not affected by these subtle distinctions. Thus when the British Census introduced an ethnic question in 1991, it asked individuals to state to which ethnic group they belonged, offering the options of White, Black

38 John Rex

Caribbean, Black African, Other Black, Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, Chinese or other Asian. There is a monumental confusion here. Whiteness can only in a very crude and imprecise sense be regarded as a form of ethnicity, and when the Census turns to Asians the basis of classification becomes one of national origin. In the 2001 Census moreover a religious question was added. No other European country has followed the British example. Finally, it should be noted that the definition of ethnicity is seen as distinct from one based upon class. The study of class differences based upon groupings of occupations is thought of in the Census as quite distinct. This ignores two other possibilities: that within each ethnic group there can be distinctions of sub-groups based upon class; and that one ethnic group might itself have a class-like relation to other groups deriving from its access to the means of production or any other resource (as is posited in Wilson’s (1993) idea of the ‘ghetto underclass’).

Race, ethnicity and class in Europe In Britain the study of race and ethnic relations became a central issue for sociologists as increasing numbers, first of Caribbean, and then of Asian, immigrants arrived to fill gaps in the labour market in the 1950s and 1960s. Kenneth Little, an anthropologist and a leading Fabian socialist, had put forward an early version of the theory of an underclass, seeing the newcomers as occupying positions below an existing class system. In response Sheila Patterson and Michael Banton used Simmel’s notion of the stranger to describe British reactions to their presence (an early version of the theory of xenophobia which commonly complements the theory of racism) (Banton 1955; Patterson 1965). In the 1960s a number of us returned to one or other variant of class analysis. The book which Robert Moore and I wrote about Sparkbrook in Birmingham (Rex and Moore 1967) became especially influential. In fact, the book had a number of different and overlapping objectives, including that of persuading the public to oppose racial discrimination (see Edmondson 1984), but the analysis of inter-group conflict turned to a large extent on class relations. The particular type of class relations to which it drew attention was that which arose from access to houses of varying degrees of desirability, giving this, rather than industrial class conflict, centrality in explaining local politics.5 In so far as it also drew upon Park and Burgess’s ecological theory of concentric urban zones, it rewrote this in terms of the responses of various groups to the housing system.


This emphasis on class analysis was criticized by Marxists, who insisted upon the centrality of industrial conflict or who drew on the work of Castells and Harvey (Castells 1967; Harvey 1973; Pickvance 1976). It was also opposed by others who, rejecting class analysis altogether, insisted that the housing system was determined by ethnic choice rather than by structural constraints (Dhaya 1974; Robinson 1979). Such criticism obviously gave priority to ethnicity over class. In some European countries explanations of inter-group conflict rejected the popular British explanation in terms of race or colour and emphasized cultural differences instead. The group singled out for discrimination and who fought against discrimination in France were Muslim immigrants from the Mahgreb. French political parties gave little recognition to these cultures and offered them instead a common citizenship. On the other hand, in Germany Turkish and other immigrants were treated as what Hammar (1990) calls denizens rather than citizens. Lacking citizenship rights they were dependent upon German churches and trade unions for social services such as housing. It was, of course, always possible to relate these developments to social class. What French and German policy did was not merely to grant or deny a common citizenship, but to subordinate the struggles of immigrant groups to the class struggle which Marxists saw as central to national politics or which social democrats saw as underlying the emergence of the welfare state (Korpi 1983). An early attempt to look at the position of immigrant workers in four European countries was that of Castles and Kosack (1973). They saw the presence of immigrant workers as a new element affecting the more normal pattern of class struggle and appeared to call for their being recognized by the national trade unions as full comrades. Many different issues are intertwined in these various European situations. These are advanced industrial societies in which there has been class struggle, but in which conflicting interests have been reconciled in the welfare state. These issues have been well discussed by Frank-Olaf Radtke (1994), who believes that, in a social democratic welfare state in which the conflicting interests of classes have been reconciled in negotiation, it is wrong to treat immigrant workers through special agencies. He believes that their problems should be explained and dealt with not by recognizing them as a distinct group but as part of the general citizenry. Much of the argument about class, race and ethnicity becomes merged in policy discussions about the welfare state. Most sociologists have been sceptical about the separate recognition of immigrant groups in multicultural societies. Thus, from a French perspective, Michel Wieviorka

40 John Rex

(1994b) sees ethnicity as something attributed only to inferiors. Jan Rath (1991) sees the much vaunted recognition of minorities in the Netherlands associated with the policy of ‘pillarization’ as one of singling out minorities for inferior treatment. Schierup and Alund (1990) see Sweden’s multicultural policy as manipulating minorities through negotiation with elderly male leaders rather than recognizing the new alliances which are being negotiated between young people across ethnic boundaries and which lead to the development of new forms of class struggle. As against these views I have drawn attention to a definition by Roy Jenkins (one-time British Home Secretary) of integration as involving not a flattening process of uniformity but cultural diversity, coupled with equal opportunity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance (Rex and Tomlinson 1979). So far as the equal opportunity element involved in this formulation is concerned, I have suggested that it could be interpreted in terms of T.H. Marshall’s (1951) notion in relation to the working class’s acquisition of citizenship first through legal, then political and, finally, a minimum of social equality. The question is whether immigrant cultural minorities can be brought within this system enjoying the same rights as citizens in the public sphere, whilst in a private and communal sphere they may preserve their language(s), sustain their religion(s) and maintain family customs. All of this is highly relevant to the question of the relation between class, race and ethnicity. It suggests that, from a policy point of view, immigrant minorities may be thought of as undergoing a process of integration into the welfare state similar to that of the working class. This, however, assumes that those who govern nation-states do have such benign intentions. On this it must be said that some do but others do not. Some of the contenders for political power indeed are both racist and xenophobic in their view of how immigrants should be treated. It is, therefore, important to notice that the immigrant groups themselves may be seen not simply as the objects of policy, but as actors on their own behalf. In so far as they do act in this way they may be seen as ‘quasi-classes’ engaged in a struggle with native people for economic and other rights. This seems the most important way in which the notion of class should be inserted into the debate about ethnicity and multicultural societies in Europe.

Conclusion What I have said here about key debates concerning race, ethnicity and class suggests that these debates are highly contextually based. The


South African debate, for example, was very specifically oriented to understanding the principal African society which had preserved racial segregation into the late twentieth century and furthermore was linked to urgent questions about how this might be expected to be overcome. The plural society concept, though in some respects more general, has a particular relevance to the colonial societies of South East Asia and their postcolonial destinies. I do not believe that we can expect to develop a simple and general abstract theory of the relation between class, race and ethnicity. What we can do, and what I have sought to do in this chapter, is to look at a number of different situations and the debates to which they give rise and note how these variables intersect with one another in each empirical case and analytical context.

Notes 1. A comprehensive bibliography dealing with this question is attached to Hall’s article, ‘Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance’, in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (UNESCO, 1980). 2. This is a somewhat oversimplified account of Smith’s theories. In his opening chapters he systematically explores both the complexities of Parsons’ theory of functionally integrated societies and the full range of anthropological theories which have affected the understanding of the Caribbean and Central America. 3. When I asked Smith whether the existence of plantations did not suggest an economic element binding groups together in colonial society, he replied that he saw the plantation as a political institution. Generalizing from this observation, what I have sought to do is to develop a theory in which the binding element in colonial society is economic-political. 4. I call my theory postcolonial theory. This is a term which has also been used in the revision of structuralist Marxism by Balibar. I believe, however, that my theory here deals with much more complex elements than does this revisionist European Marxism. 5. The housing class concept was discussed and criticized by many urban sociologists and political scientists and the criticisms are too numerous and diverse to be listed here. The best single review that I know is in Lynn Hancock’s unpublished PhD thesis for the University of Liverpool (1995).

3 Racism, Sexuality and Political Economy: Marxism/Foucault/ ‘Postmodernism’ Ali Rattansi

Introduction Between the 1960s and the 1980s, a vibrant debate about the various modalities of interrelation between ‘race’ and ‘class’ was engaged in, in Britain. The major fault-line separated various Marxist interpreters from those more influenced by Weberian concepts of class and capitalism, although it is important to note that the field of ‘race relations’ studies in general was characterized by a variety of approaches, and that even at the time a range of Marxist positions were being advanced. Even a complicated Marxian/Weberian division certainly did not completely determine what was being researched and discussed around racism and ethnicity in this period. With regard to the Marx/Weber divide, it is perhaps arguable in retrospect that the various protagonists were relatively more united in their basic arguments than appeared to be the case in the heat of that long moment, when it seemed that the mass of British sociologists were in acrimonious contention over (Marxist) production-based theories of ‘class and capitalism’ – which in effect described what was understood as ‘society’ – and (Weberian) ‘market-based’ conceptualizations.1 That is, for all their disagreements, there was little dissent from the view that class was, in general, the more important structuring influence and that ‘race’ or, more properly put, processes of racialization consistently (and for many, necessarily) occupied a subordinate place as an explanatory force. Rex, the most prominent Weberian, defined race relations ‘as a category of class relations’ (Rex 1970). Miles, one of the most sophisticated of the Marxist writers, regarded ethnic minorities primarily as a class fraction within the capitalist structure of social relations (Miles 1982). Some subsequent re-evaluations of the general Marx/Weber divide prevalent in 42

Racism, Sexuality and Political Economy 43

the 1960s and 1970s in British sociology of class have now concluded that the debate tended to exaggerate the degree to which Weber’s views (and those of most left Weberians) differed from those of Marxism on many crucial issues (Abercrombie and Urry 1983; Sayer 1989). This chapter takes this iconoclasm further. It argues that what is now required is something beyond a mere rapprochement between Marxist and Weberian perspectives on ‘race’ and class. It argues for a more sweeping revision of received frameworks, making the ‘race’/class nexus and its dynamics part of a broader reconceptualization of the way in which social divisions and institutions are analysed. I have proposed a somewhat ambitious reframing of these issues under the general notion of a ‘postmodern frame’ (Rattansi 1994). In what follows I will expound briefly on the nature and some of the merits of this proposed route away from the limitations of mere reworkings of the Marx/Weber debate with regard to the relations between ‘race’ and class. The vehicle chosen for this exploration is a discussion of one of the most influential pieces of analysis of ‘race’ and class published in the 1970s: Sivanandan’s ‘Race, Class and the State’, initially published in 1976 in the journal he continues to edit, Race and Class, and subsequently issued in booklet form in 1978. Some important caveats need to be entered before the main body of the discussion in order to prevent possible misunderstandings. First, in a chapter of this length my alternative framework can be set out in only a rather compressed manner: the interested reader is encouraged to seek out the extended elaboration in my contribution to Racism, Modernity and Identity (Rattansi and Westwood 1994). Second, in contrast to the essay in the collection co-edited with Westwood, only some aspects of the ‘postmodern frame’ will be deployed here, given that my analysis will focus primarily on developments in British immigration policy, which formed the centrepiece of Sivanandan’s own discussion. In other words, this chapter is not intended as a comprehensive demonstration of the merits of the perspective I have been advocating. Third, subjecting Sivanandan’s essay to a detailed critique should be regarded as a mark of respect on my part for the brilliance of some of his work and its enduring influence; my chapter is not meant as a retrospective, contemptuous dismissal of one of the major contributors to anti-racist struggles in Britain. Finally, as will become clear later in the chapter, by consistently inserting scare quotes around the term ‘postmodern frame’ I am signalling a very specific usage of the much reviled notion of the ‘postmodern’ as well as a reflexivity regarding its provisionality and limitations, some of which I have discussed elsewhere (Rattansi 1994; see also, Rattansi 1995; Boyne and Rattansi 1990).

44 Ali Rattansi

A seminal moment: Sivanandan on race, class and the state Sivanandan’s widely read ‘Race, Class and the State: The Black Experience in Britain’ was perhaps the single most influential piece of analysis in relation to left-wing understandings of racism and radical anti-racism in the 1970s and 1980s. It provided, characteristically, a powerfully written, succinct and highly plausible Marxist account of the changing nature of British immigration policy in the post-Second World War period. Many of its central arguments concerning the shaping of the contours of immigration policy were widely accepted by liberals, Weberians and Marxists alike. The recent availability of a mass of governmental archives on immigration policy from the 1940s and 1950s (of course, not accessible to Sivanandan at the time) makes this an opportune moment to revisit Sivanandan’s original arguments. As we will see, a great deal of his analysis has to be revised in the light of this new evidence. But the point of my chapter is not to engage in the unfair, anachronistic exercise of criticizing Sivanandan with superior hindsight. Rather, I wish to support the arguments of those Marxists who, influenced by newer currents in Marxism, for example the work of Poulantzas, had already begun to distance themselves from Sivanandan’s mode of Marxist analysis, although this current had failed to percolate sufficiently into the field of ‘race’ relations. These more sophisticated forms of Marxism can be deployed to make better sense of what we now know about British immigration policy in the period between 1945 and 1962 and could have been deployed at the time to provide more sophisticated understandings of immigration policy. However, as pointed out earlier, I also suggest that an even more adequate account requires not merely modifying but making a break with Marxist assumptions, and operationalizing, instead, an analysis of racism which incorporates elements of what has come to be called the ‘postmodern’ turn in social analysis.

The Sivanandan thesis: the political economy of immigration The Sivanandan thesis is a particular narrative about the driving forces behind British immigration policy in the post-Second World War period. Like any narrative, it has a ‘plot’ – a term that also denotes a form of conspiracy – and key characters or plotters. Chief among the latter, in Sivanandan’s story, are ‘the state’ and ‘capital’. Other characters – ‘immigrant workers’, ‘white workers’, ‘slum landlords’, and so forth – play subordinate roles, and come and go as the plot develops.


In line with the accepted scholarship and a popular Marxism of the day, Sivanandan portrayed the period between 1945 and the first Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 as one of laissez-faire in immigration policy. This was part of the political common sense of the times. It seems to have been generally accepted, too, that successive British governments – and thus ‘the British state’ – allowed the uncontrolled flow of black and Asian labour from the colonies because the British economy, picking itself up and expanding after the war, was experiencing severe labour shortages, especially of unskilled and semiskilled work, particularly in older industries with poor working conditions and pay, as indigenous white workers moved up to more skilled, better-paid work. Put in Sivanandan’s Marxist terms, the British state, in its laissez-faire immigration policies, was basically pursuing and underwriting the interests of capital. Having exhausted supplies of European refugee labour, the state became party to the recruitment of workers from the colonies where generations of systematic misdevelopment had created large pools of unemployed or underemployed labour. Successive governments, so the narrative has it, actively supported the recruitment of workers from the West Indian islands, Guyana and the Indian subcontinent. State involvement was particularly noted in filling labour shortages in the newly established National Health Service and in supplying workers for London Transport. The specific structure of labour demands and patterns of recruitment and migration resulted in immigrant workers experiencing a distinctive sectoral, occupational and geographical distribution. By the mid-1960s a clear pattern could be discerned: migrant workers were disproportionately concentrated in manufacturing, transport and communications, and the National Health Service, with the vast majority in semi-skilled and unskilled work in the conurbations of London, the West Midlands, South-East Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Moreover, their housing conditions, rather like the jobs that white workers had spurned, were significantly worse than those of the white population. The advantages to capital and the national economy, as Sivanandan and other Marxists pointed out, resulted not only from the availability of a supply of cheap labour, a colonial reserve army of labour, but also from the fact that this set of workers had other favourable attributes: they came already in adult, schooled form and often, as with nurses, with relevant skills and backgrounds; the immigrant workers were primarily young, healthy and without families, thus making minimal demands on health services and the education system (Gorz 1970; Sivanandan 1976: 349).

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Various formal and informal mechanisms ensured that more immigrant labour flowed into Britain during periods of mini-boom, while potential migrants stayed away when the economy slowed down (Peach 1969; Sivanandan 1976: 350). Moreover, and significantly, the state and capital were well served by the production of a working class divided along racial and racist lines. But the state and capital could not rest complacently on this extraordinarily smooth and profitable achievement much beyond the late 1950s. Social cracks began to emerge which started to undermine the economic fabric. There was a heightening of racial tensions. Immigrant workers had been forced into poor housing in the inner cities, there to live cheek by jowl with poor sections of the white working class. In addition, racist discrimination and a shortage of housing forced black workers into overcrowded accommodation. The housing shortage also impinged on poorer whites, whose lives were already blighted, like those of black workers, by the general decay in the inner cities (Sivanandan 1976: 350). The ‘race’ riots of 1958 in London’s Notting Hill Gate and in Nottingham proved to be the catalyst, according to Sivanandan, for a reconsideration of British immigration policy. The state had to modify its slavish adherence to the interests of capital and ‘appear’ to act in the national interest by dealing with the socially ‘counter-productive’ effects of racism: it decided to slow down immigration, trying to keep racism within profitable limits, but was also forced to provide some relief for the depressed areas. None of the measures was really against the interests of capital, according to Sivanandan, because the demand for unskilled – although not professional and skilled – labour had finally declined and in any case the abundant supply of unskilled labour gave employers a disincentive to automate and become fully competitive with the economies of the European Common Market. While the stage was now set for immigration control, the interests of capital demanded that these take a very specific form because British capitalism could function properly only if it could periodically expel and re-import migrant labour as the economy experienced its cyclical recessions and expansions (Sivanandan 1976: 351). The British could not immediately emulate the ruthless Western European model of migrant labour restrictions because of the need to maintain the historical relationship with the Commonwealth ‘which ensured the continued dependence of the colonial periphery on the centre’ – ‘No one, bar the tear-stained liberals’, according to Sivanandan, ‘believed the sentimental bull about mother-country obligations’ (Sivanandan 1976: 351). Thus he implied that the British governments were concerned only with economic interests narrowly defined.


So a strategy evolved, through successive Immigration Acts beginning in 1962, which gradually began to move Britain ‘towards the European model of contract labour (and a European configuration with the poor south as its periphery without forgoing the “Commonwealth” relationship)’ (Sivanandan 1976: 353). Increasingly intricate and sophisticated systems of vouchers were put in place, controlling the flow of Commonwealth labour of different skills and qualifications. There followed a series of White Papers and the 1968 and 1971 Acts. Simultaneously, the British state embarked on a series of measures designed to ‘integrate’ the black population in a variety of ways. Altogether, in Sivanandan’s judgement, the British state achieved an extraordinarily beneficial solution for capital, the driving force of the policies deriving from class interests rather than racism. Sivanandan’s narrative clearly privileges class over race. The state, in his account, responded above all to the needs of capital and in a series of remarkable juggling acts – and Acts – was able to keep the short- and long-term interests of capital paramount. The state is represented in this story as a unified entity, with a clear knowledge and vision of the needs and interests of capital. Hand in glove with capital, the state was constantly able to ‘plot’ to devise the best policies to exploit black labour, the vast bulk of the indigenous white working class, and cleverly pit one against the other to prevent the militancy of black labour from igniting the revolutionary impulse of the white working class: Thus the state had achieved for capital the best combination of factors while appearing, at the same time, to have barricaded the nation against the intrusion of an ‘alien wedge’. It had atomized the working class and created hierarchies within it based on race and nationality to make conflicting sectional interests assume greater significance than the interests of the class as whole. It had combined with the bureaucracy to reduce the political struggle to its bare economic essentials – degraded the struggle to overthrow the system to be well off within it … . And when the black proletariat threatened to bring a political dimension from out of their own historic struggle against capital, to the struggle of the working class, state policy had helped trade unions to institutionalize divisive racist practices within the labour movement itself … . But racism was not its own justification. It is necessary [to capital] only for the purpose of exploitation: you discriminate in order to exploit or, which is the same thing you exploit by discriminating. (Sivanandan 1976: 357–8)

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Rewriting the narratives: from Marxism to ‘postmodernism’ Sivanandan was drawing upon a Marxist theorization of the state which, in debates in the 1970s and 1980s, came to be characterized – usually by its critics – as ‘instrumentalist’. That is, a theorization in which the state simply functions as an instrument of capital. More complex theorizations had begun to draw upon the work of Poulantzas, Gramsci and others, highlighting divisions within capital and between apparatuses within the state. These suggested that such fractures prevented any easy symbiosis between (competing fractions of) capital and the state apparatuses which were divided by a variety of political, ideological and economic concerns. Gramscian and Althusserian influences, by the early 1980s, had begun to influence writings on ‘race’ in Britain (e.g. Hall et al. 1978; Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 1982; Miles 1982). But the ultimate, determining weight of capitalist class relations over ‘race’ remained fundamentally unchallenged in these analyses, despite a relatively early revisionist intervention by Gabriel and Ben-Tovim (1978). It was the late 1980s and 1990s that witnessed a more fundamental modification of the ‘race’–class orthodoxy. Writers such as Gilroy (1987), Feuchtwang and Cambridge (1990) and Anthias and Yuval Davis (1992) emphasized the variability of the ‘race’–class relationship and, in some contexts, the way in which ‘race’ may play a role of equal weight to class forces or even override class relations. The significance of the fact that both class relations and racism exist and develop in gendered forms has also been increasingly highlighted. Thus, the understanding of the meaning of racism has undergone a considerable shift since the time Sivanandan wrote his seminal essay. This issue is discussed in more detail later. The need to reconceptualize fundamentally the relations between class, racism, sexuality, gender and the state has been a feature of my recent attempt to shift the rigid grids of Marxist and Weberian frameworks even further, by incorporating concerns that have come to the fore in recent debates about ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’ and ‘colonial discourse analysis’ (Rattansi 1997; 2000). One prominent feature of a new ‘postmodern frame’ which I have proposed is an emphasis on the futile dogmatism of theoretical frameworks which necessarily assert the priority of class over ‘race’ and processes of racialization, or vice versa. Instead, we need to theorize the complexity, contextual variability and constant interrelationship between various


forces. In particular, I have emphasized the significance of sexuality and its manifold imbrications in relations of class and ‘race’, and in state functions of governance (see especially Rattansi 2000). I have found the work of Foucault on ‘biopolitics’ and other issues particularly productive, a point expanded later in this chapter. Here, I will elaborate briefly upon what I have called the ‘postmodern frame’ and some of its implications for the analysis of racism in its various forms. Then, in the rest of the chapter, I propose to rewrite, again in an abbreviated form, the narrative of Britain’s post-Second World War immigration policies from the perspective of the new. In the course of this rewriting I shall draw heavily upon the archival research of historians and sociologists who have been reading cabinet papers relating to the 1945–50 Labour government and the 1951–55 and 1956–63 Conservative governments (Dean 1987; 1993; Carter, Harris and Joshi 1993; Harris 1993). Some attempts have already been made to revise the Sivanandan narrative in the light of these historical excavations, but they go little beyond arguing that the state has played a more autonomous role vis-à-vis capital in immigration policy than was hitherto realized, and that ‘race’ has thus been a more prominent structuring force (Miles and Satzewich 1990; Solomos 1993). Instead, I intend a far more thorough-going revisionism which is theoretically underwritten by my ‘postmodern frame’. What follows is a heavily compressed account of this framework and some indications of its implications for the understanding of racism.

A ‘postmodern’ framing of Western capitalist modernity The title of this section indexes several key defining elements of my approach and will perhaps prevent a number of misinterpretations which are provoked whenever the term ‘postmodern’ makes its appearance. First, I shall return to the point registered in the introduction that the term ‘postmodern’ appears consistently in quotation marks. This signals a number of reservations and qualifications that accompany my use of the notion. For one thing it signifies that this is an unsatisfactory term in so far as it implies a ‘stagist’ framework carrying in particular the implication that somehow ‘we’ inhabit an epoch that is beyond and radically discontinuous with the era of Western modernity inaugurated after the imperialist expansion of the West, the intellectual ferment of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific revolutions and the European ‘Enlightenment’, and the era of liberal democracy initiated by the French Revolution.

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Instead, the framework I am proposing argues, echoing to considerable extent the position of Bauman (1991; 1992), that the ‘post-’ signifies the emergence of serious and widespread debate and doubt concerning the Enlightenment-type claims about the capacity of Western Reason to make nature and society transparent in a form that allows a high degree of certainty in the manipulation of nature and social relations. Moreover, the qualifying quotation marks are explicitly designed to suggest that doubts about the capacity of Western modernity to deliver the typical Enlightenment promises have been present more or less since the beginning of the project of modernity, doubts that were particularly strongly expressed in the work of Nietzsche and the Romantic Movement; and even by some key figures of twentieth-century social science, such as Weber or the Frankfurt School (see, among many others, Owen 1994). The title of this section also points up my claim that one of the key elements of continuity between the modern and the ‘postmodern’ condition lies not merely in the survival but the almost hegemonic role of some version of capitalism in the global social (dis)order. Inevitably, this also means that some or other variety of class inequality remains a crucial element of all nation states and requires detailed attention in relation to processes of racialization. In two recent publications I have indicated some of the ways in which class can be ‘brought back in’ to (‘postmodern’) social analysis, and the understanding of racism (Rattansi 1997; 2000). I have also emphasized the continuities between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ racisms (Rattansi 1994: 54–6), thus further cementing my claim that a strict stagist discontinuity between the modern and the ‘postmodern’ is being rejected in my framework. It is intrinsic to my perspective that, as Lyotard put it, the ‘postmodern is undoubtedly part of the modern’ (1984: 79); elsewhere he describes the ‘post’ of postmodernity ‘as a process of ana-lysing, anamnising, of reflecting’ with regard to the modern (Lyotard 1986: 6). On the other hand, I concur with Derridean, Foucauldian and hermeneutic critiques of aspects of the instrumental and positivist legacies of Enlightenment rationality embedded in Western modes of discourse. I am referring in particular to the manner in which conceptions of reason have become imbricated with binary oppositions between subject and object, male and female, culture and nature, such that the first term in each of these binaries assumes a superiority and separation from the second term (see Hekman [1990] for a particularly good discussion of these issues). The above might also be described in part in Giddens’ terms as a radicalization of the reflexivity of modernity, that


is, as a period marked by anxiety stemming from serious doubts about the Enlightenment faith in the capacities of Reason and the certitude of Progress (Giddens 1990; 1994). There are several other key features of the ‘postmodern’ framing of Western capitalist modernity. One is the use of the notion of Western modernity as analytically separate, to some degree, from Western capitalism. In this context, one element is the highlighting of the relative autonomy of the Enlightenment project and its forms of individualized and institutionalized instrumental rationality as part of the intellectual and cultural formations of the West. Although the Enlightenment project’s commitment to universalism and instrumental rationality was clearly an important element of the formation of Western capitalism (Gray 1999), this has taken different forms in the actual institutional organization and cultures of capitalisms in Western nation-states. Moreover, the (‘Western’) Enlightenment-derived notion of embedding Reason in the very fabric of modern society was, if anything, even more strongly institutionalized in the (‘non-Western’) Soviet project of scientific socialism, with its ideas of comprehensive rational planning. I also wish to draw attention to three particular dualities of Western modernity, dualities which have a contingent rather than necessary relation to the development of capitalism. The first is the somewhat opposing pulls of the formation of liberal democratic institutions of public political representation and of the emergence of disciplinary complexes of bureaucracy and power in state apparatuses and civil society. The second duality concerns the simultaneous excitement of rapid change and the anxiety about social and natural environments seemingly out of control. And, finally, the continuous destabilization of ‘old’ identities and the constant reinvention of ‘traditions’ and thus the formation of new identities, often in the guise of very old identities and rituals. Each of these dualities has implications for the understanding of processes of racialization in the West. For example, consider the political freedoms and representative institutions provided by liberal democratic polities to organize against racisms embedded in racialized state bureaucracies such as those involved in education, the allocation of housing and immigration. Or note the tendency to displace and personalize the anxiety of rapid change onto ‘alien’ communities alongside the tendency to create sites and narratives of heritage, and therefore (new) ‘age old’ identities, which exclude the part played by colonial encounters in the formation of these heritages, whether of architecture, design, language or intellectual disciplines such as the sciences and mathematics (Rattansi 1997).

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This connects with a further defining feature of my proposed ‘postmodern’ framing: the role of Western modernity’s Others, encountered in imperialist and colonizing projects, in actually constructing identities for the West in a process of opposition to the supposed characteristics of the Others. The idea of ‘race’ played a crucial role in the formation of Western identities, allowing the Western ‘races’ to be defined as civilized, rational, masculine, Christian, active rather than passive, and so forth, and therefore provided with a rationale for subjugating, governing and exploiting the inferiorized ‘natives’ and ‘savages’. I have deployed Derridean deconstructionist strategies to unpick the formation of such identities (Rattansi 1994). Before moving on to other features of my ‘postmodern’ framing, it is worth noting that a Foucauldian element hinted at above, the role of disciplinary apparatuses of power/knowledge in governmentality, will receive much greater attention at the end of this chapter, where I shall focus on this aspect in understanding the formation of British immigration policy. It is now necessary to address what, in poststructuralist language, I refer to as the ‘decentring’ and ‘de-essentialization’ of both subjects and the social, a set of analytical moves that have a profound significance for the manner in which processes of racialization may be understood. The decentring of the subject implies that the individual is no longer conceptualized as a fully coherent, ‘rational’, self-knowledgeable agent capable of direct access to reality and truth. Instead s/he is theorized as having potentially multiple identities, differentially activated in specific social contexts, because of the pull of often contradictory subject positionings. Access to ‘reality’ is always mediated and transformed by the necessary role of discourses involved in the description and understanding of the character of nature and the social (although this should not be distorted into the notions that ‘there is no such thing as reality’, or that the world outside the individual does not set constraints on what can be known and discovered). Social formations are no longer regarded as tightly-knit complexes of institutions with necessary forms of connection or logics of development – there are no final determining instances such as the economy or a priori determinations by social class or race, and certainly no laws of motion as posited in most versions of Marxism. Social collectivities, such as classes and ethnic groups, are also decentred in these analyses, proposing that unification of such collectivities is always historically contingent and the result of political projects of hegemony, which always remain only partially successful. Thus classes, ethnic groups and


other types of social collectivity cannot be said to be ‘actors’ on the political stage in any simplistic manner. In the analysis of racialization, at least three consequences can be alluded to. Individuals are no longer seen as racists tout court, but as open to other forms of subjectivity and practice, especially in liberal democratic polities where notions of equal opportunity, formal equality, citizenship, ‘fairness’ and the unacceptability of ‘prejudice’ are also institutionally and culturally embedded, playing a part in the interpellation of subjects. Instances of these contradictions and tensions abound. A corollary of this form of conceptualization of the subject is that singular ethnic and national identities are also under constant pressure from alternative forms of cultural, political and economic identification. A second consequence, registered above, is that it cannot be taken for granted that racialization will follow the dictates of the ‘needs’ of capital or that class forces and formations will always override the pulls of racism and ethnic and nationalist identifications. As we shall see, this has considerable relevance for Sivanandan’s thesis on race, class and the state. Note also that the concept of ‘institutional racism’ can be formulated only in a particular fashion, if the social is de-essentialized in this way. Racisms within institutions such as schools, workplaces or the police force cannot be assumed to be operating in a monolithic, reproductive fashion, but must be seen as always subject to interruptions by nonracist and anti-racist individuals and practices. Moreover, the racisms will always be found coexisting with processes involving class, gender and sexuality to prevent any easy identification of ‘purely’ racist actions, procedures and institutional and individual practices, as for example in encounters between white male and female teachers and black male students and female Asian students (see Mirza 1992; Rattansi 1997; Sewell 1997). The decentring of subjects is also a consequence of the reconsideration of the ‘psychic’ and the ‘social’ involved in my version of ‘postmodern’ framing. Individuals are presented as constitutively split between a conscious self and the disruptions of unconscious desire, emotional detachments and hostilities, psychological projections and introjections, and the operations of ambivalence, fantasy and paranoia. Again, the implications for any understanding of the processes of racialization and ethnic and national identification are profound, in particular by way of preventing any easy fit between social locations and ascriptive memberships of particular cultural groups, on the one hand, and personal identities and actions on the other (see, among many others, Kristeva 1991; Rustin 1991).

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A ‘postmodern’ framing also requires serious engagement with issues of sexuality and sexual difference as theorized in poststructuralist and ‘postmodern’ feminisms, especially the destabilization and de-essentialization of the categories of ‘women’ and ‘men’, and the deconstruction of simplistic binaries of sex/gender and public/private (Riley 1988; Butler 1990; Hekman 1990). Equally important is an understanding of the sexualization of ‘race’, and the complex intersections between ‘race’ and ‘sex’ as analysed in a number of key contributions. The great significance of this particular set of issues will become apparent when I reassess the Sivanandan thesis in the next section. The incorporation of questions of class and sexuality in processes of racialization leads to the broader theme of the de-essentialization and decentring of ‘race’ and racism. A major implication of the form of analysis advocated here is that ‘race’ and racism never appear in a ‘pure’ form. As argued above, they are always imbricated with relations of class and sexuality. Equally importantly, I argue that as a concept ‘race’ bears a family resemblance to concepts of nation, ethnicity and even religion such that any particular instance of racist discourse and practice is likely to bear the traces of other boundary markers (Rattansi 1994). The form of racism that is expressed on any particular occasion will thus depend upon the degree to which an idea of ‘race’ as based on fixed biological ‘stock’ is combined with more culturalist notions of nation, ethnic group and religion. Hence the need always to speak of racisms rather than racism tout court in the manner common when Sivanandan was writing. Temporality and spatiality should be seen as equally constitutive of the operations of the ‘social’, and of processes of identification and identity formation. Temporality is particularly important within the historical narratives involved in the creation and re-creation of identities, which often confine selected communities to a pre-modern and therefore ‘uncivilized’ stage (Fabian 1983). Spatiality is also constitutive of identities in so far as these are bound up with particular geographical locations, landmarks and landscapes which foster intense emotional attachments through processes of what might be called ‘emplacement’ and which create powerful senses of ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ (Keith and Pile 1993; Back 1996). It is hardly necessary to point out how crucially these emotions are imbricated in racialized, ethnic and nationalist movements and conflicts. They are also central to an understanding of the dynamics of diasporization (Hall 1990; Gilroy 1993; Clifford 1997; Cohen 1997).


Finally, a ‘postmodern’ framing involves an exploration of the profound impact of new phases of globalization, theorized as uneven processes, but as corrosive of old national boundaries and playing a creative role in the formation of new, hybrid, syncretic transnational and deterritorialized identities (Appadurai 1990; Hall 1991; Tomlinson 1999). In the account that follows, I shall draw selectively upon the new framework and upon insights from the Gramscian Marxism of the 1970s and 1980s, concluding with brief remarks on how the interrelationship between ‘race’, class, gender, sexuality and the state might be further illuminated by a neo-Foucauldian ‘postmodern frame’.

Postwar immigration: the significance of ‘race’ Cabinet documents relating to both the Labour administration of 1945–51 and the Conservative government of 1951–55 reveal deeply racialized responses to the arrival of black and Asian immigrant workers. While both administrations appeared to adopt the laissez-faire immigration policy attributed to them by Sivanandan and other earlier commentators, the archives reveal considerable hostility to black migrants, frequent discussions of the desire and need to keep them out of Britain, and the implementation of a large variety of administrative manoeuvres and measures to keep black immigration to a minimum. The broad similarities of response as between Labour and Conservative administrations mean that for present purposes their policies can be discussed together in this analysis. The strong elements of racialization in both administrations are evident in a range of reactions to the initial and continuing arrival of ‘coloured immigrant’ workers. News of the departure of the SS Empire Windrush in June 1948 with over 400 Jamaicans on board, bound for Tilbury, was greeted with dismay by Labour Cabinet ministers. It emerged that there had been frantic backstage lobbying in Jamaica to prevent just such an event (Dean 1987: 317). Attlee immediately branded the potential immigrants as ‘undesirables’, a claim particularly odious considering that most of those on board were skilled, had saved up relatively large sums to pay for their passage and included many ex-servicemen who had served in Britain during the war. Plans were laid to make the new arrivals feel as unwelcome as possible: temporary accommodation was provided in a reopened wartime shelter at Clapham North underground station, and the message was strongly conveyed to them that even this meagre hospitality was being offered for a brief period. This, after Attlee’s desperate suggestion that the

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potential immigrants should be diverted to East Africa, there to work on what turned out to be a disastrous groundnuts scheme, was rejected as unacceptable (Dean 1987: 317–18). The hostility and anxiety provoked by the impending arrival of the Jamaicans contrasts strongly with the encouragement provided to attract European refugees to work in Britain. All the evidence points to a racialized response, which overrides class whether in the sense of the class origins of the migrants or the putative needs of capital. Once the Jamaicans had arrived, Colonial Office functionaries were despatched to the colonies to put pressure on Governors to prevent further migrations. Advertisements were placed in local papers to convince potential migrants that any job opportunities they may have seen advertised were only ‘paper vacancies’, briefly available while white indigenous workers were moving jobs (Harris 1993: 22). There was considerable discussion, too, of the supposedly innate ‘racial’ characteristics of black and Asian populations which made them unsuitable for work in British conditions and, by strong implication, for full inclusion in the British nation. Even before the Empire Windrush had docked, the Ministry of Labour had warned that, on the one hand, workers from the Caribbean were unsuitable for outdoor work in the winter because of weak chests and lungs, and, on the other, equally inappropriate for the ‘too hot’ conditions of the mines! (Harris 1993: 22). Indeed, an elaborate racial typology, developed in the course of governing the empire, came into play. This included notions such as ‘mentally slow’ black women, West Indians as more ‘stable’ than West Africans, and a variety of differentiated mental and physical capacities among workers of Indian and Pakistani origin (Carter, Harris and Joshi 1993: 60–1). ‘Coloureds’, moreover, were regarded as variously lazy, feckless and quarrelsome. And lest one is inclined to believe that such judgements sat ill with Labour’s support for independence and selfgovernment in the colonies, we should note the considerable evidence amassed by Knowles in her study of Labour’s discourse on ‘natives’ that the capacity for full citizenship and self-government was seen to be thinly distributed in the colonies, with criteria framed by conceptions of proximity to Western modernity: degree of industrial development, ‘stage of civilization’, and so forth (Knowles 1992). A proneness to criminality was posited as a further reason to prevent black immigration, and fears were expressed about the development of a ‘new Harlem’ in Liverpool (Dean 1993). The last two points bear testimony to my arguments regarding the centrality of temporality and spatiality in discourses and practices of racialization.


The racial concern over criminality fed into two other racially charged anxieties. One focused on the fear of immigrants sponging off the newly created welfare state (Dean 1987; 1993). Equally significant was the sexualization of the various elements of racism already in play. This took at least two major forms. First was the the old fear of miscegenation and the creation of an inherently abnormal, racially mixed population. Second, there were equally long-standing fears of white women’s sexuality, especially when in potential contact with the black male’s reputed sexual proclivities and prowess. White women were placed in what appears to have been a four-fold bind. Either bands of marauding white women were supposedly travelling round the country looking to live off ‘naive’ (read: child-like, a temporalizing infantilization) ‘coloured’ men (Dean 1987: 308–9); or they were prone to being exploited by black pimps in the inner cities (Carter, Harris and Joshi 1993). Alternatively, the younger ones were feared to be wildly attracted to black men’s exploits on the dance floor, with their ‘superb sense of rhythm and their natural ease of keeping time with the music’, as a Mass Observation study reported (Dean 1987: 311). It was also asserted that there would be ‘serious trouble’ (Dean 1987: 322) if white women and black men worked in close proximity – presumably because either the women would object, or the black men could not be trusted to behave in a proper manner. This was the usual white male anxiety over the consequences of unregulated contact between white women and black men, both being the dreaded sexual Other of the white man’s fragile ego. These issues are difficult to address without recourse to an understanding of how identities are formed in relation to those regarded as binary opposites, and also without recourse to psychoanalytic frameworks for the understanding of sexual difference and identity formation as indicated earlier (see also Rattansi 1994). In other words, the fears and anxieties unleashed by the presence of the black and Asian men, documented above, are better understood if aspects of the ‘postmodern’ frame are deployed, as in this brief account.

State, capital and labour: interrogating the political economy of immigration Class and the ‘economy’, then, were hardly the sole structuring influences on post-1945 British immigration policy. Various forms of sexualized racism played a significant role, acting as points of condensation for a range of long-standing white anxieties, with class, too, being sexualized via the supposed waywardness of white women of the

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lower orders. Here one can see the intersection between internal and external Others, the dangerous classes and their women as the enemy within, in possible alliance with the uncivilized Others of the nonEuropean worlds. Arguably, though, much of the conventional Marxist political economy of immigration as found in Sivanandan’s essay could in principle remain analytically unscathed, although somewhat diminished in weight for purposes of explanation. But this is not so. A major plank of that political economy of immigration was, of course, the overwhelming weight given to economic determinations. However, this economism, while theoretically premised on Marxism, also derived from the belief that until the period immediately prior to the 1962 Immigration Act the state had followed laissez-faire policies required by the needs of capital. To demonstrate that the façade of laissez-faire was indeed only the front of the stage, while behind the scenes frantic attempts were being made to reduce drastically the flow of black and Asian immigrant labour, is to throw serious doubt on the harmonious relationship between state and capital. Key state departments were, on the contrary, it seems, behaving economically in a most illogical manner, although by following the different ‘logics’ of a deeply sexualized racism. ‘Race’ and sexuality, then, might be seen as at least equally important considerations in state immigration policies, strongly rivalling the ‘economy’ and the ‘needs of capital’ as determining influences. There are several other reasons for doubting the basic claims of the conventional political economy account. First, the key assumptions of a ‘labour shortage’ should be critically unpicked. Conventional wisdom has it that there was a labour shortage, that this was mainly in unskilled work with poor pay and hazardous and arduous conditions, and that these ‘pull’ factors determined the concentration of black and Asian workers in particular manufacturing sectors and occupations. By ‘freely’ letting in ‘coloured’ workers and allowing the labour market to work, the state was meeting the requirements of capital and facilitating the super-exploitation of black and Asian workers. As against this, however, note the following: as early as 1949 the Ministry of Labour had argued that there was no longer a significant labour shortage. Also the evidence now indicates that qualified or potentially qualified black and Asian workers were deliberately channelled away by labour exchanges from skilled jobs or from the training schemes which generally allowed white workers to obtain the skills that then enabled them to take up the better jobs (Dean 1987: 321–4; Harris 1993: 30–1). Even the much cited instances of


direct labour recruitment by London Transport and British Rail can now be seen not as state-supported schemes but rather as projects which fed into a significant debate within the state about the needs and interests of capital and the national economy (Dean 1993). There were those who believed that the real problem was overmanning and that the importation of foreign labour allowed manufacturers to continue production with outdated machinery; the ‘real’ long-term interests of capital and the national economy would be better served by restricting immigrant labour and encouraging automation and new technology instead. The recruitment drives in the Caribbean and elsewhere by London Transport and British Rail by no means received unanimous official sanctioning. Second, throughout the period leading up to the 1962 Act there were conflicts and considerable differences of approach between the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Labour. The Colonial Office consistently urged caution about the surreptitious administrative measures against black immigration being adopted by other arms of the state. Its officials were concerned that Britain’s role as head of the Commonwealth would be seriously weakened by protests if there was obvious discrimination against black workers, while white foreign labour was encouraged and unregulated. This chimed in with the postwar beliefs of Labour and Conservative governments that Britain’s dominant position in world politics would survive only as head of a strong and united Commonwealth. Moreover, it was recognized at governmental level that Britain could hardly argue against the growing entrenchment of racism in South Africa if its own policies towards the black Commonwealth could be exposed as discriminatory. Nor did Britain want to alienate the white dominions by inadvertently drawing attention to their ‘white only’ immigration policies to which Britain was turning a blind eye. Moreover, legal restrictions could not be imposed against black workers from the Commonwealth without applying them to white Australians and Canadians, and there was no intention of hindering the inflow of the latter. The Colonial Office was also anxious that racist treatment of black immigrants, and the failure to address the problem of discrimination faced by black students in Britain would increasingly encourage communist sympathies among present and future political leaders in the black Commonwealth. In arguments with the Ministry of Labour and the Home Office, members of the Colonial Office were apt to point to Britain’s culpability in colonial underdevelopment and unemployment (Dean 1993).

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In other words, the state cannot be considered a monolithic entity supremely guided by the needs and interests of capital, a point often made in the 1970s and 1980s by neo-Gramscian analysts of the state. There were contrary political pressures within the state for the maintenance of an ostensibly laissez-faire policy, despite any possible economic reasons for curbing black immigration, and these need to be understood in the context of wider constraints and ambitions connected with Britain’s international role. During the 1950s the Conservative government often discussed the option of a more direct restriction of black immigration, especially as pressure from the Tory grass roots began to build up. Uncertainty over the economic needs of capital, and possible international political repercussions provide part of the answer to the question: Why did Britain delay a formal limitation of black immigration until 1962 despite serious, racialized misgivings about the arrival of ‘dark strangers’, the term Sheila Patterson used in her study of 1950s ‘race’ relations in Brixton (Patterson 1965)? Other pieces of the jigsaw were provided by the conflicting pressures of domestic electoral politics. These were particularly effective in constraining the 1950s Conservative administrations. While there was mounting Tory anxiety about ‘the colour problem’ and its possible consequences, and thus reason to institute legal restrictions on black immigrants, Conservatives were wary of conceding the high liberal moral ground to Labour who, the Conservatives surmised, would be quick to seize upon the racism that would now be exposed. This was a source of worry only because the Conservatives widely believed that the Labour landslide of 1945 had been possible because of the support of the ‘liberal middle classes’; to institute formal controls would be to risk alienating this constituency again and handing power back to Labour (Dean 1993).

Endnotes: Marx, Foucault and black immigration The delaying of formal controls on black immigration until 1962, in the face of the evidence discussed above, can hardly be viewed as the outcome of a tight and well-oiled synchronization between state action and the interests of capital, as portrayed in Sivanandan’s narrative. On the contrary, the process was marked by uncertainty regarding the requirements of the national economy and contrary pressures, both domestic and international. And pace Solomos and Miles, and the neoGramscians, the conclusion to draw from the new research is not


merely that the state can be seen to have exercised a certain ‘relative autonomy’ or that the state was subject to conflicting demands from fractions of capital, labour and ‘popular’ pressure (Miles and Satzewich 1990; Solomos 1993). Rather, an appreciation of the forms in which racism and sexuality intersected with more conventionally recognized ‘economic’ and ‘political’ pressures, in a process in which it is impossible to assign precise, separate weightings to each of these forces, implies the abandonment of the endless and unproductive debates about the primacy of class and ‘the economy’ over ‘race’, but also suggests the rather limited nature of the theoretical advance marked by Marxist conceptions of the ‘relative autonomy’ of the state. I have suggested at various stages in this chapter the significance of the analytical insights to be gained by viewing the post-1945 period, in relation to immigration policies, through a ‘postmodern frame’, which gives due contextual weight to the complex imbrications between racism, class and sexuality, temporality and spatiality, the category of modernity, and so forth. Notions of ambivalence and contradiction, which are also key themes in my ‘postmodern frame’, suggest an understanding of the complex ways in which Labour politicians, in particular, both supported moves towards colonial independence on principled grounds and yet responded with dismay, resentment and hostility when faced with the prospect of the ‘natives’ actually arriving to take up their place as citizens of the ‘mother’ country. It is worth concluding with the point that the way in which post1945 governments and various branches of the state responded to black immigration makes even more sense if Foucault’s insights into the operation of modern Western ‘bio-politics’, ‘discipline’ and governmentality are more elaborately incorporated into the other elements of the ‘postmodern framing’ deployed earlier (Foucault 1978; 1979; Cousins and Hussain 1984). ‘Bio-politics’ and discipline refer to the set of functions and processes which became inscribed in the formation of the modern Western state as it undertook to manage the ‘social body’, the national population, by targeting the formation of individual bodies through the production of a series of complexes of knowledge/power: mental asylums, hospitals, schools, prisons, factories, poorhouses, army barracks. Techniques of organization and the deployment of new knowledges (medicine, psychology, criminology, eugenics, political economy, pedagogy, architecture, urban planning) were intertwined in ‘policing’ the population, rendering bodies disciplined, docile, politically governable, economically more productive and spatially ordered into cities and within buildings.

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The differentiation of bodies and groups of bodies became part of processes of ‘normalization’ which set up discourses and practices of inclusion and exclusion, defining the ‘abnormal’, the ‘pathological’ as requiring particular targeting, segregation and separate treatment, while at the same time instituting powerful, subsequently taken-forgranted dominant notions of the ‘normal’. Order and disorder, conceptions of cultural assimilability or absolute cultural difference, health and disease, potential for bodily discipline and productive capacity all became intertwined in the ways in which the state formed and set about reforming the national population. Foucault certainly did not ignore class and the economy, registering the state’s concern with governing the ‘lower orders’ and enhancing the productivity of the population and economic organizations as important concerns in his accounts of the formation of Western modernity. However, it is notorious that Foucault had little to say about ‘race’ (although see Stoller 1995). But it is not difficult to see how ‘race’ was increasingly a key aspect of state discourses and practices of government, from the attempted restriction of Jews from Eastern Europe via the Aliens Act 1905, the anxiety over the deficiencies of British stock, especially among the working class, as revealed in medical examinations for the Boer War and subsequently for the First World War, and the myriad conceptions of Oriental and African racial otherness which were intertwined with colonial rule (Rattansi 1994). The salience of the racialized anxieties around miscegenation, black criminality, black and white sexualities, concerns over the health and bodily and mental capacities of black and Asian people, all of which fed into the internal debates over black immigration within the state, can be better appreciated if freed from the straitjacket of a ‘needs of capital’ paradigm and viewed instead as part of governmentality, the much wider process of management or ‘policing’ of the population which Foucault analyses so well. The supposed ‘needs’ of capital, then, can be seen to provide only one set of considerations for the way in which Labour and Conservative administrations and various branches of the state responded to and attempted to control the flow of black and Asian immigration into Britain after 1945. The significance of the 1958 ‘race’ riots in Nottingham and London’s Notting Hill Gate gave much greater prominence to anxieties over the ‘public order’ consequences of black immigration which had always accompanied the other concerns. While there is dispute about the precise significance of the disturbances in Nottingham and Notting Hill Gate in hastening the prepara-


tion and passing of the 1962 Immigration Act, there can be little doubt about the general interconnections between the state’s concern over public order and the restriction of black and Asian immigration. The consistent and explicit linking of restrictive immigration policies to the better management of ‘race’ relations by both Labour and Conservative governments gives weight to the much wider lens provided by a neoFoucauldian/‘postmodern’ framework which treats class and the economy as one among a set of forces which, in different contexts, exercise varying influence on policy formation. Universalist pronouncements on the necessary primacy of class over ‘race’ seem increasingly implausible, especially when understood in the light of analyses which demonstrate how ‘race’ became intertwined with policy issues around youth, the family, the welfare state, criminality, unemployment, inner-city decay, housing, poverty, education and homosexuality in the period from the 1960s to the present (LaytonHenry and Rich 1986; Solomos 1993; Smith 1994). General confidence in the possibility of definitive theories of class has also declined, even among those who had previously espoused Marxist sociology; Crompton (1993; 1998) furnishes a good example of such a trend. On the other hand, proclamations from self-styled postmodernists about the ‘death of class’ (Pakulski and Waters 1996) are greatly exaggerated (see Rattansi 2000). To stage historical and current debates in terms of the ‘race’/class binary is likely to yield limited understanding of the dynamics of racialization and their complex operation in the context of contemporary social conflicts and state policies. It is time to stretch the parameters of the ‘race’/class debate decisively, but not uncritically, beyond forms of political economy, and into a terrain which is gradually being explored and mapped by the newer and as yet underdeveloped ‘postmodern’ turn.

Note 1. For discussions of the differences between ‘production’ and ‘market’ theorizations of class, see, inter alia, R. Crompton and J. Gubbay, Economy and Class Structure (London: Macmillan 1977), and A. Rattansi, ‘End of an Orthodoxy? The Critique of Sociology’s Interpretation of Marx on Class’, Sociological Review, 33 (1985).

4 Gender, Ethnicity and Social Stratification: Rethinking Inequalities Floya Anthias

Introduction The growth of interest in non-class forms of social division and identity, accompanied by an increasing focus on ethnic and gender inequalities (Therborn 2000), characterizes contemporary sociology. However, this has not been accompanied by a rethinking of social stratification theory; the latter is still generally seen to be about economic inequalities organized on the basis of class (Scott 2000). In this chapter, I will argue that material inequality is informed by claims and struggles over resources of different types, undertaken in terms of gender, race and ethnicity as well as class.1 This position allows us to include these categorical formations, alongside class, as important elements of social stratification, i.e. as determining the allocation of socially valued resources and social places/locations. I will also develop the concept of social division, which I believe is a useful concept for understanding social inequalities, particularly in the light of the problems of traditional stratification theory with dealing with non-class forms of inequality. There is no doubt that gender inequalities have been widely explored and theorized, and the theoretical means for understanding these have been appraised and developed substantially (for example, see Pollert 1996; Crompton 1997; Bottero 1998; Reay 1998; Gottfried 2000). This is also the case for ethnic inequalities (for example, see Modood et al. 1997, and the discussion later in this chapter). Moreover, the relationship between gender, ethnicity and class is an important debate in sociology today (for example, Anthias and Yuval Davis 1983; 1992; Brah 1996; Bradley 1996). There have been attempts to measure or understand the correlation between class position and gender or ethnic 64

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position, such as the extent to which women and men tend to be concentrated into particular occupational clusters and economic groupings (for a good summary on gender and class, see Crompton 1997). These correlations have been explained in terms of factors such as cultural or personal choices, the existence of social constraints such as sexism or racism, the sexual division of labour in the household, the existence of dual labour markets, and the idea that women and ethnic minorities constitute a reserve army of labour (for a summary of these debates, see Anthias 2001a). There is also a great deal of literature that attempts to refine the notion of class by developing neo-Marxist or neo-Weberian concepts, such as those of the ‘new middle classes’ or the ‘service class’ (for a good summary, see Scott 2000). However, these developments have not led to a substantial revision of traditional stratification theory.

The dominance of ‘class’ There is a long tradition of treating class as coterminous with social stratification or at least as the social division and relation that structures material inequality. Marxists emphasize class as a relation of exploitation which takes place in the sphere of the production and reproduction of economic resources. Classes are perceived as mutually dependent within the productive system, and potential forms of collective social organization in relational conflict, underpinned by the relations found within the economic structure. Class conflict is seen as the motor of history, and thus generating the movement from one stage of human and social development to the other. However, in the final analysis, little space is given to theorizing other forms of inequality and subordination such as gender and ethnicity, as significant social forces in their own right. These are treated as the natural conditions – as in Engels’ (1968) idea of the natural division of labour – for human life, upon which class is built. Their embodied and constructed forms are explicable by the processes found in the production and reproduction of economic resources. Social stratification has also been identified with forms of sociality and economic inequality, relating to the sphere of the distribution, allocation and exchange of skills and resources in the marketplace, within the Weberian framework (Weber 1964). Such a framework, drawing similar conclusions to Marxism about the centrality of the economic in the domain of the social, none the less treats class inequality as a product of the free exchange of skills and resources, rather than as a precondition of the form that exchange takes. Social stratification, in this approach,

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involves the construction of unequal life-chances or life-conditions. Here, a distinction between class and status is made which is able to consider ethnicity and gender in terms of status but not class relations. Whilst the Marxist and Weberian paradigms still occupy a central place in theorizing class relations, there has been significant development and diversification within them. Contemporary debates on class have focused on fragmentation and the growth of flexible and differentiated labour markets. Developments in class theory have included concerns with the boundary issue, that is with how to delineate the boundaries among the various classes, the location of supervisory grades and of the managerial strata, as well as the petty bourgeoisie. A particular focus in Britain has been on employment relations and the fragmentation of occupational categories, particularly through the work of John Goldthorpe and his colleagues (Goldthorpe 1980; Goldthorpe and Heath 1992), and it has been argued that class relations are strictly those related to the relations of employment. The labour process (see Braverman 1974 and the debates around his work) has been subject to analysis, and the growth of flexible labour markets, as well as segmented labour markets, has been extensively researched (Doeringer and Piore 1971; Dex 1987; Crompton and Sanderson 1990). Despite acknowledging that gender and ethnic/race processes are relevant in determining social positioning, many of these approaches have been largely unable to think through the implications of this for their traditional foci (Crompton 1993). The recognition of multiple forms of inequality in modern societies has led to attempts to find alternatives to the traditional stratification approach by developing the essentially Weberian notions of social exclusion and status. Concurrently, a whole industry has grown up round the study of ‘social exclusion’, a term in the past associated with Max Weber, but which few contemporary writers have sought to clearly define. This term potentially broadens the foci of stratification to include political, civic and cultural forms of stratification. Since the matter of exclusion and inclusion spans a number of important parameters of differentiation and stratification, this potentially opens the way (as Parkin [1979] noted) to considering gender and ethnicity as aspects of stratification.

Social exclusion and the concept of status One way out of the difficulties facing traditional stratification theory and an acknowledgement of a crisis at its heart is this current concern with social exclusion, potentially breaking the impasse found in the


concepts and debates that dominated sociology for so long. There are a number of problems, however, worth highlighting in the analysis of social exclusion (for an extended discussion, see Anthias 2001b). One is the tendency to identify people as ‘the excluded’. Social exclusion appears to be identified in many debates with social polarization (for example, through focusing on those at the bottom rung of the stratification order, such as the poor or the underclass). One of the dangers is that it may reduce those subject to processes of ‘social exclusion’ to passive victims or willing agents in their own denigration. In much of Europe exclusion has been related to lack of social integration or anomie, utilizing a Durkheimian problematic relating to the conditions for social cohesion, and often being another term for poverty and its effects (Berkel 1997). The danger here is a tendency to pathologize and homogenize, and produce a disqualified identity. Moreover, it could be argued that concentrating on ‘the excluded’ focuses too much on the bottom of the scale and does not allow for looking at forms of inequality and hierarchy more generally. Another difficulty relates to treating inclusion as the opposite of exclusion. This is clearly problematic as subordination, economic exploitation and assimilation can be seen as forms of inclusion. However, this does not mean that in the moral binary of exclusion as bad and inclusion as good they can be fitted easily into the latter: indeed, they are subordinating and disempowering forms of inclusion. For example, being included in the workforce under unequal conditions, as are many minorities, particularly undocumented migrants, constitutes a disempowering form of inclusion which indeed may also be referred to in terms of exclusion. Moreover, inclusion in one social sphere such as the labour market can go hand in hand with exclusion from another social sphere, such as the political process of citizenship, as is the case for migrants and refugees in many states. Additionally, not all can be included in everything. In other words, it is not possible to treat exclusion and inclusion as mutually exclusive. Therefore, the opposite of exclusion may not be inclusion (since inclusion can also mean subordination), but perhaps should be seen as citizenship or participation/representation. The notion of status has been proposed recently as a way of thinking about non-class forms of social hierarchy/stratification and as ‘relating to the overall structuring of inequality along a range of dimensions’ (Crompton 1993: 127). This is also a position argued by Scott (2000). This involves a reiteration and return to the Weberian notion that status is about lifestyle groupings on the one hand, and the social

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system of deference and honour on the other. Weber himself was clear in seeing ethnic groups as particular types of status groups (Weber 1964). But treating them as ways for allocating prestige and honour or as denoting life-style or consumption categories alone underestimates their centrality in terms of the ways they enter material resource distribution, allocation and power. In some current analyses, status has been used to refer to a wide range of social relations including citizenship rights (Lockwood 1996). The Weberian notion of status is being asked to do theoretical work of a different order here. In Weber, it was used to locate relations that affected life-chances within the marketplace as well as positing a parallel but different basis for power. Certainly citizenship rights constitute a place for formulating a range of conditions about resource access and allocation, but the juridical and other categories implicated are themselves highly gendered and racialized in quite specific ways. The concept of ‘status’ is not able to attend to the complex range of social relations involved here. By treating non-class divisions as relating to status as Scott does, a particular definition of class operates that identifies it with everything to do with economic distribution and production. The conflation between class and the economic is significant and places a hurdle in taking gender and ethnicity seriously as modes for organizing the distribution and consumption of resources. This approach assumes that class processes are distinctively material: about the distribution and consumption of economic value (in some cases linked to the production process) singularly related to the marketplace or the labour market/ employment system. The binary that Weber constructs between class and status is purely heuristic: here it is interpreted to refer to actual groupings of people that can be allocated a position under two different grids: those of economic resources, which produce class populations, and those of life-style and honour, which produce status group populations, such as women and racialized minority groups. But gender and ethnic populations are not simply groups with differential life-style or social honour: for their conditions of existence, given discourses, practices and systemic institutional relations, actually mean that they enter into the whole system of economic resource allocation. Moreover, dividing people into permanent class and status groupings simply does not work or have any heuristic value. This is because the people in class groups are concurrently cross-cut by gender and ethnicity. Moreover, treating gender and ethnicity as ‘groupings’ and then allocating them to the ‘status’ category within a Weberian problematic fails to attend to their specific characteristics and their differences,


both from each other as well as from other types of status groupings such as occupational or consumption-based groups. When one looks at processes for the production of unequal outcomes on the other hand, one cannot use the class category alone, unless it becomes merely a shorthand for all those processes that lead to outcomes of unequal resource distribution. These problems do not imply abandoning class but treating it as a heuristic device rather than about actual groupings of people; that is, for sociological purposes rather than for auditing purposes. Class, ethnic and gender attributions and competences are centrally important in the marketplace, both as resources that individuals bring to it, and also in terms of the allocation of value to the places in the market (for example, see the discussion of skill in the work of Phillips and Taylor 1980; Cockburn 1991).

Explaining ethnicity and class Ethnicity and class, when paired together, have led to problems of reductionism, where ethnicity becomes a disguise of class or its symbolic manifestation. Marxist approaches may treat it as false consciousness, where the real divisions of class take on symbolic forms. Ethnicity may also be seen as being a way that classes organize (not as a disguise, but as a vehicle), in order to struggle over economic resources, as in the work of writers such as Hechter (1987). This is less reductionist, but again ethnicity is treated as a dependent phenomenon, whereas class is treated as being about ‘real’ resource claims. Alternatively, twinning ethnicity and class may focus on the correlations between the actors who occupy particular ethnic positions, and those in particular class positions. This is to focus on how actors within each coincide on scales relating to social position. As an example, black groups who suffer racial disadvantage are then seen to occupy a particular class position or class fraction (Phizacklea and Miles 1980). Another facet of this is to treat one as an effect of the other, in terms of the influence of the valuation (and prejudice/racism/discrimination) that accrues to particular ethnic positions, and how this is manifested in terms of class effects or outcomes. Or it can be done in terms of the mutually reinforcing disadvantages of ethnicity and class (Myrdal 1969). These positions are problematic (Solomos 1986; Anthias 1990). One underlying difficulty is that whilst the delineation of connections, correlations, and so on between ethnicity and class are useful, as long as there is a clear operationalization of the terms in substantive analyses, it is much more difficult to specify the mechanisms at work. Moreover,

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the attempts to find correlations assumes each one is homogeneously constituted, has a unitary role and is mutually exclusive, implying, for instance, that all class members belong to a particular ethnic group. Many of the difficulties of these forms of analysis relate to the ways in which class is seen to be a division marked by material difference, and inequality of positioning around material resources, whether conceived in the area of production or distribution (determined by relations of exploitation or by relations of the market). Ethnicity, on the other hand, is treated as being positioned in terms of culture, or in the symbolic and identificational realm, with particular behavioural or action elements flowing from this. The lasting effect of these traditions of exploring social inequality, through the primacy of the economic realm, heralded by the Marxist framework and revised within the Weberian tradition and the aftermath, have seriously skewed academic conceptions of inequalities and social stratification. They have been impediments to thinking about inequalities in a more holistic and multidimensional way, and are premised on the ontological and epistemological primacy of economic/material needs and their social organization in human life.

The material and the cultural The distinction between the ‘material’ on the one hand, and the ‘cultural/symbolic’ on the other, underpins the distinction made between class and other social divisions. My view is that whilst it is useful to hold on to these distinctions at the analytical level, however fraught and difficult their delineation might be, they cannot be used to posit a particular configuration of relations as the exclusive domain of particular kinds of groupings of people. This is because material and cultural/symbolic elements are to be found across all the social categories. Categories therefore may be distinguished not through the polarity of the material and the cultural/symbolic realms, but rather in terms of the specific forms these take. In addition, it is necessary to disassociate the economic and the material from one another. Materiality is here defined in terms of the production and allocation of socially valued resources of different types. Once ‘the material’ is formulated around the idea of resource allocation and hierarchical placement, with regard to different types of socially valued resources (which can be cultural as well as strictly economic: although economic resources may possess cultural value and cultural resources may possess economic value), this allows ethnicity and gender a definitive role in a theory of social stratification.


The significance of the economic lies in the production of value at the level of reproduction of human life and as a central form of exchange, and functions particularly as a primary context for all other values, that is it is their necessary condition of existence. Where Marx made that sphere the determining one, it is also possible to see it as an a priori condition of existence for all the others, in terms of allowing for the satisfaction of culturally determined survival and reproduction needs. However, the same could be said of sex difference with regard to biological reproduction as a prerequisite for human life, and the existence of solidary bonds as prerequisites of social and human life. Moreover, although it appears incontrovertible that human beings need to produce in order to survive, the economic is but one, albeit a central and necessary resource, up to a certain level constituting a condition of existence for the other resources. After this level, economic value assumes a symbolic value. Marx himself was very clear on this, and raised the issue of the symbolic (and indeed the psychic), from the point of view of the fetishism of commodities. This insight, however, was used to reinforce the argument of historical materialism. However, it could be used to subvert it. For once commodities become fetishized, they no longer function as mere material or economic value, but assume a cultural and symbolic value. If this is the case, Marx is acknowledging the important role of the symbolic and the cultural within social stratification. The fetishism of commodities no longer gives commodities mere economic value, either as use value or exchange value, but endows them with human value and social worth. Developing this insight can take us in the direction of recognizing the importance, within stratification, of the role played by social value, defined as symbolic, cultural and political, in terms of providing access to socially valued resources and positionings. These are not impersonations of the material, nor do they provide its conditions of existence alone. They construct places and positions in terms of the allocation of a range of social resources. Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of cultural capital goes some way in acknowledging the role of cultural resources as a form of capital. However, the analogy with capital is too focused on how such resources might enter into providing access, in the final analysis, to economic resources. But economic resources are not the most valuable resource from the point of view of social positioning, at least not in any essentialist way. Economic resources have to be endowed with a symbolic or cultural value for them to be seen as socially meaningful in producing social hierarchies relating to life conditions and life-chances. Imagine a situation where money can buy a

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big house, but cannot buy entry into a sports club or the formal rights of citizenship. Or imagine where money or capital can buy workers, and can thereby, through relations of exploitation, produce more capital, but cannot buy social respect or membership of a community. National lottery winners have access to economic value, but may not be empowered politically, socially or culturally by this, despite the power as consumers, or the freedom to live a life of leisure they may acquire. In addition, cultural ideas about consumption values mediate the mere notion of economic value. The value of a particular trainer or eye shades is not solely dependent on the economic value they possess. Advertising and marketing construct the value of commodities; they do not have value in and of themselves. From the point of view of capitalism as a social system, the focus on the economic and its effects is vital, but this focus need not be retained in the analysis of systems for the social allocation of resources and in terms of social relations of hierarchization and inferiorization, important elements of social division and stratification in modern society. Even acknowledging the epistemological primacy of ‘the economic’, in the final analysis, as Althusserian revisions of Marx have done (Althusser 1969; 1971), does not require us to maintain this primacy in terms of explaining the social allocation of resources to concrete individuals and groups. This discussion might indicate that Marx’s historical materialism is embedded in a framework that essentializes economic value, rather than seeing it as socially contingent. If this is the case, then material value is not only produced within the sphere of production, the labour market and the economy, but is generated in relation to symbolic and cultural processes. Moreover, gender and ethnicity involve the allocation of hierarchies of value, inferiorization as well as unequal resource allocation (on their basis and not through the intermediate relation of production relations). For example, women may be paid less than men for doing the same job, or jobs that women do may be allocated a lesser economic value. Being a woman or black can exclude an individual from access to resources of a group such as male-dominated occupations, or those defined as ‘masculine’, or defined by the state as only appropriate for British nationals (such as top civil service jobs).

Life-conditions and life-chances In light of the above discussion, I would like to explore the potential of rethinking the distinction between the concepts of life-chances and life-conditions, which I believe is a useful one. However, simultaneously,


the distinction between social outcomes and social practices/processes needs to be maintained. This will provide an important diachronic reference, incorporating both spatial and time dimensions. Life-conditions reference how a person/group at a particular point in time and space is positioned in social relations, in terms of structured social outcomes relating to resource allocation and social placement. Life-chances may be seen in terms of the set of predispositions and opportunities structured by the placement of individuals within the different ontological realms: of production (class), sexual difference (gender) and collective formations (ethnicity). Life-chances provide the overall context for the achievement of life-conditions. These lifechances are not produced only through the allocation of individuals to a role and position within the productive system, but also include allocation and role within the production and reproduction of sex difference and biological reproduction (gender), and the production and reproduction of collective bonds around notions of origin and destiny (ethnicity). Therefore, although at one level life-conditions themselves (that is, outcomes) give rise to life-chances, life-chances are also determined by a range of other social relations such as gender or ethnic forms of opportunities and exclusions. The third aspect of stratification is found in the dimension of collective allegiances and identities relating to struggle over resources. Such allegiances may be formulated around ideas of class solidarity, gender solidarity or ethnic solidarity, and cannot be restricted to class-based allegiances. Such modes of organizing around resource claims may be a product of the articulation between, on the one hand, life-chances (cultural predispositions and structural opportunities/exclusions) and life-conditions (the actual allocation of a range of socially valued resources). The latter include the economic, the political and the symbolic/cultural. The cultural can be seen both as artefact and as the place where valuation is constituted; as a form of consumption of commodities as well as the realm in which those commodities assume social value. This is imparted to those that consume them and this figures in the construction of human worth. There is no necessary coincidence between individuals who share life-conditions, life-chances and collective solidarities. However, sharing life-conditions with others alerts individuals to the disjunction in their life-chances. Sharing life-chances (of class, of gender or ethnicity) may alert individuals to the disjunction with life-conditions, and makes more manifest systems of inequality. The solidarities formed through these manifest disjunctions may produce a range of local

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struggles, contestations and proclamations on the basis of organizing around the category of class, or that of ethnicity or that of gender. On the other hand, a coincidence in the individuals that share both lifeconditions and life-chances (that is, shared outcomes and shared exclusions/opportunities), might have the effect of naturalizing the similarity and lead to the formation of more permanent solidary groups. These may or may not result in subaltern solidarities and resource struggles of a more overarching kind; for example, antagonistic groups of a more permanent type manifested in ethnic conflict based on exclusion or usurpation (such as white dominant groups or national liberation struggles). Marx’s notion of the importance of the division between labour and capital is central in the analysis of systems of production, at the holistic level, but the analytical privileging of the economic cannot work in explaining the life-chances, conditions or solidary formations of concrete and determinant individuals and groups. This is because other cultural, symbolic, political and juridical factors mediate the abstract level that Marx is concerned with. This also applies to Goldthorpe’s analysis of employment relations as being the key to stratification relations. Such employment relations are end-products of processes but are not themselves explanations for the allocation of resources of different kinds to individuals and groups, according to the approach that I have outlined.

Boundaries of ethnicity, gender and class The issue of boundaries relates not only to the difference in the boundary between class, gender and ethnic groups, but also to the boundary between one social class and another, as well as one ethnic group and another. The issue of the boundaries for defining particular class groupings has been a long-standing concern in class theory, with its problematic of homogeneity of positioning within class groupings. On what dimensions do people have to share (or have similar) functions, conditions, life-chances or solidarities to be placed in one social class rather than another? A concern in contemporary class theory has been particularly with defining the boundary between the petty bourgeoisie and the working class as well as bourgeoisie (for example, see Poulantzas 1973; Carchedi 1977; E.O. Wright 1985; Scase 1992). The issue of boundaries for defining ethnicity exists at two levels: in terms of the ethnic as a boundary (Barth 1969; Wallman 1979; Anthias 1992) rather than a set of cultural diakritika; and the problem of who can be classified as belonging within the boundary, that is the criteria


by which entry and closure take place. Issues are raised about who does the classifying, what uses this is put to and what its effects are. Within any particular population there are boundaries around both one set of diakritika and around others. For example, the diakritika used for placing individuals into gender groups are different from those used to place them into ethnic and class groups. Individuals, therefore, will not always be placed together using the same diakritika. Putting the two terms of unities and divisions together helps us to see that within any unity there are also divisions, and within any divisions or boundary points, there are unities. The constructed rather than essential or fixed nature of the boundaries becomes clear. Different markers may be used to define the boundaries. This is raised, for example, by the debate on the category black and the shift from seeing it as incorporating both Asians and Afro-Caribbeans, to seeing it as describing only Afro-Caribbeans (see for example, Modood 1988; Brah 1991; Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992; Anthias 1998b). Alternatively, it may be used as a form of self-identification and not dependent necessarily on ascriptive criteria, or may be used as a political identity. A group may be defined, at different times, in terms of culture, place of origin or religion. For example, Jews may be seen as a cultural group, as a diaspora with a reclaimed homeland (Israel) or as a religious community. Greek Cypriots may be seen as either Cypriot or Greek. These are labels, as well as claims, that are produced socially and enter into the realm of assertion, contestation and negotiation over resource allocation, social positioning and political identity. There are three related aspects, therefore, raised by this discussion of unities and boundaries: the shifting and contextual nature of the boundaries that fix the unities; the processes which give rise to particular symbolic and material manifestations of the social categories; and the ways in which the social categories intersect in producing social outcomes for individuals and for social structures. The boundaries of the categories can be identified in terms of relationality/dichotomy, naturalization and collective attributions (Anthias 1998a). Relationality constructs difference and identity in terms of a dichotomy or binary opposition between those within and those outside the boundary. Within the category of ethnicity, for example, the outcomes of ethnicity may be treated as causal, therefore bringing us to naturalization. For example, ethnicity is seen to be at the root of explaining entrepreneurial behaviour among some Asian groups. Collective attributions function to homogenize: for example, the gender category uses the attribution of sexual difference and ideas of its necessary social effects to treat all

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women as a unity. The categories of ‘race’, ethnicity and class also homogenize. The individuals within may be treated as though they are all the same and sensitivity to difference, contradiction, diversity and multiplicity may be absent. In terms of social outcomes, ethnicized, racialized and gendered relations involve a set of exclusionary mechanisms relating to hierarchization, unequal resource allocation and inferiorization. Hierarchization relates to the ways in which the categories construct places or positions in the social order of things. Sometimes this involves the allocation of specific social roles such as occupational (caste and class) or familial (gender) but more often than not these are accompanied by a pecking order of roles and places. The principle of unequal resource allocation, despite the problems of the class analogy, in general, stands. This is not only because of the wealth of empirical evidence that shows that many women and ethnic minority groups suffer disadvantages in the labour market (see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992): these are well known. It is also because unequal resource allocation also involves the issue of power at the political, cultural and representational levels. Gender, ethnicity and ‘race’ are structured in terms of unequal social relations. Regarding cultural resources, for example, such as language, education and religious values, there is no doubt that the dominant ethnic, ‘race’ and gender groups within the state have privileges in terms of cultural production and reproduction. The principle of inferiorization involves the construction of ‘otherness’, normality and pathology and relates to the ways in which one side of the binary divide is seen as the standard, as the norm, as expressive also of the ideal. The yardstick for the individual where gender is concerned, becomes male capacities or achievements, male needs or interests. This is one example of the assumptions that underlie the specification of binary social categories. Ethnicity, gender and class are grids for conceptualizing unity, difference and division, and involve social and political representations (rather than constituting concrete or permanent groups). Class classification starts off from the allocation of individuals, sorting their competencies on the basis of criteria of marketability of skills, competencies, property and knowledges. Membership of individuals in ethnic and race groups is also determined by the possession of criteria of entry, but using other markers, such as colour of skin or language. Individuals are attributed levels of competencies on that basis, maybe extrapolating from certain tendencies of the group and seeing these as inevitable rather than as a product of social relations. In other words competencies are endowed a posteriori on the basis of already meeting


other criteria of entry. In real labour markets the two systems are intertwined: in the first case what is regarded as a marketable skill may be dependent on who possesses the skill (for example, the market value of medical degrees may go down if the people who have them are endowed with intrinsically lower social worth or are regarded as not so deserving: feminization and ethnicization of occupations may lead to this syndrome). A significant difference is that in the case of class there is no natural reproduction posited, although individuals may be seen to inherit characteristics from their parents which means that they may be regarded as fated to be members of a particular class. But movement in or out is seen as a product of individual capacities. In the case of race/ethnicity and gender, there can be no movement in and out in terms of capacity. The capacity is written into the very classification. However, we should note that Cohen (1988) has argued for the racialization of class as has Miles (1993). Gender and ethnicity may be given the characteristics of marketable attributes in the marketplace. For example, where the marketplace requires sexual attributes, ranging from explicit sexual services such as prostitution or surrogacy, to personality traits or physical traits, then gendered characteristics may sit with education or technical skills, that is as resources which individuals can bring to the marketplace and use for determining their life-chances. The human capital approach to social stratification in a sense does this, although in its traditional form it has not treated gender and ethnicity in this way. In terms of ethnicity, knowledge of certain cultures including language or other interactive behaviours may be skills that allow entry into the market and subsequently become constitutive of class positioning.

Concluding remarks The above discussion treats forms of subordination as complex. Recent debates have moved away from the specification of categories as unities and divisions. In the area of ethnicity and migration, for example, there has been an interest in what has been called transethnic, transnational and hybrid identities (Hall 1990; Gilroy 1993; Brah 1996; Anthias 1998b). I do not have the space nor is it my aim here to explore this area. I want to note it with regard to the developments in class theory that focus on contradictory and hybrid class positions (as in the work of E.O. Wright [1985] for example, and the debates around Carchedi [1977] and Poulantzas [1973] on the lower

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middle classes). I want to focus on contradictory locations in a different fashion: as a way of connecting together class, ethnicity and gender. Recognizing the material and symbolic facets of each enables us to do this much more effectively than in the past. Social divisions single out specific kinds of attributes for the filling of the places. Therefore, the debate about stratification as a question of places, and stratification as a question of population groupings needs to be rethought in the light of the ways the places on the one hand serve to single out attributes for those to fill them, and the ways in which the attributes of those who fill the places over time, will serve to mark out the location of the places within the hierarchical system. Thus, a time/distance perspective needs to be introduced into the analysis, as the process of structuration of positions and groupings is a dynamic and relational one. Moreover, all individuals occupy places in each one of them so that they are not mutually exclusive. But the attributions, psychic identifications and claims may vary greatly, some of which may be seen as forms of resistance as well as external constructions and social attributions. To be proud to be woman/feminine, black/minority ethnic (or disabled, Oliver 1995) is to refuse the attribution of a hierarchical otherness. Moreover, identities are multiplex, contextual and situational. Therefore, in terms of social relations that are hierarchical, it is not purely a question of a hierarchy of individuals within a category. For example, in the category of race, where the distinction between, say, white and black is constructed, the white is dominant over the black. The white is able to reproduce advantages and privileges and reproduce the evaluative components of whiteness. However, within this construct, there exist class differences and gender differences that interplay with those of race to produce hierarchical outcomes for individuals. These may lead to complex forms of hierarchy across a range of different dimensions. If the constructs are read as ‘grids’, their salience will not only vary in different contexts, but the interplay of the different grids needs to be always considered in any analysis of social outcomes or effects (Anthias 1998a). The social categories of differentiation and stratification (and I hold the view that differentiation always entails an evaluative process) involve both processual social relations which are analytically distinct, and embodied social outcomes which are difficult to disaggregate. However, through substantive analysis, it is possible to investigate how social categories can act, either to reinforce one another mutually or to set up contradictory locations for social actors (Anthias 1998a).


Therefore, there are two simultaneous sets of contradictory locations: on the one hand, those from within the very categories of class, gender and ethnicity (in the sense of conflictual social relations structured in and through antagonism, exploitation and subordination), and those between them (in the sense of the different places constructed for individuals by each of the ontological positionings). For example, white working-class men have a different position with respect to ethnic and gender hierarchies than with respect to class hierarchies, when compared to black middle-class women. Contradictory and in-between positions construct identities and actions that constitute important points of departure for understanding the dynamics of social stratification, on the one hand, and social integration on the other. In this chapter I have argued that it is necessary to develop an analysis which is able to understand unequal social outcomes. Within my analysis, the social outcomes for specific persons and specific constellations of persons is a product of the interplay, within determinate time/space dimensions, of the processual features of social relations identified through the heuristic device of the ontological spheres or domains of gender, ethnicity and class.

Note 1. This chapter draws extensively on Anthias (2001a; 2001b).

5 Muslim Voices: Class, Economic Restructuring and the Formation of Political Identity Pandeli M. Glavanis

Over the last two decades major changes in the nature of work and employment have occurred on a global level. The restructuring of the global economy, for example, along with the growth of transnational companies, favours decentralized production and a cheap and flexible workforce employed on a casual basis (Glavanis 1996; Sassen 1991). Casualized labour is not marginal to the modern industrial economy, which is dependent on these earnings, yet workers are marginalized within society. Casual workers, however, are often denied all employment rights and are exploited by their employers, who are in turn pressured by the manufacturers, to obtain the maximum level of production for minimum levels of pay (Fekete 1997). Furthermore, public discourse and policy-making have converged, so as to highlight some of the negative effects of the drive to enhance economic growth and competitiveness. In particular, this convergence has highlighted the manner in which this may have contributed to an increase of the social exclusion and marginalization for different social groups and communities within the European Union. This chapter explores this argument with reference to one community, European Muslims (immigrants and settlers), who constitute one of these vulnerable and marginalized groups, and who appear to have experienced discrimination in the labour market and the societal effects that have followed the drive for economic competitiveness and the concomitant increase in flexible employment practices. The focus on European Muslims also derives from a concern to deconstruct an increasingly popular account, which has gained currency within the field of academia and among policy makers at the local, national and European level.1 This is the essentialist account of the recent emergence and increasing visibility of Muslims within the 80

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European Union, which, it is argued, derive from a loyalty to an anachronistic and traditional Islamic culture, which is incompatible with modernity. As such these accounts have contributed, albeit inadvertently, to the emergence of a new form of ‘racism’ within Europe: Islamophobia (Glavanis 1998; 1999). Furthermore, such accounts suggest that European Muslims are able to make use of their particular cultural capital (Islam) in order both to minimize the effects of economic restructuring as well as exploit niche markets within the changing European economy. This, it is argued, allows European Muslims to temper the effects of this economic restructuring and thus, contrary to received wisdom, negate some of the socio-economic ramifications of their social exclusion and marginalization, which may have intensified due to the economic restructuring process. Such accounts, however, raise a number of conceptual and empirical concerns, which will constitute the focus of this chapter. First is the conceptual paradox where an apparently traditional and anachronistic culture (Islam) constitutes the particular social capital that allows (some) European Muslims to compete successfully in a very ‘modern’ and contemporary phase of capitalist development. This in effect raises the issue of the extent to which it is appropriate, conceptually at least, to perceive of Islam as a socio-cultural set of values that are incompatible with modernity. Second is the assumption, derived almost entirely from aggregate quantitative economic indicators, that because some European Muslims are able to mobilize and exploit their particular cultural capital, they in effect are less vulnerable to certain forms of social exclusion and marginalization. Instead, this chapter will explore the emergence of Muslim Voices within Europe in an analytical account, which gives conceptual privilege to an articulation of the two recent processes noted above: globalization and economic restructuring, and the formation of Islamic political identities on the European political canvas. The term Muslim Voices is used in this chapter to highlight the diversity in the way in which European Muslim settlers exemplify their socio-cultural identities in the different locations where they reside. This should not be confused with the concept of Political Islam, which is also used. The latter term represents a very particular political ideology, which is a global ideology shared by only a small minority of the European Muslim settlers. Unfortunately, this is the fundamental confusion, perpetuated by Western media and even academic accounts which tend to assume that all European Muslim settlers who exemplify an Islamic socio-cultural identity are also adherents and supporters of the political ideology.

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Muslims in Europe: the stranger within For more than a century Western social science accepted that the assimilation of cultural and religious identities into a national society was a necessary precondition for socio-economic and political development. In fact, diverse and competing ethnic and religious communal identities were seen as a primary factor in dividing postcolonial societies and hindering development. European scholars perceived ethnic and religious identities as inimical to rational social planning and economic development, and instead highlighted the classical European model where, it was assumed, modernity had eroded communal identities in favour of citizenship and loyalty to the state. Furthermore, conventional European social sciences also assume that communities of immigrants, settlers and/or ethnic origin will invariably follow a course characterized by the privatization of religion, which it is also assumed is the case in the ‘host’ societies. Nevertheless, Political Islam in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, since the 1970s, has continued to furnish evidence for the salience of ethnicity (and religion) as an organizing principle for political action. This is forcing a number of scholars in different areas of the social sciences to rethink the long-standing theoretical and conceptual models regarding the relationship between ethnic and religious identities and citizenship/nationhood. This was particularly the case in 1989 and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For, as Gilles Kepel has noted: With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, an entire way of conceptualizing the twentieth century world disappeared. At a stroke not only the confrontation between east and west, but also conflicts between social classes expressed politically in the left-right opposition became obsolete … . However, along with the end of the old order symbolized by the wall, 1989 also brought events which signalled new dimensions reflecting some of the contradictions of the world to come … in Britain’s rundown inner cities working-class Pakistanis burnt copies of The Satanic Verses … . France, instead of uniting in celebration of the bicentenary of the 1789 Revolution and the values it proclaimed, was rent by divisions as it had not been since the Dreyfus affair, over an apparently trifling incident: could French society allow three Muslim girls (living in an underprivileged city suburb) to wear an Islamic veil to attend state school? (Kepel 1997: 1)

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The analytical significance of exploring the emergence of Muslim Voices derives from the fact that these new socio-political and cultural movements have established themselves outside the ‘space’ where Islam has traditionally been presented as a socio-political ideology and force. Thus it has also blurred the long-standing ‘us and them’ view held by most Europeans, as they have had to accept within Europe the existence of substantial settler communities of Muslims: four million in France, two million in Germany and just under two million in Britain (using conservative estimates). Western scholarship, of course, has addressed the issue of Political Islam and its role in reshaping political space in the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the non-European world (see Said 1978; Ayubi 1991). What it has failed to do, however, is to consider the extent to which it can also constitute an alternative basis for the mobilization of a global political order, and thus its ability to affect political organization within Europe. In other words, can Islam and especially contemporary Political Islam exemplify a non-Western way in which political space can be organized and thus challenge the ‘European’ (Westphalian) state system, which emerged during centuries of socio-political and cultural struggles that were grounded in a Judeo-Christian tradition (Allen 1995; Beeley 1995)? A consideration of the failure of Western scholarship to consider seriously the possibility of any other socio-cultural tradition as being capable of influencing changes on a global scale is of course beyond the limitations of this chapter. Nevertheless, it is important to quote Peter Worsley’s comment on this matter. Following an extensive analysis of various theoretical and conceptual models of the nation-state, Worsley notes that none of the models so far discussed take[s] culture into account. All of them are variants of one kind or another of political economy, though without a cultural dimension it is impossible to make sense of a modern world in which nationalism, religion and inter-ethnic hostility have been far more important than internationalism and secularism. Models based on political economy alone, therefore, are quite incapable of explaining such phenomena as the rise of a modern version of Islam, which is wrongly labelled ‘Fundamentalism’ … . The modern world has been shaped by cultural communities, from the Catholic Church and Islam to secular ideologies and movements like communism which transcend the boundaries of even the largest and most centralized state. (Worsley 1990: 92, 94)


It is for the above reasons that the primary analytical objective of this chapter is to place on the European social research, intellectual and political agenda issues which are relatively submerged at the present time. This is to locate the study of Political Islam and Muslim Voices within the European Union in an analytical framework which will distance itself from the commonly held assumption that the Western European narrative has an overriding importance in the analysis of modernity (Asad 1993). Instead, I argue that the study of European Muslims and the manner in which they express their socio-political and cultural identities should be located in an analytical framework where they are ‘agents of their own history’, albeit within a broader global socio-political and economic structure. In this respect this chapter moves beyond the thesis presented by Worsley, which tends to privilege, even if only conceptually, the specific cultural dimension over the global economy and its implications. Thus, in the first instance such an alternative account must highlight the broader canvas on which the varieties of European Muslim Voices have made their mark. For although European Muslims should not be subsumed analytically into the Western and European narrative, the analysis of Political Islam cannot be located outside the path of the modern juggernaut of global capitalism (Asad 1993: 5). In other words, we need to highlight the economic, social and political structures within which European Muslims have adopted the vocabulary of Political Islam as a means of expressing their identities and bringing attention to their narratives. It is only then that we will be able to consider whether Muslim Voices are incompatible with the vocabulary of modernity (if at all), and the extent to which (if at all) European Muslims have succeeded in tempering the socio-economic effects of globalization and economic restructuring.

Globalization, flexible employment and marginality The increasing globalization of economic, political and cultural processes has profound research and policy implications. Issues concerning European competitiveness, policy and social stability must now be viewed in the context of the internationalization of social and economic life. Furthermore, the establishment of trading blocs in Europe, North America and South East Asia has created a global ‘golden triangle’. As the respective states in these regions are unable to manipulate trading relationships in order to win competitive advantage, they seek instead to maintain an advantage by reference to supply-side

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policies. Thus, in all European countries the encouragement of entrepreneurial activity, the development of new skills and, in particular, the introduction of new forms of work organization (flexibility in employment practices) have become major issues on the policy agenda (Brown and Crompton 1994). These changes, however, have also been accompanied by even more important transformations in the nature of employment relations and practices. By far one of the most important changes here is the dramatic decline of the power of trade unions as significant social partners and the concomitant decline in union membership. As traditional unionized manufacturing industries have closed and high levels of unemployment have emerged, especially among white skilled males, so the bargaining position of unions has all but been eliminated from the social contract. In their place managements have emphasized the importance of increasing the ‘flexibility’ of their workforces, for example by employing at least some of their workers on contracts of employment which are ‘nonstandard’ in the sense that they offer less than full-time employment and/or are not open-ended in duration (e.g. part-time, temporary and fixed-term contracts) (Brown 1992; 1997). In this respect it is possible to suggest that workers’ experience of work during the last two decades is characterized primarily by three interrelated elements: insecurity and precariousness of employment; the intensification of work in the workplace; and the increasing demands by employers for greater flexibility in employment practices (Brown 1997). Insecurity in employment has been maintained by the increasing high levels of unemployment in many European Union states and the intensification of work can be seen in the heavier workloads, longer and more demanding working hours, unsocial shift work and an increased pace of production. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is increasingly immigrants (legal and illegal) who are prepared to work under such conditions. It is important to note, however, that the increasing reliance on immigrant workers during this phase is significantly different from the postwar period when Europe looked to cheap immigrant labour as a way of rebuilding its shattered economies. This was very much the case in such sectors as textiles, car manufacturing, electrical industries and metal manufacturing. Nevertheless, as these older industries have gradually disappeared from the economic landscape, immigrant workers have been confronted with diminishing alternatives and have thus had to accept the more casualized and flexible employment opportunities in the new economic activities (primarily in the service and clothing


sectors). Thus, as the expectations of secure jobs in these ‘older’ industries have been replaced by insecurity and unemployment, immigrant labour has had to adjust its own aspirations and make important economic behaviour decisions with regard to individual and household survival. The significant element concerning this new situation is that flexibility in employment practices also means a flexible supply of labour. In other words, it has led to an increased demand for temporary immigrant labour in order to maximize the competitive advantage of these European industries, which are compelled to compete in an increasingly globalized economy in which supply-side costs are the only elements that can be controlled. In this context, settler immigrant populations constitute more of a burden than an asset and this is in distinct contrast to the postwar era, when they were a central component in the rebuilding of the national economies. The social cost (housing, health care, welfare, and education) needed to sustain a settler immigrant population is, of course, the central issue here. There is only one way, however, in which such a dilemma can be resolved: reduce or remove the citizen and resident rights from settler immigrant populations (especially from new immigrants) and thus render their stay in European countries precarious and contingent. Thus, a variety of new regulations need to be introduced which would ensure that only those who are legally entitled can and do benefit from the welfare regimes in each of the European countries. The problem, of course, is how these various legal entitlements are defined and implemented. Given the above, it is not surprising that one of the most striking and visible characteristics in the cities and regions of most European states is the presence of increasing numbers of immigrants (and their descendants) and the particularly high rate of unemployment among these groups (Cross and Waldinger 1997; Modood et al. 1997). As Malcolm Cross notes: Migrants who arrived in many European cities from former colonies, or those recruited under gastarbeiter systems in the 1960s and the early 1970s, originally revealed very low rates of unemployment. After 1980, this pattern changed rather dramatically and migrants and ethnic minorities are now strongly over-represented in the ranks of the long-term unemployed … . In Germany, for example, older industrial cities on the Ruhr have undergone de-industrialization with major job losses in then traditional sectors of mining and steel production. In Frankfurt in 1970 the foreign population was 11.8%

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while by 1994 had risen to 29.2% … this rise was not due to foreign bankers arriving to work in global finance; the fastest growing groups in the period from 1986–1994 were Yugoslavs, Moroccans and Poles. (Cross and Waldinger 1997: 1–2) Similar patterns can be observed in a variety of other European cities. What is important to note, however, is that although there is a visible rate of high unemployment amongst immigrant workers, there is also a very visible increase of their numbers; even in the context of deindustrialization and the dramatic decline of the traditional industries. In Greater London, for example, immigrants constituted 20 per cent of the population in 1991, compared with 9 per cent a decade earlier. At the same time, immigrants are more strongly represented among London’s unemployed than they were a decade ago, both because they are more numerous and because they appear to have been disproportionately affected by the downturn in economic fortunes affecting the UK capital at the end of the 1980s. Thus, the Bangladeshi population (a high proportion of whom are the migrant generation) have seen unemployment rates rise from 16.7 per cent to 35.8 per cent within one decade (Cross and Keith 1993). Saskia Sassen, amongst many others, has presented an explanation of what appears to be a sociological dilemma: the continuous increase of immigrants in a context of a dramatic decline of productive economic activity that had attracted them in the first place. Sassen argues convincingly that the hallmark of such a social phenomenon is the dramatic growth of low-level service jobs, usually accompanied by short-term labour contracts, privatized services, part-time work, a growing dependence on female labour and a general informalization of economic activities (Sassen 1991). Similarly, Cross and Keith and Modood (1997) have also argued that these European cities and regions, which exemplify an expanding informal sector, have also constituted the location where immigrants have embarked into entrepreneurial and self-employment activities. These accounts, which explore the relationship between the persistence of thriving informal economies and state policies favouring privatization and free competition, also highlight the extent to which competitive market forces are tempered by the way in which immigrant populations fall back upon ‘ethnic identities and loyalties’ and use them to engage in a social dialogue with the state. What is not clear, however, is the origin of these ethnic identities and loyalties and their relationship, if any, to modernity and the process of globalization


and economic restructuring. Sometimes the dynamic and changing nature of global economic systems is acknowledged. But we must also consider the extent to which these dramatic changes may also have a role in conditioning ethnic identities, especially the way in which they are mobilized with respect to particular engagements with the state or other economic competitors. It is wrong to assume that marginalized immigrant and/or settler communities derive economic decision-making from presumed cultural value systems that are said to be associated with particular ethnic and religious identities. There can be a tendency to polarize ‘rational’ with ‘culturally determined’ behaviour without exploring the interaction between the two. Cultural religious and ideological values may be tempered by economic opportunities and may be mobilized as specific responses to particular policies. We should, therefore, consider the way in which cultural, social, religious and personal values, structural economic changes and opportunities, and state policies and incentives may come together in order for a decision to be made or for a particular form of behaviour to be articulated. We need an analytical approach, which highlights the points at which these three intersect and thus consider the dynamic relationship between the individual, the economy and society.

Muslim workers in Europe: a case study2 This section derives from research carried out within a European (TSER) sponsored project entitled Muslims’ Voices in Europe: The Stranger Within, which was conducted in eight European countries (Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK), during the period 1996–99. The project carried out quantitative and qualitative research and examined both the cultural and economic dimensions of the formation of identity among Muslim settler communities. The analytical framework highlighted the relationship between social exclusion and marginalization and the emergence of the politics of identity across the eight European countries and thus presented an account of the diverse socio-economic, political and cultural backgrounds, which gave rise to the different ‘Muslim Voices’ identified by the project. Evidence from the research project suggests that atypical working patterns, in conjunction with low wages and labour market immobility, are responsible for an atypical social life and conditions of poverty for many Muslims3 in Europe, resulting in marginalization or exclusion from society. Although Muslims across Europe occupy a wide variety of positions and levels in most sectors of the economy, there is a high

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concentration to be found at the lowest end of the job market. Many hold part-time, flexible, temporary jobs and are invisible in statistics. Recent immigrants are often employed as unskilled or semi-skilled workers due to a lack of language skills and/or qualifications, or due to the intention of returning home. In Germany, for example, migrants are largely employed in mining, manufacturing, commerce, hotels, restaurants and construction. As heavy industry and manufacturing have been particularly affected by the restructuring of the economy, migrants are also most adversely affected by job losses. Seasonal workers employed in the agricultural sector, hotel and building trades in Switzerland are recognized to have the lowest status, living without their families on low wages and in poor housing conditions. In Greece and Italy, migrants find seasonal work as builders and unskilled industrial and agricultural workers, or work in the retail industry. In the United Kingdom, different minority groups tend to be concentrated in different industries; South Asian Muslims, for example, are concentrated in the textiles and clothing industry and, more generally, in transport and communications. While in the United Kingdom only 3 per cent of all women work in the textile and clothing sector, for South Asian women (predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi – i.e. Muslim) the figure increases to 13 per cent. Similarly, whereas just over 1 per cent of all men work in this sector the figure increases to 7 per cent for South Asian men, with a very high concentration of Bangladeshis. Again many of these data are available (especially in the United Kingdom) as data about ‘minority ethnic groups’; in the typically Muslim groups they are also likely to be recent migrants and their children. There are also Muslims, particularly women, many of them recent migrants, employed in the service sector in many European countries, as hotel and restaurant workers, domestic help, cleaners and porters. These workers often do not have contracts, health insurance or holiday entitlement and are forced to work long hours for low wages. There is a low representation of Muslims in senior positions and management levels in most European countries. In the United Kingdom, where there are a considerable number of Muslims employed in the medical profession, these statistics mask the fact that they are often employed in inner city areas with a lack of resources. The perception of Muslims in Belgium as a problem-generating social category, plus the division of society into ethnic classes, maintains the low status of Muslim workers. Furthermore, increased restrictions are placed on immigrants due to immigration policies and employment regulations. In Switzerland, for example, only Swiss nationals can be employed in


the public sector. In Greece, undocumented Albanian migrants are unable to receive welfare benefits despite making social security contributions through labour market activity. Muslims in Europe are also more strongly represented among the unemployed. In the United Kingdom, even in cities with relatively small minority populations, they account for a disproportionately large number of the unemployed. The proportion of young unemployed men among ethnic minorities is considerably higher than for young white men, even with the same levels of education and qualifications. It is also higher among Muslims than some other ethnic minorities. In London, for example, unemployment among Bangladeshis rose from 16.7 per cent to 35.8 per cent during the Census period 1981–91, and while there was a similar increase among Pakistanis, the increase for Indians was from 11.4 per cent to 11.8 per cent. These statistics are similar in the other European countries. In Germany the sectors with the highest levels of unemployment are those with the highest proportions of Muslim immigrants; whereas the relationship between the unemployment rates of Turkish workers and Germans was 5 per cent as compared to 3.8 per cent respectively in 1980, by 1997 it had risen to 20.45 per cent as compared to 11 per cent. Thus the relative unemployment rate for Turkish workers in 1997 had increased to 85.5 per cent, as compared to 31.6 per cent in 1980. A high level of unemployment is therefore common amongst immigrants, despite the fact that the majority of the immigrant population are of employable age. In Switzerland, permanent resident migrants are three times more likely to be unemployed than Swiss nationals. In Italy, although long-term unemployment is not a common problem for Muslim workers, the majority change or lose jobs frequently, leading to precarious employment (see also Daly’s account in chapter 9). As a consequence of the difficulties in securing employment in the formal sector, they become over-represented in the informal economy. The informal economy covers a wide range of activities, some legal and others illegal, including tax evasion, unpaid economic activities undertaken for the household or friends, the criminal economy or any profitable activity undertaken outside of legal obligations. Employers exploit the lack of alternatives available to immigrants by using clandestine workers who are cheaper and more flexible than legal labour. Illegal labour often corresponds to illegal residence and this is also reflected in the crime statistics: the number of resident immigrants sentenced in Switzerland is 1.3 times higher than among Swiss citizens of the same age and eight times higher among asylum seekers, the

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differential here mainly due to infractions of the Federal Law on the Stay and the Establishment of Immigrants. Asylum seekers and refugees in Germany cannot work without a work permit; in Switzerland they must wait for three months from filing the application, and in both cases they therefore often become hidden, illegal labour. Immigrants from outside the European Union, for example Turks in Germany, have limited conditions of residence in the European Union and can easily become illegal workers due to pressure to engage in atypical employment. Homeworking is increasingly common, but often crosses the border into illegality with respect to safety conditions and rates of pay or because the income is undeclared. The situation in the Netherlands reflects the blurred distinction between the informal and formal sectors, which means that legislation can be difficult or unfavourable to enforce; but it appears that those who profit most from the informal economy are young and well skilled, rather than illegal workers with little education, who are also forced to the lower end of the informal economy. It is not surprising, therefore, that the research project identified a significant rise in Muslim entrepreneurship in all of the eight European countries within which the project was carried out. Faced with a lack of employment options, self-employment can be interpreted as a way to avoid exclusion from the labour market; the fact that the levels of selfemployment increase with a rise in unemployment would appear to illustrate this. In the Netherlands, for example, self-employment among Muslim settlers increased by over 300 per cent from 1986 to 1997. Furthermore, whereas in 1986 only 3.3 per cent of the ethnic settlers were categorized as self-employed, by 1997 this figure had more than doubled to 7.4 per cent. Similarly, it is estimated that, in 1997, seven out of every ten newsagents in Greater London were Asian-owned. Muslim workers are able to take advantage of social networks (e.g. family labour) and ethnic niches in the economy (e.g. halal food), although many have expanded considerably beyond the ‘ethnic economy’. As discrimination comes into play, particularly at the threshold of the world of business, Muslim workers retreat into sectors such as shop-keeping and catering to cope with exclusion. Small firms are favoured by the rise of the service sector and the growth of the financial sector; European Muslims are able to take advantage of opportunities in self-employment in small businesses, which can meet unstable demand, and necessitate only a small amount of capital, in addition to using family labour. The development of ethnic enterprises in Italy, for example, is credited to gaps left


by native Italians in, for example, productive craftsmanship and services. The project, however, also highlights similarities between immigrants and/or settlers and indigenous entrepreneurs based on age, education levels and (low) participation of female entrepreneurs. It suggests that the cultural background is only one aspect pertinent to small enterprises, concluding that the high percentage of Muslim enterprises is due rather to long-term unemployment. Furthermore, the main impetus for self-employment among Muslims in the United Kingdom was found to be unemployment, underemployment, job dissatisfaction and blocked opportunities, with racism being seen as a significant factor. In France, the research project identified a distinctive ‘halal economy’, which is represented by the increasing number of second-generation North Africans (young settlers) who find significant difficulties in gaining access to the labour market and confront even greater difficulties in promotion when inside it.

Muslim women and employment In focusing on Muslim women and employment, the project also explored connections between gender, marginality, Islam and work. In general, the research concluded that Muslim women are more marginalized in society than men, due to a combination of different factors, but it also notes an increasing participation in the labour market despite such obstacles. Many of the difficulties Muslim women face in the labour market are the same as for Muslim men, comprising racism and religious discrimination, the lack of secure, full-time positions, lack of language skills and qualifications in some cases, high levels of unemployment and restrictions of immigration policies. The growth of the service sector has resulted in lower unemployment levels for Muslim women than men due to increased opportunities in this sector, albeit in very low-paid and insecure employment. However, there is a much higher concentration of women, both Muslim and non-Muslim, in part-time employment, work associated with lower pay, lower status and fewer promotion opportunities. In addition, they face the sexual division of work and gender discrimination in the labour market. The specific employment choices, career paths, types of work undertaken and work preferences of the women interviewed for this project are shown to be extremely diverse and varied depending on levels of education, qualifications, length of time spent in the partner country, nationality, age, generation, family responsibilities and relationship with Islam. The life histories that make up part of this project illustrate the extent of the

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marginalization of Muslim women in Europe and describe their different ways of coping with social exclusion due to their ‘Muslimness’. The part-time, ‘flexible’, temporary, casualized labour seems to be more common among Muslim women. In France, Muslim women frequently hold jobs in the ‘mobile tertiary sector’, comprising work such as private or domestic service and shop-keeping; only 16 per cent are salaried employees in the public sector with its associated benefits. When difficulties are encountered in seeking employment, for example, racism or religious discrimination due to names or wearing headscarves, women from several countries described how they must resort to informal networks and contacts in order to secure work. This requires a high degree of initiative, determination and flexibility. Some women reported that they did not wear a headscarf due to fear of discrimination or inability to find work; others searched for alternative types of employment, for example homeworking, self-employment, social or youth work. One Muslim woman interviewed in Manchester noted: Even though you get the degree, this amounts to nothing. I see educated boys every day. They are working in take-aways and taxi firms. The degree amounts to nothing. The prospects for the next generation are worse. Hijab-wearing women won’t get jobs. They can get the jobs at Tesco, or doing some menial admin. work, but they won’t get higher level jobs. Muslim women often find themselves in a position particularly vulnerable to discrimination due to their visibility if they wear a headscarf. Another woman interviewed in Manchester stated: Once anybody sees you wearing a scarf there is an image of you straightaway where people think you are a downtrodden Muslim woman and everything that you do, you walk a step behind your husband, all these things, they automatically come into place in that person’s mind once they see you … so people automatically do start judging you and there’s definitely discrimination there. This conditions to a large extent the types of employment available to Muslim women, or the types of employment they will themselves consider. For example, it is for this reason that some Muslim women choose to be self-employed or to work from home.4 Whereas Arab women working in Switzerland in general felt that the labour market was open to all, women wearing headscarves have found the headscarf


to be ‘incompatible’ with the labour market. Similarly, some Pakistani Muslim women in the United Kingdom held the belief that with adequate skills and qualifications, Muslims will not face discrimination in the labour market, but women wearing headscarves who have more contact with the community all condemn racist attitudes and comments towards them. Muslim women of Turkish origin living in Germany face the additional challenge to their choice to wear headscarves, as the issue is also fiercely debated in Turkey. Headscarves have become a self-conscious decision, particularly for women from the younger generation. Where for the older generation the headscarf is traditional, for younger women it represents greater freedom. They feel constantly challenged to defend their choice and justify their views, which has led them to acquire an in-depth knowledge of Islam and the Koran and a new self-understanding. In Germany, women known as ‘veiled feminists’ demand positions in political parties, criticize male interpretations of Islamic practices and patriarchal structures, and deem gender-specific spatial segregation unnecessary. Ironically, protests have led to increased participation of pro-Islamic women in society and politics. Muslim women in the Netherlands have protested at the pressure on them to become ‘emancipated’, stressing that ‘modernization’ or emancipation is not the same as Westernization or ‘Dutchification’. In Belgium, the young headscarf wearers feel that their identity is challenged and their own responsibility goes unrecognized. They also believe that they are seen as a collective by Belgian society rather than as individuals and are more likely to be considered ‘fundamentalists’. On the contrary, their status as Belgian citizens, they believe, gives them the right to express their faith publicly and to be accepted as Belgians along with their faith, signalling ‘the transition from politeness to politics’. Headscarves thus, in certain situations, become a political attribute, instruments of reaction to mechanisms of domination, of mobilization in public, and of claiming the right to equality. Similarly, the older generation of Muslim women interviewed in Germany see themselves as ‘guests’ in Germany who therefore ought to adapt to the host society, whereas the younger generation see the headscarf as compatible with German society: they have a constitutional right to practise their faith, they feel ‘at home’ in Germany, and therefore have the right to assert their interests. Women born in the host country and having citizenship are the most likely to enjoy a sense of stability, socialization and permanence and they hold the greatest variety of occupations in society. Work, rather than being a financial necessity, is a symbol of fulfilment and

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opportunities in society. This group of women are also more likely to be critical of the labour market situation, holding the lack of acceptance of a different culture accountable for inequalities, rather than assuming that the lack of qualifications or language skills is responsible. Their identity is most often expressed in terms of their faith and the nationality of the host country, for example Muslim British women, whereas for their parents their identity is based on their nationality, Pakistani Muslim. The German report likewise suggests that self-definition for the younger generation is expressed via culture and religion: although links to the country of origin are weaker, links to Islam become stronger in order to achieve a new cultural justification of their minority status. Even non-practising Muslims who have a greater attachment to their culture of origin assert that Islam plays an important role in their lives. However, there are also young Muslim women who prefer to be discreet in their religious practices or reject an Islamic identity altogether. The attitude of the host society to second- and third-generation Muslim women is ambiguous: they are either regarded as doubly discriminated against because they face resistance from within their community and from outside it, or conversely they are seen as having a privileged position due to their insights into the Western and the migrant/Muslim culture. Muslim women also face discrimination on the basis of their gender. As with many non-Muslim women, they must cope with a ‘double day’ of work plus domestic and family responsibilities. Paid work is often the subject of negotiation within the family, particularly concerning the type of work that can be undertaken and the hours worked. In Germany first-generation Muslim women of Turkish origin complain that the negative attitudes of Turkish men towards their work limit their choice of occupation. These differing cultural norms also affect the types of work Muslim women occupy. For example, it is more common for a woman to work in Turkey than in Morocco, and correspondingly, there are more Muslims of Turkish origin than Moroccan working in the Netherlands. Muslim women in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands assert that Islam is no barrier to women working. Dutch research has determined two ‘emancipation models’: an orientation towards work and an orientation towards care. Rather than being dependent on nationality, religion or immigrant status, socio-economic position was found to be a major determinant. Dutch women with young children from low socio-economic backgrounds also fit into the model ‘orientation towards care’. Low wages do not pay for childcare, and women in this position are


therefore unable to take paid work. Muslim women of Pakistani origin working as homeworkers in the United Kingdom cite disadvantages inherent in homeworking very similar to those experienced by white British women homeworkers: long hours for low pay, with no benefits or security and the stress of combining work with childcare and domestic tasks. The reasons for undertaking this type of work are also replicated, in terms of childcare and the responsibility for taking care of the household, in addition to the reluctance on the part of their husbands for them to take paid work outside the home. Pakistani Muslim women, however, particularly first-generation, face the additional disadvantages of a lack of language skills and educational qualifications, and they tend to be concentrated in the lowest-paid jobs. Yet younger, second- and third-generation Muslim women with the advantages of language skills and qualifications still experience racism in the labour market, leading to their effective exclusion from many sectors of the economy.

Conclusion It is clear from the above schematic account of Muslim workers in Europe, and especially of women workers, that economic status and generation do constitute determinants of marginality and the typical response of individuals from this immigrant and settler community does not rely solely on cultural values. On the contrary, it can be concluded that cultural values do articulate with a variety of economic conditions to produce varied responses and that it is almost impossible to conceptualize a ‘typical’ Muslim worker or Muslim woman worker. In this respect Islam, as a cultural set of values, cannot be seen as having any analytical privilege in any account of the socio-economic conditions of European Muslims, in the period of globalization and economic restructuring. Nevertheless, Islamic values and Muslim identities cannot be dismissed from the analysis. Instead what this chapter has suggested is that European workers, and in this case Muslims, may well employ any set of cultural values at their disposal in order to respond to the dramatic changes brought about by the economic restructuring. Thus, it is not surprising that European Muslims may make use of Islamic networks or even political identities to cope with their marginalization and social exclusion. This, of course, is not to imply that Islam is incompatible with modernity or that using Islamic values tempers the effects of economic restructuring. On the contrary it suggests that Muslim Voices are very

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much part of modernity and that those European workers who resort to such Islamic political identities may temper the effects, but at a cost of attracting other forms of socio-cultural exclusion and marginalization: Islamophobia. In this respect, it is possible to conclude by noting that approaches which analytically polarize the economy and culture in their accounts of ethnicity will fail to grasp the dynamic relationship between the two and thus produce static and essentialist interpretations. Culture and economy do not possess analytical priorities over each other: it is an analytical framework, which is able to articulate both together, that will allow us to grasp the subtleties, diversity and contingencies which characterize the process of ethnic formation.

Notes 1. Miles (1993) has argued that the ‘race relations problematic’ gave a misplaced credibility to the idea of race. But it is critics of the race relations paradigm, including Robert Miles, Stuart Hall and Fred Halliday, who tend to privilege European modernity and secularism and thus fail to grasp the complexity of the politics of identity. For a critique of these latter authors, see Glavanis (1998; 1999). 2. Given the limitations of space only some indicative data are used in this abbreviated summary, but all the statistical and other quantitative indicators as well as qualitative information from the project can be found on the following web-site: http://socialsciences.unn.ac.uk/eumuslim. I am indebted to Ms Emma Hughes, the project’s research assistant, for assisting in the preparation of this abstract from volumes of data collected in the eight countries. 3. Throughout this chapter the term ‘Muslims’ refers to European residents (citizens or non-citizens) who are represented in the statistical data by their country of origin, e.g. Bangladeshi, Moroccan, Turk, etc. The assumption that is made is that they are Muslims since in these countries Islam is the religion of the vast majority of the population (over 95 per cent). The reason for making such an assumption is that in all the countries concerned the statistics do not identify workers by religious or cultural identification. Furthermore, it should be noted that relying upon such an assumption does not imply that all Muslims exemplify socio-cultural Islamic identities (Muslim Voices). In fact, the project has estimated that approximately one third of the European Muslim settlers exemplify secular Western identities, even if the media and society at large tend to ignore this fact, assuming that all those who originate from these countries (even if second- and third-generation) are by definition persons who will exemplify Islamic socio-cultural characteristics and quite possibly adherents and supporters of Political Islam. 4. For example, a young Muslim woman in Germany, after countless attempts to secure employment where she was always asked to remove her scarf, eventually started a community newspaper. Many Muslim women of Pakistani origin in the United Kingdom work at home sewing garments for the clothing industry.

6 Ethnicity and Class as Competing Interpretations: The Socio-economic Mobility of Asian Americans1 Deborah Woo

This chapter deals with culture and structure as rival explanations, especially in the area of race or ethnic relations. In the United States, the subject of socioeconomic mobility among Asian Americans is often used by political conservatives to claim the triumph of cultural explanations of minority status. Debates on the North American continent have been rather different from those that have absorbed Europeans. Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches have dominated European social and political theory, and competing perspectives have been obliged to work out their own theories in relationship to the concept of class as a central analytical factor. American sociology, by contrast, has never been burdened with ‘the ghost of Marx’, even though the discipline has done more than any other to recognize the significance of class stratification. Still, class has played a lesser role than race, ethnicity or culture as an analytical tool. One reason for these different orientations has to do with how racial demographics have affected the sociology of knowledge. In the latter half of the twentieth century, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, European states accepted considerable numbers of in-migrants from their former colonies – in the case of Britain, from India, Hong Kong, West Indies and former British colonial regions of Africa. These new migrations projected questions of ‘race’ and racism onto the public agenda in a new way. Class relations were a focal point of sociological debate among British intellectuals, and only as ethnic or religious differences made themselves felt in recent years did these factors emerge as salient and competing nodal points for analysis. By contrast, almost from its beginnings in the early colonial period America has had to grapple with the issue of racial and ethnic diversity, given its dependence on the forced labour of African slaves and the indigenous 98

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population of native Americans. While independence from monarchy produced ambivalence about inherited class privilege and the exterior trappings of class, Americans have been haunted by a legacy of racial consciousness. The question of ‘race’ – with its associated disadvantages – has never been entirely disassociated from the question of ‘class’. However, the conflation of race with ‘culture’ has introduced another variable into the equation. In the last three decades, ‘race’, ‘class’ and ‘culture’ have infused not only sociological but popular debates about the differential progress of America’s majority white population and its racial minorities. The lens applied to any particular analysis has shifted over time and depends on the racial groups involved. Thus, for example, blacks have largely been analysed through the lens of ‘race’, and the black–white model of race and racism still persists. While ethnic ancestry and diversity among whites sharply demarcates Europe, racial status and identity as ‘whites’ have systematically conferred privilege in the United States (Roediger 1991). Class, more than ethnicity, is the dimension along which whites have been most often internally differentiated. Apart from such social consciousness, whites have also been more likely than other racial groups to claim that their status as ‘individuals’ overrides all other identities. Although the ideal of equality among citizens is a generally Western one, it has in the United States been situated alongside the ideals of individualism, entrepreneurship and cultural socialization of a certain sort, which have also been a large part of American ideology. Success stories in this vein have been part of ‘America’s perpetual morality tale about its minorities’ (Lyman 1973). As such, they have attributed relative good fortune or failure to the presence of certain cultural traits, and in the process trivialized the significance of race or class barriers. As the most recent in this series of group success stories, Asian Americans have been viewed primarily through the lens of culture. This perception has been cultivated not only through media hype but through reference to statistical data pointing to their high educational and occupational achievement. As the fastest growing minority group in the United States (Gardner et al. 1985; O’Hare and Felt 1991; US Bureau of the Census 1993),2 Asian Americans are the most highly educated of all groups, including white males, and are projected to make up a disproportionate share of the professional workforce in the next decade (Fullerton 1989; Ong and Hee 1993). Though the majority of Asians in the United States are employed as private wage and salary workers, ethnic small businesses

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and other forms of ethnic-specific work have provided the major empirical focus for academic theorizing regarding their occupational mobility. There is some legitimate reason for this. Asian Americans are more likely to be involved in small business activities than other groups,3 and in California, their high self-employment rate (more than 11 per cent) is exceeded only by the white self-employment rate (17 per cent) (Los Angeles Times, 15 July 1998). While these data lend support to the morality tale in its entrepreneurial form, the relationship between culture and mobility is rarely directly examined, though the myth is kept alive by linking statistics with culturally appealing explanations. For each statistic, a cultural value is typically imputed to explain the rate in question: high educational attainment rates are seen as issuing from a value placed on learning, low unemployment from a strong work ethic, low divorce or delinquency rates from a strong value placed on the family, low rates of psychiatric hospitalization from a philosophical attitude of acceptance, and so on. Conversely, the underachievement of American blacks has been attributed to a ‘culture of poverty’, an ‘unstable family structure’ and a way of life promoting failure or low achievement (Moynihan 1965; Valentine 1968). By such logic, discriminatory actions on the part of employers and a host of institutions are trivialized as causes of continuing racial segregation and unemployment (Massey and Denton 1993; Wilson 1997). Though empirical evidence has contradicted the tenability of the melting pot ideal and its culturally-based mobility assumptions (Glazer and Moynihan 1963; Steinberg 1982), cultural analysts have typically countered by citing Asian Americans as living, prima facie testimonials to the myth (Caudill and DeVos 1956; Petersen 1971; Sowell 1981). Genetic explanations attribute these social inequalities to racial biology or ‘natural’, inherited differences in intelligence between the races (Herrnstein and Murray 1994). In their most conservative renditions, both types of explanation have rendered the relatively inferior economic or educational status of blacks unamenable to improvement through government intervention. Critics, in turn, have not only criticized the ideological agenda thereof, but disputed the meaning of such statistical data, along with the cultural (or genetic) theory purporting to explain the disparities (Jacoby and Glauberman 1995). In general, cultural theorizing, especially that premised on ‘model minority’ ideas, has withstood counter-evidence and counter-arguments, partly because of the appeal in the popular cultural imagination; and, in


the case of Asian Americans, because subsequent versions of the model minority thesis have been stretched to subsume even critical research findings under the core thesis of success (Osajima 1988). In this way, simplistic portrayals became slightly more complex in the 1980s, though the fundamental thesis remained largely unchanged, surviving into the 1990s.

The persistence and elasticity of the model minority thesis Although it was the experiences of native-born Chinese and Japanese Americans, who formed the majority of the Asian American population prior to 1965, that would be the original stimulus for media success stories, after 1965 similar success stories were reproduced for other subgroups in an increasingly diverse Asian American population (Caudill and DeVos 1956; Kim and Hurh 1983; Caplan 1985; Osajima 1988; Caplan et al. 1992; 1994). The model minority thesis persisted for several reasons: 1) media celebration of a few dramatic examples of ‘rags-to-riches’ stories; 2) the existence of a sizeable and visible group of highly educated professionals; 3) failure to disaggregate census data; 4) unexamined assertions about the relationship between culture and mobility; and 5) the specific political or ideological purposes served by the thesis. In general, the thesis was never based on careful, systematic analysis but rather on a loose grab-bag of assumptions, where reasoning has been stretched to accommodate contradictions, both empirical and logical. In the end, the major support for the thesis is ideological – the myth of the American Dream. 1

Media celebration of ‘rags-to-riches’ stories

Where Asian Americans have been ‘newsworthy’ subjects, palpable accounts of their mobility have been reported within the framework of assimilationist rhetoric. In April 1998, for example, the Washington Post retold a familiar fable, now rendered in the form of high-tech success. The opening line read: ‘The classic dream of entrepreneurial America came true in Landover yesterday: Jeong Kim, a Korean-born immigrant who once worked the night shift at seven-to-eleven to put himself through school, sold his company – for $1 billion’ (Washington Post, 28 April 1998). In selecting this news account for special attention, radio commentator Charles Osgood similarly opined: ‘This is a story that Horatio Alger would love to tell.’ The impetus for the report was the merger of Jeong Kim’s company, Yurie, with Lucent Technology

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and Kim’s appointment as president of Lucent’s Carrier Networks division, making him one of the 100 richest high-tech executives in the country. Such mergers reflect the timbre of our time, though what is considered unmistakably noteworthy and thereby newsworthy was the more personal narrative of bootstrap success. When he was fourteen, Kim had come to the United States from Seoul with his Korean-born parents, eventually attending Johns Hopkins University, where he studied electrical engineering. Kim went on to the University of Maryland, receiving a PhD in engineering. After serving seven years in the navy, where he was the officer of a nuclear submarine, he went to work as a contract engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory. Here he developed the idea for a multimedia technology that would enable reporters to pipe almost instant voice, data and video feeds from international hotspots, battlefields or elections. Founded on this technology in 1992, his company, Yurie, made its mark almost immediately, soon marketing to federal agencies and later to world-wide markets. Although initially framed as a classic story of entrepreneurial success, the Washington Post account goes on to reveal that Kim had not pulled himself up entirely by his bootstraps. Yurie had, like other companies, been ‘born from government contracts’, having received $305,000 of Defense Department money through a separate programme for small, minority-owned businesses (Washington Post, 28 April 1998). This last observation alters the story as a cultural narrative, and it is to the credit of the writers that they sought to explore this issue. This may be 300K to riches, but it is not ‘rags to riches’. Nevertheless, the original framing of the report is what readers will remember. Over the years, stories about individual dreams realized through sheer perseverance have saturated the media. On 16 July 1998, CBS News’ 48 Hours dedicated an entire programme, ‘Making It’, to this theme, where the dream now encompasses individual aspirations that surpass even Alger’s expectations: ‘Only in America: a place where you can reach for your dreams and make it big, against all odds, aiming for that million dollar payday.’ Whether because of an unquenched public thirst, or because of particular circumstances surrounding their own condition, the populace has relished accounts where pluck, ingenuity and, above all, the ability to endure and persevere have overcome desperate circumstances, back-breaking or mind-numbing work. The story of David Tsang, a successful entrepreneur and founder of three high-technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, is reported to conform to the fabled climb from rags to riches. A ‘shy


young man of 19’, he arrives with only ‘$300 in his pocket and a shabby suitcase’ in a country which ‘seemed like an intimidating, unfriendly land’. Despite being alone (his only contact a ‘distant friend of his father’) and facing obstacles that included corporate politics and having ‘just the barest knowledge of English’, Tsang ‘persevered’. In the end, this discipline pays off, and after some thirty years, Tsang is described as someone who continues to work 10–12-hour days and six-day weeks, who ‘prides himself in never giving up’, and now offers himself as a role model to ‘younger, potential Asian American entrepreneurs’ (AsianWeek, 8 March 1996). Another news account describes Chong-Moon Lee, also a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, as one who persisted despite desperate circumstances which forced him to live on ‘21-cent packages of Ramen noodles’, near bankruptcy and frequenting pawn shops in order to pay a $168 phone bill (AsianWeek, 3 November 1995). Lee eventually not only recoups but becomes a major benefactor. Thus, the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of his story underscored his meteoric rise as follows: ‘From the depths of longing for a hamburger he couldn’t afford and contemplating suicide, this entrepreneur rose to such success he was able to give $15 million to S.F.’s Asian Art Museum. Chong-Moon Lee makes Horatio Alger look like a Slacker’ (San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 1995). Although these journalistic pieces inspire, they become problematic when elevated to the level of social analyses and models for others to emulate, without a commensurate effort to integrate and analyse the role that other factors play. What these accounts often fail to do is draw the link between biography, history and society, which C. Wright Mills (1959: 8) saw as necessary for escaping the entrapment created by framing the problems in everyday life as individual ‘troubles’ responsive to wilful activity rather than as public ‘issues’ requiring attention to the interpenetrating milieux which structure social life. Individuals who have worked their way up from poverty to wealth are the exception, not the rule (Domhoff 1998). Thus the celebrated success story of Chong-Moon Lee, on closer examination, can be qualified in important ways. As a first-generation Korean-born immigrant, Lee certainly faced difficulties a native-born American would not have. He also had, however, certain social advantages and connections, including royal descent. Before immigrating and later founding Diamond Multimedia Systems in 1982, Lee had been a university professor as well as a successful pharmaceuticals executive in the family business of manufacturing antibiotics. While his personal

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success itself is not at issue, his biography deviates significantly from the typical Horatio Alger one of humble beginnings. If it is to be treated as a morality tale, then it seems that the moral of the story is that making it in American society is unlikely, given the formidable odds for someone even from such an elite background as Lee. Conversely, the more poignant social commentary is that many who adhere to an ethic of hard work face insurmountable hurdles. This is not to say that exceptions to this larger pattern cannot be found, but the point is that they are exceptions. Whether details about social origins are omitted or included, narrative as ideology is crafted to suggest that the all-important factors are individual character, high moral standards and motivation. The contradictions in Chong-Moon Lee’s life were bracketed discursively, so that by the end of the narrative, an extraordinary history of privilege, with all of its tangible and intangible resources, recedes into the background. In other biographies, we know little about whether other factors were relevant in propelling such individuals out of desperate circumstances. David Tsang’s background, for example, is not fully revealed. We are told that his father was a teacher, which one might infer provided at least a certain level of status, security and economic means, but his background is otherwise sketchy. Even when facts contradict the idea of humble beginnings or of individual ‘bootstrappers’, the main theme of the American Dream is preserved. Those who identify with this dominant ethos generally buy into the model minority assumption that education will bring with it equality and achievement (S. Lee 1996). The life trajectories of those on the bottom, however, are rarely examined for the purpose of empirically specifying the limits of cultural explanations. An implicit assumption or hope is that it will simply be a matter of time and cultural fortitude before those less fortunate close the gap between themselves and their more successful counterparts. In their own review of ‘Asian Americans in the Power Elite’, Zweigenhaft and Domhoff (1998) argue that social class plays a critical role in mobility. When looking into the family backgrounds of the Asian Americans in the corporate elite, they found that many did not make the climb from the very bottom of the social ladder but rather from already high rungs. Their list included Chang-Lin Tien, former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, born into a wealthy banking family; television personality Connie Chung, the daughter of a former intelligence officer in Chiang Kai Shek’s army; and Pei-Yuan Chia, former vice-chair of Citibank and the highest ranking Asian American executive and corporate director at a world-class American


corporation, also from a banking family (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff 1998: 140–2, 145–6). Zweigenhaft and Domhoff’s book is replete with such examples for other groups, women as well as other ethnic minorities, where the biographical details suggest that the true moral is that the American Dream is primarily open to those who come with certain material advantages and social connections.

2

A sizeable and visible group of highly educated professionals

Though a sizeable and visible group of highly educated professionals exists among Asian Americans, the conceptual or theoretical leaps from such observations need to be re-examined, especially the view that they are contemporary Horatio Alger’s heroes. To remain true to the myth of humble beginnings, one would have to ignore the fact that the 1965 Immigration Act contained special provisions that specifically recruited professionally trained personnel to these shores. As a select group of immigrants, they arrive either already educated and trained, or from sufficiently affluent social class backgrounds which enable them to pursue their education abroad. In fact, the vast majority of Asian students who receive postgraduate degrees from American institutions are foreign-born (Escueta and O’Brien 1991; Hune and Chan 1997), with many choosing to remain in the United States after they have graduated. In their study of diversity in America’s ‘power elite’, Zweigenhaft and Domhoff acknowledge that there were few ‘authentic bootstrappers’ among Asian Americans, especially Chinese who formed the majority of Asian American directors in Fortune 1000 Boards: ‘Unlike most Chinese immigrants to the United States before the 1970s, who came from low-income backgrounds, the great majority of Chinese Americans at the top levels of American society are from well-to-do or well-educated families in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong’ (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff 1998: 144, 141). In general, those in the upper echelons, especially corporate executives, board members and directors, tended to hail overwhelmingly from the upper strata of society as well. This generalization was true for Jews, women, blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and gays and lesbians. Women and minorities who found their way into the power elite were usually ‘better educated than the white males already a part of it’. For this reason, the authors state that class alone did not explain the composition of the power elite. One had to also have cultural capital in the form of degrees from high-status institutions.

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Other studies similarly note that those from elite universities and colleges are best groomed or primed for the high-status track (Kingston and Lewis 1990), and that wealth, social connections and elite educational credentials go far towards explaining disparities in social mobility (Useem and Karabel 1990). Whether education or social class has the greater effect on mobility, the convergence of high educational and social status among Asian professionals in the United States obscures this distinction. The lateral mobility of such immigrants to the United States has been facilitated by their affluence, as has been any subsequent rise up the ladder. 3

Failure to disaggregate Census data

Of all the criticisms bearing on the model minority thesis, the most common one is directed towards the glib and facile generalizations that gloss over important internal differences within this population. Asian Americans include many ‘old’ as well as ‘new immigrants’, with segments of this population more accustomed to rural life and more likely than their urban counterparts to resist the pulls of mainstream American society (Knoll 1982; Walker-Moffat 1995). Descendants of older immigrants here are likely to be more culturally assimilated than recent arrivals and more economically adjusted, since length of time in the US bears importantly not only on acculturation but on income. Although all US-born Asian Americans, with the exception of Vietnamese, were also less likely to be in poverty than US-born blacks or Hispanics (Barringer et al. 1995), culture again may not be the key differentiating factor. The major point here is that statistical averages obscure the fact that Asian Americans tend to concentrate at the extremes – at both the high and low ends – of social status indicators, reflecting what is called a ‘bimodal’ distribution.4 Focusing on the aggregate, therefore, perpetuates a picture of high achievement, whether we are talking about educational achievement or occupational mobility. In the case of education achievement, there are large clusters of Asian Americans who are high achievers and college-bound. There are students, nevertheless, whose high school records are not only less promising but indicative of retention problems, including delinquency (Trueba et al. 1993; Hune and Chan 1997). Failure to disaggregate statistical data in other ways has also resulted in inappropriate conclusions suggesting Asian Americans are not only doing well but ‘outdoing whites’ (Suzuki 1989). The common belief that Asian Americans earn more than other groups, including majority males, is significantly qualified once other factors are ‘controlled for’.


These include region of residence, whether income calculations are based on mean or median income, the number of wage earners per family and the nature of managerial work. National comparisons mislead since Asian Americans tend to reside in metropolitan areas of high-income states, whereas the general population or non-Hispanic whites are more geographically dispersed. In 1990, for example, Asian Pacific Americans were reported to have a median home value of $178,300, more than double the median home value of $80,200 for whites (Chen 1995).5 Yet in 1990, three-fifths of Asian Americans lived in just three states – California, Hawai’i and New York (Lott 1991) – which partly explains the discrepancy in property values.6 Similarly, if we look at the median annual income for Asian Americans nationwide for that year, it was $36,000, whereas that for non-Hispanic whites was $31,100. Disaggregating national income data for this same year reverses this very picture. According to comparisons based on four metropolitan areas, the median annual income for Asian Pacific Americans was $37,200, compared to $40,000 for nonHispanic whites (Ong and Hee 1994: 34). Not only are Asian American incomes lower but when one recalls where they live, their dollars also have less buying power. Like national income figures, the use of ‘mean income’ can similarly obscure. Given the bimodal character of the Asian American population, median income rather than mean income is the preferred measure (the median being that point above and below which 50 per cent of all cases fall). When calculated, the median incomes of Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Asian Indians, and Vietnamese, are invariably lower than the mean (Barringer et al. 1995: 152–3). The number of wage-earners per household also tends to be higher for Asian households. The US General Accounting Office explicitly drew attention to this fact when it reported on 1985 incomes. Specifically, it reported that while Asian American households earned $2,973 a month, 28 per cent more than the average US household income of $2,325, this difference disappeared once one looked at per capita income (US General Accounting Office 1990: 20–1). In other words, Asian Americans did not necessarily earn more, but household incomes tended to be higher because they were more likely to have more income-earners, including unpaid family members. Finally, where Census data are used to gauge glass ceiling barriers, managerial data are seldom disaggregated to distinguish between fundamentally different managerial levels in the corporate hierarchy or between different sectors of the economy. The distinction between

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managers in mainstream corporate America and those in ethnic enclaves is especially critical for Asian Americans. Managerial status for Asian Americans often takes the form of self-employment, which may be an indicator not so much of an entrepreneurial spirit but of downward mobility and disaffection with mainstream employment, a possibility glossed over when Census data collapse salaried managers in large-scale bureaucratic organizations with managers of ethnic small businesses. Because minority-owned firms tend to be concentrated in the retail and service sectors, rather than in the manufacturing or finance-insurance-real estate sector (Waldinger et al. 1990: 56–7), Asian Americans thus engaged have long been viewed as experiencing a form of disguised underemployment (US Commission on Civil Rights, 1979). These businesses are more likely to be concentrated in highly competitive, low-wage industries, and as high-risk operations are associated with lower than average sales, with profits depending on long hours, unpaid family members and overall fewer workers per firm. Even if this propensity for small business involvement is considered a viable opportunity structure, not all Asian Americans participate.7 In general, research has been inconclusive and conflicting regarding the role of small business employment in mobility (Bonacich 1988; 1989; Min 1989; Waldinger et al. 1990). In sum, these general methodological issues flag for attention factors which are not necessarily reducible to culture or to simplistic notions of cultural dynamics. 4 Unexamined assertions about the relationship between culture and mobility Although Asian cultural values are credited for much individual or group success, one cannot assume the operation of certain values, or assuming their existence, predict where they will lead. Despite a frequently assumed relationship between culture and mobility, there has, ironically, been a dearth of studies in this regard. One reason has been the discipline’s commitment to statistical analyses, along with Census data being a poor source of cultural data, except perhaps for language (Barringer et al. 1995). This state of affairs, of course, has not kept people from reading into such data – from inferring or imputing the influence of culture. Notwithstanding that cultural values may be operating at some level, cultural theorizing and empirical research have not kept pace with demographics. Granted, most critiques of the model minority thesis acknowledge diversity in the Asian American population and repeatedly


point out that ‘not all’ Asian Americans have made similar progress. But how cultural diversity produces differential progress within these populations is not altogether clear. During the 1960s, the Chinese and Japanese were the two largest Asian ethnic populations in the United States, and Confucianism was a major part of their cultural orientation, which also included Buddhism, as well as elements of American culture. A comparison of select Asian subgroups in terms of value orientation and objective status even seems to support Confucianism as an enabling body of values. Where the Confucian tradition has been strongest (e.g. among the Chinese and Japanese), one finds these individuals clustered at the upper end of the income, educational and occupational ladders. Conversely, those groups where the historical and cultural trail to Confucianism is moot or absent (e.g. among Hmong, Khmer and Cambodians) are ones where poverty is also higher (Trueba et al. 1993: 44). However, even among Japanese and Chinese Americans, one can find high poverty levels among recent immigrants (Barringer et al. 1995: 155). When still other Asian ethnic groups are brought into the picture, however, it is questionable whether Confucian values can be credited. For example, Korean Americans fall somewhere between Chinese and Japanese in terms of educational attainment. Despite a strong Confucian tradition in Korea, a significant portion of those who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and in recent years have been Christian (Kim 1981; Knoll 1982; Abelman and Lie 1995). In the case of both Asian Indians and Filipinos, college completion rates exceed those of other Asian ethnic groups, including the Chinese and Japanese, and yet ‘neither Filipinos nor Asian Indians can be said to be influenced by Confucianism and they equal or surpass East Asians in educational attainment’ (Barringer et al. 1995: 164). The model minority thesis survived because it was stretched or reinvented discursively, as opposed to through new empirical research (for example, that which shows how different subcultural tendencies produce similar outcomes). Where Confucian values do not fit, the picture of success has been repainted with broader brush strokes positing values related to ‘hard work’ as the key differentiating factor between the poor and the successful. Such broad cultural generalizations are insufficient, however, for explaining why those who strongly adhere to the same values are not similarly positioned in life.8 Some of the relatively greater educational progress of Asian Americans over African Americans and others can be linked not simply to cultural values but to pre-existing experiences or structures of

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support. These include pre-immigration work experiences, either prior professional training or commercial involvement, as well as access to investment capital (Carnoy 1995). Money for educational pursuits or business adventures came through family borrowing, rotating credit associations and, more recently, for a select group of entrepreneurs, through large-scale venture capital firms (Park 1996). For those with little education or English fluency, entrepreneurialism establishes an economic floor for pursuing educational ambitions. First-generation immigrant parents might be uneducated and illiterate, but their ability to set up small shops offers a possible escape from poverty. Factors other than culture influence, however, often influence the ability to take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities. In the case of Korean Americans, for example, it has been suggested that the relative contribution to mobility played by Confucian or Christian cultural traditions may be less important than situational or structural factors (Min 1996). If cultural aspirations were the determining factor, Koreans would avoid commercial pursuits altogether in favour of government or academic jobs.9 As Abelman and Lie say about Korean immigrants to the US, small businesses confer comparatively lower social status: many 1970s immigrants had graduated from college, including extremely prestigious universities such as Seoul National University (SNU)… . For an SNU graduate to ‘make it’ as a greengrocer or a dry cleaner in the United States is akin to an elite U.S. university graduate’s succeeding as a convenience store owner in opulent Japan. … Korean immigrant entrepreneurship should thus be seen as a concatenation of conscious decisions, albeit made under strong structural constraints. (Abelman and Lie 1995: 123, 129) Self-employment is taken up because of language barriers, the nontransferability of professional credentials or college degrees, and other structural constraints to white-collar and professional employment, including racial discrimination. As long as culture is viewed simply as a property of individuals rather than of structures, cultural explanations will give short shrift to structural explanations. The relative absence of small business activity among American descendants of slaves can be linked partly to the disappearance of such structures as the esusu, an African form of the rotating credit association.10 As a result, blacks have depended upon white employers and government policies to establish an economic floor from which educational gains can be made. The educational progress


of black children, in turn, has been most rapid when public policy measures are directed towards improving schools and alleviating poverty (Carnoy 1995). The presumption of entrepreneurial values among Asian Americans in general is a recurring one of no small consequence. The problem with cultural explanations has to do with the conditions under which they are invoked. As Portes and Rumbaut (1990: 77) point out, they are ‘always post-factum’. In addition, the numerous ‘unique entrepreneurial values’ invoked for different ethnic groups are not only theoretically untidy, but cannot explain the empirical exceptions to the theory.11 Finally, although education is now almost a prerequisite for mobility, culture need not be. In their book Inequality by Design, University of California, Berkeley sociology professors (Fischer et al. 1996) drew upon a cumulative body of research to show how social class background as well as social or national policy arrangements significantly affect social inequalities. Social status was shown to have direct implications for IQ. For example, though Koreans have achieved high levels of education in the United States, their lower, minority status in Japan is manifested in lower IQ scores. In the United States, however, IQ differences between Koreans and Japanese fade. Rather than being a direct measure of innate intelligence, IQ test results reflect access to resources that affect performance on these very tests. As we saw earlier, social class background might better explain important differences among Asian Americans, as well as between Asian Americans and other racial-ethnic groups. To return to the point raised at the beginning of this section, Census data are not designed to address cultural theories. Despite this limitation, we might make the best of this situation were we to approach such statistics as a basis for generating theories. Besides cultural explanations, one might posit a range of structural explanations for the rates in question. For example, even when student achievement can be traced to parental pressures to perform, the motivation need not be culturally based. Parental exhortations to ‘work hard’, for example, may be derived from the realization that discrimination makes it necessary for a minority to work ‘twice as hard’ in order to succeed. This alternative, structural perspective has yet to get the attention it deserves even in the educational context where the model minority thesis prevails. In the occupational sphere, research has noted that the motivation behind ongoing education among Asian Americans is not cultural but ‘structural’ – a response to blocked mobility (Sue and Okazaki 1990).

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5

Political or ideological purposes served by the thesis

Cultural explanations like the model minority thesis ignore structural conditions, institutional policies and social class privileges that have assisted the large majority of those who ‘make it’. In doing so, they have served to maintain the status quo, persisting because of their ideological appeal.12 Were there not African Americans and other minorities who form a prominent part of the picture of sustained economic disadvantage, the thesis would not exist. Because of the value placed on social equality in the United States, gross inequities have been a source of national embarrassment, ill ease and social if not ideological crisis. In this context, model minorities serve as a sign of the ongoing viability of the American Dream, reducing social inequities to matters of individual will or choice. Success on the part of individual Jews at the turn of the nineteenth century similarly occasioned some to wonder aloud why African Americans do not imitate or emulate those strategies. The Jewish Horatio Alger story itself has been criticized in ways that parallel some of the analysis in the previous pages. Sociologist Stephen Steinberg made several pointed criticisms in this regard: 1) that success was not uniformly distributed throughout the Jewish population, 2) that even those who managed to climb the occupational hierarchy still found their mobility limited, 3) that Jewish cultural values have limited explanatory power, and 4) that structural considerations have a vital bearing on the degree to which pre-immigration skills interfaced well with the needs of the American economy.13 For these reasons, he said, ‘the popular image of Jews as a middle-class monolith tends to be overdrawn’, and even those who entered the professions were far from being an ‘economic elite’ (Steinberg 1982: 90–1). Zweigenhaft and Domhoff’s more recent study supports this last point (1998: 20). Since the 1970s, however, Jews have made such significant inroads into the largest Fortune-level boards that the authors conclude they are now ‘most certainly overrepresented in the corporate elite’ (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff 1998: 23). Zweigenhaft and Domhoff (1998: 176–81) saw four factors as critical to the assimilation of Jews (as well as to the assimilation of other minorities and women): identity management, class, education and light skin. In those contexts where Asian Americans have supplanted the standard reference point for assimilation (white Americans), model minority logic has acquired its appeal from the fact that it is couched in values consistent with middle-class American values and taps into familiar cultural beliefs and myths (such as Horatio Alger and the


American Dream). One might even argue that it has persisted largely because it serves an ideological or political purpose. Attitudes towards Asian Americans have shifted depending on whether they represent a greater or lesser threat than other groups in the existing hierarchy. While dubbed a model minority, Asian Americans have rarely, if ever, been seriously elevated as a model for majority whites, especially where competition between the two has been direct. It is precisely in these situations where the thesis is no longer considered tenable and where ideology and politics become most apparent, especially to those who run up against new or unexpected barriers. Thus, where Asian American admissions to colleges and universities have been associated with declining white enrolments, praise is at best faint and more often accompanied by concerns about Asian American overrepresentation and by unflattering characterizations of them as ‘nerds’, who are academically narrow or lacking in socially desirable qualities (San Jose Mercury, 23 February 1998; Woo 1990; 1996; Takagi 1992). In work spheres where Asian American professionals have appeared in significant numbers, glass ceilings and negative assessments of their allegedly poor managerial potential have impeded mobility. Whatever the justifications for their exclusion, the idea of them as ‘model’ no longer surfaces.

The limits of cultural ideologies Historically specific, the model minority thesis is premised on the fundamental assumption that educational achievement is indispensable for success. For this reason, it is unlike its Horatio Alger counterpart, which was born at a time when agrarian and newly emerging industrial sectors could still provide decent work for those without high school diplomas. Only in postwar decades has the nation firmly embraced an ideology that links education achievement with occupational mobility. The postwar economy was an expanding one, and the GI Bill made it possible for education to be widely pursued. In this way, opportunities were created for educational achievement to become a form of social or cultural capital that could be converted into job security, greater socio-economic benefits, professional autonomy or authority. In the new ideological formulation, education would substantially counter and overcome the effects of racial discrimination and entrenched racial privilege. However, there is a limit to this ideology of education as a doorway to mobility and success. Though such cultural capital may serve as prerequisites for mobility, minorities with equivalent qualifications as

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white males have reaped far lower returns (Federal Glass Ceiling Commission 1995). Under such conditions, culturalist explanations for success are more ideological than sociological, and differences in opportunity structures rather than culture or ethnicity should prompt an empirical reexamination of these issues. Although the preceding analysis sought to bring a structural or class analysis to mobility, the point was not to rule out cultural factors entirely. Indeed, if cultural factors have been inadequate as explanation, it may be because it has not been appreciated how enmeshed they are with political ideology as well as with institutional arrangements.

Conclusions In the public discussion of Asian migration to the United States we see a classic test of a much celebrated case of the relationship between culture, ethnicity and economy. Asians in America are portrayed as a more or less unqualified success story, as visible models of social mobility, especially as professionals and entrepreneurs. In the American media, they appear not only in this way to vindicate the ‘rags to riches’ narrative in which willingness to ‘get an education’ or ‘get up and go’ is fully rewarded; but also vital to the idea of a model minority is that other – less successful – groups have a weakened case for citing obstacles to their own success. This chapter has interrogated this well-worked theme, of public media coverage of Asians in America, in three principal ways. First of all, it examined the propositions of the narrative empirically; second, the culture mobility thesis was subjected to critical scrutiny; and third, there was discussion of what the ideological force of the narrative might be. Empirical re-examination showed the claims of mobility to be seriously questionable in several respects. Media accounts frequently chose dramatic individual instances of business success where in fact prior wealth and advantage were commonly implicated in the individual career; key visible groups were highlighted at the expense of others; and Census data were insufficiently disaggregated. All these common imperfections in the use of data weaken the ‘model minority’ thesis simply as an empirical case, but the rhetorical political uses of the idea mean that the idea of a ‘model minority’ stubbornly persists as conservative ideology. Perhaps even more crucially for the central concerns of this book, close inspection of the model minority narrative showed that the widely held view of the reasons for purported Asian success is largely a matter of


untested assumptions. While educational achievement has a bearing on subsequent career success, the same amount of educational ‘investment’ has different rewards for different groups. Despite their tremendous investments in education, Asian Americans are not only likely to receive lower returns compared to other groups, but increasingly lower returns for more years of education (Fong and Cabezas 1980; Li 1987; Tienda and Lii 1987; Duleep and Sanders 1992). The cultural explanation of career success as a thesis applied to ethnic or immigrant populations was resoundingly challenged by Steinberg’s classic critical essay. Steinberg had been able to show that, whatever differences in culture there might be, the opportunity structure at the time of arrival had a crucial influence on subsequent group destinies. Even if a ‘group’ can be characterized as having an ‘advantageous’ group culture, one must allow room for cultural – or structural – differentiation within a designated ‘group’. Finally, this discussion makes possible some conclusions about the political and ideological climate of different countries in relation to the principal intellectual discourse. In Europe the concepts of social class and capitalist economic order have long dominated the agenda of social science. Two questions have served as a double-edged leitmotif: are the working classes of industrialized societies able to present a real challenge to the capitalist order? Or is a measure of welfare and redistribution able to placate the exploited and poor? These political questions have long been part of the social scientific critical imagination. But the social science emphasis shifted as the world political and economic order changed so dramatically in the last decade of the twentieth century with the globalization of market economies (Friedman 2000). European nation-states were forced to address new questions about racism and national identity in response to increased ethnic diversity and narrowly nationalist anti-Europeanisms in virtually all states of the European Union. Le Pen’s racist National Front in France was mirrored, if less starkly, in many other states of the Union, as well as in the former socialist Eastern Europe. Such social movements kept racism and nationalism firmly on the sociological agenda. By contrast in the United States a ‘racial question’ was on the national agenda from its birth when a large segment of the national economy was dependent on the enslavement of Africans whose descendants continued to be suppressed and excluded even after slavery’s abolition. The discourse of race persists long after the biological notion of race has been discredited. However, the terms of that discourse have been significantly altered, if not transformed, by the emergence of a pattern of ethnic diversity which disrupts the ‘black–white’ paradigm.

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Because the discourse of class has, to a much greater degree than in Europe, been submerged, the idea of class determinacy has offered relatively little rebuke to the idea of openness and unfettered mobility. Instead, the ideology of the model minority was deposited in a climate quite ready to accept a cultural thesis. It is a thesis whose ideological purposes are bared when an awareness of ethnic difference is critically combined with an awareness of class difference and opportunity structures.

Notes 1. This chapter is adapted from ‘Inventing and Reinventing of Model Minorities’, in Deborah Woo, Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans: The New Face of Workplace Barriers (Altamira Press, 1999). 2. While the Census Bureau has published different population estimates for Asian and Pacific Islanders, there is little question that their rate of growth has surpassed other groups, including blacks, Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. Now the third largest minority, after blacks and Hispanics, they were expected to approximate 9.9 million or 4 per cent of the US population, by the year 2000. In 1970, the Asian American population numbered 1.4 million. By 1980, that population had more than doubled to 3.5 million, or 1.5 per cent of the total US population of 226.5 million. The 1980 figures represent a doubling of the population since 1970. And by 1990, they numbered 7.3 million, having doubled their size since 1980. 3. Although such activity was not as prevalent among some groups, such as Filipinos, Vietnamese and Cambodians (Min 1986–87; Huynh 1996; G.L. Lee 1996), small business participation for other Asian subgroups exceeded that of the general population. Whereas 6.4 per cent of the total population were selfemployed, 9 per cent of Koreans reported that they owned their own businesses, followed by 7.1 per cent of Asian Indians, 7 per cent of Japanese, and 6.6 per cent of Chinese. Only 1.3 per cent of blacks, by contrast, were so listed (Waldinger et al. 1990: 56). Similarly, among the Spanish-speaking populations, the percentage of business ownership was smaller: 4.7 per cent of Cubans, 1.7 per cent of Hispanics, 1.6 per cent of Mexicans and 0.7 per cent of Puerto Ricans owned their own businesses. 4. The ‘modal’ tendency simply refers to the ‘frequency’ of an occurrence on any given measure or indicator. 5. The report from which these figures were drawn was a May 1995 study by the US Department of Commerce, Housing in Metropolitan Areas. 6. Nina Chen (1995) made two additional observations relevant to interpreting the housing situation of Asian Americans: 1) that the value of homes was based on owners’ estimates regarding what their home might sell for on the open market rather than on computations by an impartial appraiser, and 2) that Asian Pacific Americans were eight times more likely than whites to live in ‘crowded’ households, defined by the Census Bureau as having more than one person per room. 7. Filipinos have been underrepresented in small business, whereas Koreans are heavily concentrated here, more so than other Asian Americans and/or


8.

9.

10.

11.

other immigrant groups. According to Min, ‘The Korean group shows the highest rate of self-employment among seventeen recent immigrant groups classified in the 1980 Census, while the Filipino group ranks fifteenth, ahead only of the Portuguese and Haitian groups…’ Min theorized about distinctions between Filipino and Korean immigrants that might explain their differential distribution. For one, Filipino immigrants are more highly represented as professional or white-collar workers in non-Filipino firms, which itself might be traced to the fact that the Philippines is an Englishspeaking country. In contrast, Koreans had greater language barriers to entering the US general labour market. In addition, as immigrants they have some history of working in an industrial business economy, which can be seen as giving them an ‘advantage’ when it came to starting up small businesses (Min 1986–87: 56). Values alone – seen as wants, preferences or subjective inclinations – are inadequate for understanding action or conduct. Culture of poverty theories notwithstanding, blacks themselves have highly valued education as a path to mobility, leading some researchers to explore the gap between these abstract and concrete attitudes, and their different implications for predicting achievement or mobility outcomes (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff 1998). For this same reason, sociologist Ann Swidler argued against this conventional view of culture in favour of defining culture as a repertoire of skills, habits or styles that organize action (Swidler 1986). Kwoh (1947) similarly explained the paucity of business persons among American-born Chinese graduates to the low prestige and lack of opportunity for mobility afforded by such work, along with the expectations associated with their college training. The disappearance of the esusu has been attributed to the patriarchal relationship between the American plantation owners and their slaves. In contrast to West Indian slaves, whose absentee owners permitted them to develop their own subsistence economy (if only out of necessity, because the slave population here was much larger relative to slaveowners), American slaveowners discouraged their slaves from independently cultivating their own plots of land or else devoting themselves to trades and crafts. Moreover, slaves in the United States were legally denied the right to maintain their own traditions, customs and language, and otherwise positioned to ‘absorb the culture of the slaveowner’ (Light 1987). In his study of the Mississippi Chinese, James Loewen further underscores the importance of situational factors by explaining how a variety of situational and structural factors positioned the Chinese so that they were able to become prosperous in the grocery business, a ‘ready-made niche’ unavailable to blacks. Mississippi Chinese, in fact, were more concentrated in the grocery business than other Chinese immigrants (‘with identical geographic and class origins’) elsewhere in the United States (Loewen 1988: 32–57). As Portes and Rumbaut (1990: 77–8) explain: ‘A first problem with culturalistic theories … is that they are always post-factum (that is, they are invoked once a group has achieved a notable level of business success, but they seldom anticipate which ones will do so). A second problem is the diversity of national and religious backgrounds of entrepreneurially oriented groups. Among minorities with high rates of business ownership, we find Jews and

118 Deborah Woo Arabs, southern and northern Europeans, Asians, and Latin Americans. They practise Protestantism, Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Confuicianism, Shintoism and Islam. If a set of unique entrepreneurial “values” must be associated with each of these distinct religio-cultural backgrounds, it is difficult to see what is left out as a point of comparison. This theoretical untidiness is compounded by the presence of other groups of similar cultural and religious origins that are not significantly represented among minority business owners. Why, for example, are Chinese Buddhists prone to entrepreneurship, but not Buddhist Cambodians; why Catholic Cubans and not Catholic Dominicans? A theory that must invent a unique explanation for each positive instance or for each exception ends up by explaining nothing.’ 12. According to Karl Mannheim (1936), dominant groups, given that the existing order supports their own group interests, will be particularly invested in an ideology that supports the status quo. 13. While acknowledging that cultural values certainly played an important role in promoting literacy, study and intellectual achievement, Steinberg directly questioned the viability of the Jewish Horatio Alger myth as cultural ideology. Pre-immigration skills were also critical, and it happened that the industrial skills of Eastern European Jews intersected well with the needs of the burgeoning American industrial economy. Their decision to become merchants, shopkeepers, money lenders and liquor traders, on the other hand, cannot simply be attributed to cultural traits since these were occupations they might not otherwise have engaged in were it not discriminatory laws that restricted their ability to own land (Schwarz 1956; Steinberg 1982; Cowan and Schwartz Cowan 1989).

Part II Empirical Explorations

7 The Ugandan Asians in Sweden – Twenty-five Years after the Expulsion Charles Westin

Introduction Modern immigration to Sweden divides into four distinct phases. First came refugees from neighbouring countries between 1940 and 1948. Second, there was labour migration from Finland and Southern Europe from around 1949 to 1971. This was followed by a period of family reunification and of the arrival of refugees from Third World countries (1972–89). Finally, asylum-seekers came from South Eastern Europe and the Middle East during the 1990s. The positive experiences of employing refugees in the workforce during the war led Swedish industry to recruit skilled labour from Finland and Southern Europe after the war. Unlike Germany, Sweden never adopted a guestworker policy. Migrant labour was expected to settle permanently and to assimilate culturally into mainstream Swedish society. It was not until labour migration was stopped in 1972 that a rethinking of migration and cultural policies occurred. Integration replaced assimilation as the goal of incorporation. Minority rights were recognized. Mother-tongue instruction was guaranteed children from nonSwedish-speaking homes. These policies were based on the experiences of labour migration, but what the policy-makers did not anticipate was the economic decline in the 1970s resulting from contradictory goals and demands in the welfare state, global capital flows and the 1970s energy crisis. Earlier labour migrants had jobs but no real cultural recognition. Later arrivals enjoyed certain cultural rights but had no jobs. The Ugandan Asians appeared at this turning point of policy and economy. They were the first Third World refugees to be accepted with no prior links to Sweden, and a test case, as it were, of the new policies. In what follows I describe in some detail the progress of Ugandan 121

122 Charles Westin

Asians in Sweden with a view to illustrating some of the links between culture, community and economic engagement.

The expulsion Some 70,000 Ugandan Asians were forced to leave Uganda in 1972. They represented a community that had originated with the British colonization of the East African territories in the late nineteenth century. Indentured labourers had been brought from India, mainly from Punjab, to build the railway from Mombasa on the Kenyan coast to Lake Victoria. Traders from Gujarat followed, establishing trading posts along the line. Some labourers remained when the task was completed but most returned to India. The Gujarati-speaking tradesmen remained however, and encouraged relatives to come to Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda to set up new businesses. Migration from Gujarat to the Asian communities in East Africa continued right up until these territories achieved independence in the early 1960s. Although the Asian communities by then controlled much of the economy, politically they were marginalized. They distrusted leaders such as Milton Obote, the first president of Uganda, who strove to develop an African brand of socialism. Many were therefore reluctant to accept Ugandan citizenship when the opportunity arose. Quite a few maintained their status as British protected persons despite the fact that this status no longer entitled them to settle in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless a significant number of Asians opted for Ugandan citizenship, anticipating that business would carry on as usual. Quite a few even welcomed the coup staged by Idi Amin in 1971 when Obote was ousted from power. The expulsion a year later was first aimed at Asians who were British protected persons. But in the chaos that followed even those who were Ugandan citizens were deprived of their passports and became stateless. The world was taken by surprise, but international relief operations were quick to act. In the exceptional circumstances the United Kingdom accepted those who were British protected persons. Canada and the United States accepted quite a few with good academic and professional qualifications. And Sweden was one of several European countries to accept those who were stateless. Approximately 800 arrived in Sweden early in December 1972. Family reunifications took place in the following months. Thus the initial Ugandan Asian community numbered approximately 1,000 persons. They represented different sects and castes within the main cleavage between Hindus and Muslims.

The Ugandan Asians in Sweden 123

Research on the Ugandan Asian exile Research on the Asian communities in East Africa has primarily been carried out by historians and anthropologists (Morris 1968; Mangat 1969; Ghai and Ghai 1970; Gregory 1971, 1993). A retrospective study of class structure in postcolonial Uganda was carried out by Mamdani (1976). Mamdani, who grew up in Uganda, has given a personal account of his experiences of the expulsion, the international relief action, resettlement in the United Kingdom and his encounter with British racism in From Citizen to Refugee (1973). Other reports have been given by O’Brien (1972), Kuper (1979), Mazrui (1979) and Twaddle (1975). Over the years various studies of the Ugandan Asian resettlement have been undertaken in Britain, Canada and the United States. Adams, Bristow and Pereira have presented the results of their research on social adjustment problems in a number of articles (Adams 1973, 1975; Bristow, Adams and Pereira 1975; Bristow 1976; Bristow and Adams 1977; Adams, Pereira and Bristow 1978; Pereira, Adams and Bristow 1978). With the benefit of hindsight it appears today that these researchers expected to find adjustment problems and consequently that is what they found. Other early studies were reported by Kohler (1973), Cole (1973) and Kuepper, Lackey and Swinerton (1975). Tambs-Lyche, a Norwegian anthropologist, did some comparative work on the Ugandan Asians who were accepted in Norway and Britain (Tambs-Lyche 1980). He concluded that conditions of resettlement were very different, not unexpectedly due to the existence of the large Indian and Pakistani sub-cultures in England. About ten years subsequent to the expulsion another type of article started to appear, which indicated that the Ugandan Asians seemed to be doing well academically, professionally, in business and economically (Adams and Jesudason 1984; Tandon 1984; Bhachu 1985; Robinson 1993). Robinson (1986; 1988) analysed the situation for the Asians in the British labour market. Helweg and Helweg (1990) showed that successful integration in the labour market was also typical of the East African Asian communities in the United States. Most of the literature on the Ugandan Asians before as well as after the expulsion is descriptive. The works by Mamdani, and perhaps Morris, represent exceptions.

Defining the group In 1973 I interviewed members of some thirty Ugandan Asian families in a Swedish refugee camp about their background, the expulsion, their feelings about their enforced departure and their thoughts about

124 Charles Westin

resettlement in Sweden (Westin 1977). Later in the 1970s I met the same respondents several times (Westin 1986). The current study is a follow-up of social and geographical mobility twenty-five years and a generation later. In several countries where the Ugandan Asians resettled the qualification ‘Ugandan’ (and even ‘East African’) is gradually diminishing in importance. A generation has been born in the West without any personal experience of or attachment to East Africa. It is an open question whether the Ugandan and/or East African Asian groups are gradually merging with other migrants from India and Pakistan in terms of organizations and infrastructure. In 1997 there were approximately 15,000 migrants from countries of the Indian subcontinent residing permanently in Sweden, 10,000 of whom were from India. Only about 1,500 are affiliated with the Asian Cultural Societies tracing their origins in Sweden back to the Ugandan expulsion. The names and addresses of most Ugandan Asians in Sweden are listed in a telephone directory compiled by the Asian Cultural Society in Mariestad, one of the centres of Ugandan Asian settlement. The latest updated edition of the directory was issued in conjunction with the 25-year anniversary of the expulsion. In a short preface the expulsion is mentioned as the event that triggered the diaspora, and hence the origin of the Asian Cultural Societies in various Swedish towns. The preface, however, also addresses itself to members who have come later from India and Pakistan, as well as to those of the younger generation who are born in Sweden. This is important identity information. Everyone listed in the directory does not have a personal background in the Asian communities in Uganda as such. Indeed, many on the roll, and family members of those listed in the directory, have come from India, and in a few cases from Pakistan. Some have even come from the United Kingdom, Kenya, Tanzania and Norway. Most importantly, a large number of family members are born and raised in Sweden. The Ugandan Asian label, then, refers to the origin of the communities in Sweden. The Asian Cultural Societies (as the communities refer to themselves) do not include or embrace all migrants from the Indian subcontinent, only those who experienced the expulsion themselves, their descendants and later arrivals who, through family ties, identify themselves with and are accepted as members of the Asian Cultural Societies. The roll of names in the directory is organized according to towns of residence and heads of household, predominantly middle-aged and elderly men. This directory proved to be the only practical way to


locate families with a ‘Ugandan’ Asian background currently living in Sweden. Official registration and Census data provide insufficient information to locate and identify members of the community. Immigrants are registered only by country of birth and citizenship. Later arrivals as well as descendants of the original refugees born in Sweden would have been impossible to identify by way of Census data. In the case of Muslims, an additional problem would have been to distinguish Asians from Africans with access only to information about country of origin and names. In 1997 a questionnaire was distributed and addressed to first names listed for the 343 households in the directory. More than 85 per cent of the returned questionnaires were answered by males. Normally this would be seen as a bias. However, the information that we asked for was not personal but rather ‘structural’, that is to say, concerning the whereabouts of the family and household in the social and geographical land- and timescape. We did not seek to uncover individual attitudes or values. The level of non-response was 45 per cent which is high. Only 177 questionnaires were returned. There is, however, no systematic bias in the geographical distribution of the respondents as compared to non-respondents. Distributions with regard to religion and age correspond fairly well to estimations made by members of the Asian Cultural Society in Mariestad.

Indicators of social mobility Education, housing and occupation were used as indicators of social position in this study. These indicators have limitations, because in a questionnaire of the kind employed here these variables are taken out of the context of real life with its complex dialectics of ideology, identity negotiations and status attribution. The subjective and interpersonal dimension of values, status evaluation and prestige is missing in our attempt to determine social position. Another complicating factor is that we are dealing with change over an extended period of time – over three generations and between three continents. This means that only rather crude indicators will work as a kind of least common denominator. The respondents’ parents are referred to as Generation One. The respondent and his/her spouse are referred to as Generation Two, and their children as Generation Three. Each generation in this sense covers a wide range of years. Those classified here as belonging to the same generation do not necessarily belong to the same age cohort.

126 Charles Westin

There is, however, a centre of gravity. Typically Generation One was born in India, Generation Two grew up in Uganda, and Generation Three has spent most of its life in Sweden.

Formal education Practically all those referred to here as Generation One had their schooling in India. It is more surprising that almost half of those belonging to Generation Two, that is to say the respondents themselves and their spouses, also had their primary schooling in India (and in what is now Pakistan), the other half in Uganda. Most of those belonging to Generation Three have had their schooling in Sweden, in some individual cases in Uganda. Broadly speaking, the educational opportunities have differed considerably for the three generations. What they appear to have in common, though, is the belief that education promotes the chances of social mobility. All generations appear to value education highly. The information given in Table 7.1 is consistent with the trend over the past few decades that the number of years people spend in education and training is constantly increasing. A large majority of the respondents’ parents (Generation One) had about six years of schooling. For mothers it was generally less than three years. Surprisingly, many males of this first generation, however, had some university-level training. The relatively high degree of university attendance has increased only marginally for males but substantially for females for the following generations. Partly these distributional differences between the generations

Table 7.1 Highest completed formal education (percentages achieving each level). Primary level 0–6 years

Secondary level 7–12 years

University level

1

Father Mother

71 82

8 15

21 3

100 100

2

Respondent Spouse

29 34

51 52

20 14

100 100

3

Son 1 Son 2 Daughter 1 Daughter 2

13 13 12 18

62 54 58 53

25 33 30 29

100 100 100 100


may be explained by social mobility. Mainly, however, the differences between the generations are attributable to the universal extension of the number of years one has had to spend in school to qualify for given occupations and positions. A final comment: the marked gender difference in access to higher education for the first generation has more or less levelled out for the third generation. Twenty-five years ago Ugandan Asian families maintained traditional gender values stressing the husband’s bread-winning role and his wife’s more domestic responsibilities. These customary roles have not prevented women of the second and third generation from pursuing secondary-level, and not infrequently university-level studies. Gender roles still differ in many respects from the Swedish ideal stressing equality, but as far as higher education is concerned, young Asian women have not been discouraged from study and have caught up with their brothers. In Western welfare states, education has tended to be a powerful indicator of social class, in whatever way one chooses to operationalize it. However, this is more obvious in cross-sectional studies of a national population than in cross-generational studies, one reason being that education as an indicator of social position in the generational context is quite blunt to structural and societal change. For obvious reasons changes of life circumstances that occur in adult life do not and cannot affect the educational status that was obtained earlier in life.

Housing In Sweden as elsewhere the neighbourhood and type of housing one lives in are salient markers of social position. In contrast to most European cities, inner-city districts in Sweden are not run-down ghettos housing immigrants, ethnic minorities, the unemployed, socially disadvantaged groups and working-class populations. Inner-city districts have been taken over by more affluent segments of the population. The working class, immigrants and others low in the social hierarchy usually live in housing estates on the outskirts of the city developed in the construction boom in the 1960s and 1970s. The material standard of these flats is generally quite good but the neighbourhoods as such are characterized by poor social infrastructure – run-down schools, lack of jobs, unsatisfactory public transport, high unemployment rates, high crime rates and widespread social welfare dependency. Increasingly, these housing estates have become identified as ‘immigrant’ ghettos. Without exception the (Ugandan) Asians were provided with living accommodation in the immigrant-dominated neighbourhoods.

128 Charles Westin

Clearly the structure of the Swedish housing market differs considerably from the situation in Uganda before the expulsion, and in India before that. Climatic differences come in to the picture, but so also do differences in the right to land ownership, the availability of freehold land, leases, etc. It is virtually impossible to account for all the changes, over several generations, in housing and accommodation. But the typical situation within the Asian community in Uganda was to own one’s housing. The questionnaire provides information about types of housing, the periods of time and places (towns and countries). It is possible to trace individual migratory careers through the moves people have made during the course of their lives. So let us look back. We see, for instance, that most respondents spent their childhood years in East Africa although a surprisingly large share appear to have been born in India/Pakistan. The periods of time in question are the four decades before the expulsion in 1972, mostly the 1950s and 1960s, and coming to an end for quite a few of the respondents with the expulsion. The first home in which an overwhelming number of the respondents lived as children was owned by the family. The second childhood home for almost half of the respondents was in Sweden. Initially, rented accommodation was the only option. The period of time in question is the early 1970s after the expulsion. Those who were slightly older may already have moved around with their parents or left their childhood home in conjunction with marriage in East Africa before the expulsion. Quite a few mention refugee camps as their second or third childhood ‘home’. Those who arrived in Sweden in the early 1970s had spent time in various European refugee camps before being placed in a Swedish camp. What these accounts taken together amount to is a drastic change of living conditions as a result of the expulsion – having to abandon privately owned homes in Uganda, forced into cramped refugee camp accommodation with little privacy, and then in Sweden to be dispersed and resettled in rented flats in low-status neighbourhoods of the kind mentioned above. Most people have moved once or twice during the 25-year period in Sweden. One motive has been to distance oneself from the immigrantdominated neighbourhoods. An informant of mine once mentioned that the Asians in one of these neighbourhoods at first were mistaken for Roma (Gypsies), something the Asians found extremely offensive. The aggregated outcome of these moves is an increasing proportion of privately owned homes. Since social infrastructure is organized according to spatial criteria (health services, social services, day nurseries, schools, etc.) moving to middle-class-dominated neighbourhoods in privately owned housing was a cause and effect of social mobility.


Occupational status As a sociological variable occupational status is more attuned to ongoing changes in life-situation than is education. However, the same reservations apply about comparing social positions over time as for education and housing. The sequence of occupations may serve as an indicator of change in social status, but one has to bear in mind that status varies over time, educational opportunities differ for different generations and life-situations can sometimes change radically within the course of a few years. A comparison over time is nevertheless justified, not least because many middle-class families tend to think about career improvements over generations. In this study occupations are classified roughly into four different status categories: 1. Occupations requiring academic qualifications such as doctor, lawyer, teacher, accountant, chemist and librarian, and positions clearly related to responsibility for large companies, such as managing director, financial manager. 2. Subordinate occupations at an intermediate level, as for instance nurse, technician, salesperson, non-academic engineer, administrative/ clerical work at an intermediate level, and family-owned enterprises on a small to intermediate scale. 3. Skilled workers and crafts – such as assistant nurse, car mechanic, tailor, carpenter, lorry-driver, assistant clerical positions, as well as shopkeeper, trader in small business with no employees. 4. Unqualified labour in industry or service, such as unspecified factory work, waitress, janitor, cleaning staff, hospital orderly, shop assistant. Table 7.2 illustrates changes in occupational status experienced by (Ugandan) Asians in Sweden. Columns I–IV give the distribution of occupational status. Rows 1 and 2 are father’s and own occupation before the expulsion. Table 7.2 shows social mobility between father from India and son/daughter in Uganda (1→2). It also shows the drastic change of occupational status brought about by resettlement in Sweden (2→3). Row 3 is ‘theoretical’. Regardless of people’s qualifications and experiences from Uganda, the Swedish labour market authorities treated the Asians as though they were unskilled labourers. Unspecified factory jobs were the only work available from the start. Over the years there has been a gradual mobility to occupations of higher status. Rows 4–7 indicate that about half of the Asians have improved their occupational status.

130 Charles Westin Table 7.2

Distribution of occupational status (percentages)

1. Father’s occupation 2. Own occupation before Sweden 3. Initial resettlement in Sweden 4. First occupation in Sweden 5. Second occupation in Sweden 6. Third occupation in Sweden 7. Current occupation 8. Occupation one hopes to get

I

II

III

IV

6 20 0 0 0 0 7 10

55 60 0 8 12 17 29 63

17 9 0 30 40 35 16 24

22 11 100 62 48 48 48 3

before 1973 1977 1981 1985

1972 1976 1985 1991 1991 1997 future

However, almost half of the respondents have remained in unqualified positions on the lowest rung of the career ladder. These were predominantly middle-aged or even elderly when they came to Sweden. This contrasts markedly to their hopes and expectation (row 8). In summary, the evidence points to social mobility in terms of education for the young (third) generation, geographical mobility (often only within the town of residence) to middle-class neighbourhoods and an improvement of occupational status for about half of the population. Jointly, these indicators support the hypothesis that the Ugandan Asians as a distinct community in Sweden are ‘migrating’ from an initial position of unskilled labour in working-class and immigrantdominated housing estates to occupations of higher social prestige and middle-class neighbourhoods. In turn this supports the view that as a community the Ugandan Asians seem to have done better than most other migrants and refugees from non-European countries. These results are consistent with findings made in various British and American studies (Modood et al. 1997).

Explaining the Asian integration Why do the Ugandan Asians appear to have done economically and professionally well in Sweden when so many other immigrants from Third World countries are marginalized – politically, economically and in the labour market? One obvious factor is the length of time passed since initial settlement. The Ugandan Asians were the first non-European refugee group to be accepted in Sweden. Collectively, they have had time to merge into society and to work out their forms of integration, to clarify their collective goals, to achieve a deeper understanding of how things work in Swedish society, and to develop appropriate instruments


to achieve their goals. Those who were in their mid-life when they came in 1972 and 1973 could go part of the way, but as we have seen, many have remained in unskilled factory work. Mastering Swedish was an obstacle to many of the middle-aged and elderly. The length of stay implies that the young generation, those who came as children and those born in Sweden, don’t face the problem of a foreign language or having to learn to deal with subtle codes, alien practices and unknown rules. The duration of settlement in Sweden, however, is not the only answer. Comparing the situation for the Chilean refugees, the first of whom arrived less than a year after the Ugandan Asians, is instructive. Collectively the Chilean refugees have faced greater problems of integration (Mella 1991). For the Ugandan Asians the factor of timing was also to their advantage. In the early 1970s there was a demand for labour. The Asians didn’t have to face a period of long-term unemployment as so many later refugees have had to do. Although they were dissatisfied with factory work, it nevertheless provided them with an entry into the labour market. Timing was beneficial to the Chileans too, but they were generally unwilling to accept factory work. Many were young academics who were convinced that the Pinochet regime would be short-lived. The relative freedom of university studies enabled them to engage in resistance politics in exile (Lundberg 1989). The Ugandan Asians hoped that the course of events could be reversed, but they realized at the same time that a return to Uganda would not be feasible for many years to come – if ever. Spatial location is a third factor. Whereas the Chileans would settle only in major cities, the Ugandan Asians preferred to settle in small towns. In the early 1970s, the choice to settle in small or medium-sized industrial towns was more opportune. It was easier to acquire an understanding of the workings of Swedish society, to establish useful contacts and to exploit the structure of opportunities there. An explanation of the relative success of the Ugandan Asians in Sweden has to look at the structural conditions in Swedish society and its minority and integration policies, as well as at the developing infrastructure of the refugee community itself, its organizational forms and self-understanding.

Integration policies After the Second World War a period of uninterrupted economic expansion followed during which the Swedish welfare state was consolidated. The demand for labour could not be met from domestic sources. In the

132 Charles Westin

1950s and 1960s labour was imported from Finland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey. The authorities regarded this set-up as a temporary solution to the demand for labour. In the mid-1960s, however, they became concerned about future societal effects of the on-going immigration. Trade unions also became concerned about the number of migrants and competition for jobs in the future. In 1972 – the year of the Ugandan expulsion – the Labour Organization in Sweden (LO) recommended that the import of labour should be discontinued. The Social Democratic government, with its historic ties to the trade unions, complied (Westin and Dingu-Kyrklund 1997). Sweden accepts and resettles refugees as part of its commitment to the United Nations. The small number of refugees reaching Sweden in the 1950s through to the 1980s was treated as part of the general labour migration. Refugee resettlement was therefore the responsibility of the National Board of Labour. Regardless of professional qualifications, merits or skills, the Board of Labour resettled refugees by providing jobs for them in industry. A sociologist, for instance, could be retrained as a welder. Turners and machine operators were others in demand by industry in the 1960s and 1970s. This was the situation for the first Ugandan Asians. They were placed in camps for a couple of months for medical check-ups and basic language training, and then bustled off to various towns. Within four months most of the refugees had left the camps and all able-bodied men and quite a few women were working on the assembly lines. In 1975 a policy for incorporating the immigrant population into mainstream society was adopted by parliament. It focused on integration and was thus a break with the notion of assimilation, that had never been expressed as a policy as such but had just been taken for granted as a sine qua non for persons of foreign origin who wished to settle in Sweden. The three pillars of the new policy are summarized by the terms equality, freedom of choice and partnership. Equality is the fundamental principle. It implies that foreign citizens residing in Sweden on a permanent basis enjoy the same social, educational and economic rights as Swedish citizens. They also have the right to vote in local and county elections. Freedom of choice implies that immigrants are free to identify with their culture of origin or to assimilate into Swedish culture. This is an individual right. It does not mean that Sweden recognizes ethnic group rights. It did imply, however, that provisions for mother tongue instruction in the schools were made, and that such classes were organized wherever there was a sufficient number of pupils. The concept of partnership is a typically Swedish solution to the


problem of loosening the hold over people while at the same time maintaining a subtle control. In essence it means that you are free to express your cultural identity in whatever way you wish as long as you do it according to Swedish standards and norms! In other words, some basic values – equality, justice and democracy – are non-negotiable (see Hammar 1985; Ålund and Schierup 1991; Westin 1996). A cornerstone of Swedish integration policy has been to encourage migrants permanently residing in the country to naturalize. The requirement for Swedish citizenship is five years’ residence. Stateless persons are entitled to apply after four years of residence. Citizenship is seen as one of the essential means of integration because it brings people into the polity. Practically everyone affiliated with the (Ugandan) Asian community is now a Swedish citizen. Most naturalizations were concentrated in the years 1976–80. Practically everyone who was made stateless applied for Swedish citizenship at the first opportunity. In the early 1970s Sweden was one of the most economically and technologically advanced countries of the world, second only to the United States. It was a well-developed welfare state striving to reduce economic and social inequalities. The Swedish model was admired internationally since it seemed to combine the best of the two competing economic and political systems – a system of state planning within a market economy, and a liberal democracy housing a well-developed corporatist structure, in which major interest organizations had a considerable stake in political power. Sweden was neutral and non-aligned and could therefore play an international role between the two power blocs well beyond its population size and economic strength. Things have changed since then and Sweden has slipped back to a more modest position, overtaken economically today by many European states. Sweden is a highly centralized nation-state, which was exceptionally ethnically and culturally homogeneous before the on-set of postwar labour migration.

Consolidating the community More than half the respondents arrived in Sweden within two years of the expulsion. Within five years three-quarters of them had settled in the country. Thereafter an average of a few individuals have come to Sweden per year, mainly by way of marriage. This is the only gate open since refugee status is no longer applicable. Very few belonging to this particular group have been granted permanent residence on grounds of work.

134 Charles Westin

The situation for the first arrivals was as follows: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h)

In many families members had been separated from one another in the chaotic rush out of Uganda. The expulsion was experienced as a severe trauma. Everyone suffered personal, cultural and economic losses. Nobody had been able to bring any material possessions or economic assets to Sweden. Very few were personally acquainted from Uganda or India. Very few had anything but an extremely rudimentary knowledge of the conditions in Sweden. Previous academic and professional qualifications were no longer applicable. Practically everyone experienced a drastic change of social status. Practically everyone experienced a crippling loss of sense of agency and initiative.

These factors complicated the restoration of an exile community. In most people an almost instinctive reaction was to try to reconstruct what had been lost through the expulsion. The first and foremost priority was to locate dispersed members of one’s family. The Swedish authorities and international relief organizations could bring most families together within the space of a few months. In some cases it was more drawn-out, but eventually family reunifications were sorted out. Once families were united, new priorities were acted upon. Let us now try to place ourselves in the position of the refugees. Within three months the entire Asian society in Uganda had collapsed, disintegrated and vanished. What do people do in such circumstances? How do they react? Those accepted by the United Kingdom could link up with the East African Asian communities already existing there, and eventually carry on with their lives. They had been through a difficult and stressful time psychologically, but communities of the kind that the Asians were accustomed to were well established in places like Leicester. The basic infrastructure of the Asian type of community already existed. This must have been a source of consolation. In Sweden, on the other hand, the reconstruction of an Asian community was a lot more complex because the number of potential members was small, they were divided and there was virtually nothing to build on that was even remotely familiar to the Asians. People were conscious about their identities and the status associated with jati and sectarian membership, as these categories had applied in East Africa. A very first step of the process of reconstruction, then, was about defining oneself in relation


to others. This was done in a situation in which the customary markers of identity that had been significant in the East African context lacked roots in Swedish society. There was no corresponding social structure to support them. This could lead to unexpected, unpredictable and problematic outcomes. The attribution of status was thus open to change. Let me give an example. A former teacher of high standing in Kampala was not in the best shape physically. He was short of stature and ailing in health. He found factory work extremely demanding. His earnings were thus well below the average. A former student of his who had not done particularly well at school was strong and physically fit and was soon earning good money. In this new situation the relative status of these two men was confused and problematic. It soon became clear that the communities based on sect and jati membership that had come into existence in East Africa were not functional in Sweden. People recognized that they couldn’t continue to assert these distinctive identities against one another. Hindus of different caste and jati backgrounds found ways to cooperate so as to achieve joint aims and common goods. So did Muslims of different sectarian denominations. The local Swedish authorities generally took a benevolent view to requests for graveyards, temples and mosques voiced by spokesmen for the Hindus and Muslims respectively. Cultural support was another domain that the authorities understood. Local libraries received extra grants to purchase Indian books, journals and films. In the educational field the organization of mother tongue instruction (in Gujarati) provided jobs for a few qualified teachers. In time most people seemed to be able to deal with the traumatic events of the expulsion. A sense of common destiny evolved. Friendships developed across boundaries that normally would have been difficult to bridge in Uganda. Most people realized that there would be no ‘return’ to Uganda and that settlement in the United Kingdom, Canada or the United States was, realistically, out of the question. Within the course of some six or seven years most people understood that they would have to make the best of a life in Sweden. An important explanation for the relatively smooth integration of the Ugandan Asians in Sweden was about social cohesion within the group. Consolidating the Asian community meant exploiting the opportunities that the Swedish integration and immigrant policy provided, and hence forming organizations to promote common interests once these were identified. This meant downplaying differentiating factors – caste and jati, sect and religion – and promoting or emphasizing factors that were common to all. This reorientation was slow but began to take discernible shape.

136 Charles Westin

Differentiating and common factors The Ugandan Asian community in Sweden is approximately one third Muslim and two-thirds Hindu. This reflects the situation in Uganda before the expulsion. Sectarian distinctions are mainly typical of the Shia Muslim community (Ismaelis, Daudi Bohoras and Ithnasheris), but only about half of the Muslim respondents state that they belong to one of these sects. This may be due to a reluctance to disclose sensitive identity information in a questionnaire. It contrasts, however, with the willingness to inform me about sectarian affiliation in the 1973 interviews. On those occasions everyone belonging to the Muslim community made their identity quite clear. In lists prepared by the authorities that year the Muslims were classified according to age, sex, family position and sectarian affiliation. The latter was something the Muslims themselves must have pointed out, not information that Swedish authorities would have asked for on their own initiative. The apparent reluctance to reveal one’s sectarian identity in the questionnaire contrasts moreover with the situation in Uganda before the expulsion. Surprisingly few mention affiliation with the Ismaeli community, which was the sect with the strongest sense of distinctiveness in Uganda. Similarly the Hindu community in Uganda was divided in a number of competing communities based on caste and jati distinctions (Brahmins, Lohanas, Patels, Mochis, etc.). In the 1997 questionnaire a majority of the Hindus also refrained from referring to caste or jati categorizations. Even for Hindus, then, it appears to be important to downplay divisions within the community. Emphasizing sectarian or jati distinctiveness in the Swedish context is seen as an obstacle to achieving common goals. People have generally accepted that cooperation rather than competition is necessary for a small vulnerable community to survive. A gradual reorientation and adjustment is taking place to life in a modern welfare state. Religion is not practised as actively as before, family size is conforming to the Swedish norm, husbands participate in housework which used not to be the case. These are experiences that all the Asians have in common, regardless of their former position in Uganda. The changes are largely determined by the economic and structural realities in Swedish society – wage levels, income taxes, social security, housing conditions, educational opportunities, the labour market, and so on. Sectarian and jati distinctions that were the driving force of economically and politically competitive communities in East Africa are downplayed. This is not to say that people aren’t aware of


the traditional categorizations, but they just aren’t functional in the Swedish context for this small and rather vulnerable group. Common language is an obvious factor uniting a majority of the Asians – Hindus and Muslims alike. The Asians were multilingual in the East African setting. English was the language of education, organizations and politics, and was used to some extent in business. Swahili was otherwise the main language of commerce and trade. Gujarati and the other Indian languages were primarily spoken at home. An overwhelming number of respondents – more than 90 per cent – grew up with Gujarati as their family language. Children were naturally socialized into these languages. All but one respondent mention that the language spoken mutually by parents (Generation One) was an Indian language, predominantly Gujarati. In their own family (Generation Two) spouses communicate with one another in Gujarati (or one of the other Indian languages) in 87 per cent of the cases. Swedish is used by about 8 per cent. Finally 25 per cent of the respondents mention that the language spoken by their children in mutual conversation is Swedish. Indian languages still predominate (70 per cent). Proficiency in Gujarati – for many also Hindi and Urdu – enables people to share Indian/Pakistani cultural works – media, films, videos, books and above all music. In turn the demand for cultural products is a motivating force for joint organizations. Traditional clothing is an obvious marker of cultural identity. More than a third of the respondents regularly wear ethnically distinctive clothing. Practically all families cook Indian or Pakistani food. Jointly the Asians constitute a small market for Indian and Pakistani music, films, clothes and ‘ethnic’ food. In the long-term perspective Swedish will inevitably increase its hold over the young generation. In a generation to come the use of Swedish within families is likely to have increased. Siblings who have attended Swedish day care nurseries may continue to communicate in Swedish long after they have left day nurseries.

Demographic prospects The total population of the Ugandan Asian community in Sweden is increasing at a very slow pace. This contrasts with the trend for other refugee communities in Sweden (Syrian Christians, Kurds, Iranians, Chileans, Somalis, etc.) for whom immigration on grounds of refugee status is accepted. Young families have adapted to the western norm of having only one or two children. There are compelling economic

138 Charles Westin

reasons to limit the size of one’s family for people with moderate incomes. Yet the Asian families in Sweden still have a birth-rate above the average for Sweden. In East Africa, on the other hand, families of six to eight children were not uncommon. Families arriving from Uganda in 1972 and 1973 were often large. Indeed, it was claimed in the 1960s that the Asian communities in East Africa were among the fastest growing populations in the world. A second reason for the slow population increase is a constant drain of young people to the United Kingdom, United States and Canada for purposes of marriage and study. In the long run the slow growth of the community is a threat to its survival. The drain of young people needs to be balanced by an inmigration. This can only be done through marriage. Most marriages (75 per cent) reported in the questionnaire have taken place after 1972 in Sweden. In East Africa the Asians as a rule observed strict principles of endogamy. Ideally marriages were arranged. For most Hindus a marriage partner would have to conform to a set of criteria with regard to family, villages of origin, jati and caste. Differences of status between families would be given due consideration in negotiations about dowries. Similar rules applied to the Muslims, though for them sectarian membership was the most important criterion. In East Africa the Asian communities were sufficiently large to provide a pool of eligible marriage partners. Still it appears that for a number of reasons finding marriage partners in Gujarat was frequently practised. Bringing in a marriage partner for one’s son or daughter from Gujarat was a means to ensure continuity of one’s business, but in a wider context also of one’s community. In the 1960s the marriage institution was gradually modernized. Love marriages were accepted as long as the liaison conformed to the rules, or could be defined as doing so, and provided that parents could reach an agreement on the intricate balance of the value of dowries in relation to prestige. The rules were a front, an ideal that one was supposed to adhere to. There seems to have been leeway for unorthodox solutions by redefining the identity of the groom or bride. During the early years in Sweden arranging appropriate marriages was of great concern to parents. They became more active than before in finding suitable marriage partners for their sons and daughters. This return to traditional ways was a response to a vulnerable position. Families needed to be strong and consolidated. The traditional rules represented an opportunity to expand the community by bringing in new members. In the 1970s most families thus stressed the importance of observing the marriage rules of the community to which they belonged.


According to the 1997 survey practically all marriages within the Asian community have taken place with persons accepted as members of the Asian community. Quite a few of the respondents were married before they came to Sweden, but 75 per cent of the marriages in Generation Two have taken place after the expulsion. In most of these cases spouses were brought from India and Pakistan. It has proved more difficult to find a partner from the United Kingdom willing to marry in Sweden than vice versa. It is easier, on the other hand, to find marriage partners in India and Pakistan fitting the traditional criteria who are willing to come to Sweden. A few marriages with Swedes have taken place but these seem to be exceptions, and it appears that these persons quite often become marginalized in relation to the Asian community. Respecting the rules of endogamy means reasserting the importance of caste, jati and sect. Although India is modernizing rapidly, modernization has not basically affected life in small-scale society in rural villages and small towns. Traditional values and classifications still determine much of social life. Bringing in marriage partners from Gujarat in accordance with the customary rules can be somewhat problematic because it goes against the adaptive strategy of downplaying traditional categorizations. It is something of a Catch-22 situation. The Asians seem to live in two different worlds – traditional divisions of rural Gujarat and the emerging ecumenical community in Sweden. This small ecumenical community is a practical and functional solution to constraints that the international system of states has placed on the movement across international boundaries and that affect this group of people who by a freak of fate happened to end up in Sweden. The community in Sweden, however, has access to a transnational hinterland by means of which both modernizing and traditional dispositions can be lived out. The Ugandan Asian diaspora is a typical transnational community if ever there was one (Hannerz 1996). The Asian community in Sweden is highly dependent upon contacts with other Asian communities abroad. Most respondents (97 per cent) have visited the United Kingdom many times to see family and friends. Many (70 per cent) have also visited India/Pakistan for the same reason. The contacts with East Africa – Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – are less frequent. Thus the Ugandan Asian community in Sweden is part of a broader diaspora. In the discourse on global diasporas and transnational connections, the use of modern technological means of communication is pointed out (Morley and Robins 1995; Castells 1996; Hannerz 1996). To some extent this holds true for the community in Sweden. The telephone is

140 Charles Westin

the most used means of communication. E-mail seems to be on its way but has not come into common use yet. It is used mainly by younger respondents. About half of the households surveyed were linked to the Internet.

Conclusions The Asian communities in Sweden are centred in three principal towns – Mariestad, Jönköping and Trollhättan – with additional smaller settlements in a handful of other small towns. Comparatively few have moved to major cities – Stockholm or Göteborg. Geographic mobility is concentrated on the towns mentioned above, with people moving within them, between them or to them. Young people of Ugandan Asian origin get along with young Swedish people but generally they don’t mix on a personal level. They prefer to keep to themselves, their clubs, associations and social life. The reasons are partly discrimination, but also a self-chosen separateness. Those who do mix with Swedes on a more familiar, personal and regular basis may face the risk of becoming marginalized. In 1993 a mosque in the town of Trollhättan was burnt down by racists. This mosque had been built by the Ugandan Asian Shia Muslim community as the first regular mosque in Sweden. It has been rebuilt after the fire. As with all others of nonEuropean origin, the Asians have experienced an increase in militant racism during the 1990s. This brings us back to the telephone directory which was our point of departure. The directory lists those who identify themselves as members of the (Ugandan) Asian communities in Sweden and who are accepted as members by these communities. Individuals who don’t identify themselves with these communities even though they may have been victims of the expulsion, and those who aren’t accepted as members for some reason, are not listed. The directory excludes those who have chosen to remain outside the (Ugandan) Asian communities, and those who have been rejected or denied membership. The roll of names in the directory, reflecting the body of people behind it, indicates that the vast majority of migrants from India and Pakistan are not associated with the Asian Cultural Societies referred to in this directory. The roll may be seen, then, as a statement of self-defined collective identity. Although the Ugandan label is rarely used nowadays in (public) self-references, the collective memory of the expulsion is emotionally highly significant and a source of distinctiveness. Using


Cohen’s terminology, the expulsion turned the earlier Gujarati trade diaspora into a victim diaspora (Cohen 1997). It was a traumatic event binding those who experienced it at first hand, their descendants and relatives by marriage together into a distinct group. Social cohesiveness within the Ugandan Asian community which is the principal explanation for the successful social mobility is rooted in the common experience of the expulsion trauma which has been reinforced in recent years by virulent racism of which the Ugandan Asians have had their share as victims. The first Ugandan Asians to come to Sweden arrived the very same year that labour migration was stopped. They soon found jobs in factories as there still was a demand for unskilled labour. To many it was frustrating that their previous experiences of trade and business and their academic and professional qualifications were not recognized. Running a shop or a small business was something that many hoped to achieve as it was thought to provide a degree of economic independence of the kind the Asian communities had enjoyed in Uganda. Factory work proved to be an opportunity to learn something about the subtle codes governing work and occupation in Sweden. Eventually several families did set up private businesses. The history of the Asian communities in East Africa is one of how culture and economy are intertwined. In this case it was about how the Asians exhibited a strong sense of continuity with their roots in rural Gujarat in family life, social life and language, while at the same time these communities were highly flexible in adapting to the new society in their economy, politics and educational institutions. The small Ugandan Asian community in Sweden is an appendix to the wider South Asian diaspora in Britain and North America. There is reason to project that a similar intertwining of culture and economy is taking place in the diaspora. The Asian communities in the West are fully integrated into modern society and all aspects of its economy. Still there is a strong sense of unique identity and cultural continuity that may be traced back to the Gujarati origins, culture and economy, continuity and change.

8 Social Exclusion and Young Turkish-speaking People’s Future Prospects: Economic Deprivation and the Culturalization of Ethnicity Pinar Enneli

Introduction This chapter draws on data from research exploring the lives, aspirations and values of Turkish-speaking young people with specific reference to ethnic, religious, family, education and economic concerns. The aim of the chapter is to analyse Turkish-speaking young people’s relationships to the labour market and their economic prospects with reference to exclusion.1 As Fenton and Bradley point out in chapter 1, in recent years, there has been a ‘cultural turn’ in sociology accompanied by a ‘culturalization of ethnicity’. Yet, both authors also argue that we need to explore the mutual impact of ethnicity and class, since class relations tend to be ethnicized and ethnicity is located within specific economic contexts. In this sense, this chapter will explore the complex relationship between ethnicity and economy and the interplay of economic and cultural factors. It will be argued that the deprived economic condition of their families has a powerful influence on these young people’s upward mobility and that existing education policies based on multiculturalism are far from helping these young people to achieve better economic positions in the future. In recent years, the multiculturalist approach (later leading to the critical multiculturalist approach) developed and argued that the lack of recognition of the cultural assets of ethnic minority students in schools is the reason behind their lack of success (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997; Modood 1997; Corson 1998; May 1999). As Verma and Mallick argue: The realization and recognition of the identity and culture of the ethnic minority children are not only important to the child’s 142

Social Exclusion and Young Turkish-speaking People’s Future Prospects 143

self-image, his intellectual functioning and social behaviour, but are also crucial for his occupational and social adjustment. (1981: 52) Even taking into account the existing structural economic barriers to the economic prospects of ethnic minority children, some critical multiculturalists believe that multiculturalism is the solution to children’s economic futures. Kalantzis and Cope propose that a new understanding of cultural diversity portrays the children as ‘“multi-skilled” all round workers who are flexible enough to be able to do complex and integral work’ in the global economy. In this new work environment they argue that ‘cross-cultural communication and the negotiated dialogue of different languages and discourses can be a basis for worker creativity’ (Kalantzis and Cope 1999: 267–8). However, my research failed to find evidence of opportunities for these young people becoming genuinely valued multi-skilled all round workers. Under the guise of respect for their community values, the existing education policies provided these young people with limited experiences suitable only for jobs their parents may have had in their communities, as will be discussed in this chapter. It should be noted that educational policies in particular do not undermine, but underpin, this reality. This is best observed in the example of the Work Experience Scheme, which is a reflection of family exclusion on students’ school lives.

Research background Estimating the population of the Turkish-speaking community in Britain is difficult, but more than half are living in the Inner London area and most of them are in Hackney and Haringey (OPCS 1993). For this reason, I concentrated my research in these two boroughs. The fieldwork was conducted between 1997 and mid-1998. The latest language survey of 896,743 schoolchildren in London found that Turkish is the sixth most commonly spoken language. Turkish-speaking schoolchildren make up 1.74 per cent of all children in London, while they are 9.9 per cent in Haringey and 10.61 per cent in Hackney (Baker and Mohieldeen 2000: 56). Storkey (2000: 65) estimated that the total number of Turkishspeaking people living in London would be between 67,600 and 73,900. I conducted interviews with a structured questionnaire, held two focus group discussions, and carried out intensive observations and unstructured interviews with several parents and teachers. Interviews were conducted with 206 Turkish-speaking young persons, 103 girls and 103 boys, aged mainly between 14 and 16, who are a relatively

144 Pinar Enneli

homogeneous group in terms of future employment and marital status compared to an older group. Also they are at the final stage of their compulsory education and will make the transition from school life to adult life sooner than their younger counterparts. In the Turkish-speaking community, there are three basic subcommunities: Kurds, Turks and Turkish Cypriots. The oldest established community is Turkish Cypriot. Turkish Cypriot males began to migrate to the United Kingdom between 1945 and 1955 (Sonyel 1988: 11). Most of the Turkish Cypriot children I spoke to were second generation, even third generation. The Turks came to England to find a job after the 1960s, when Europe and especially Germany began to accept Turkish workers. Kurds have been in the United Kingdom since the early 1980s. Their political status is different from Turkish Cypriots and Turks. They are here as political refugees escaping from the dispute in eastern Turkey. Ninetyeight per cent of Kurdish children in the sample had been in the United Kingdom for less than ten years, while 88 per cent of the Cypriot children were born in the United Kingdom. Apart from these three groups, there were mixed origin young people in the sample. Their mothers and fathers did not have common origins. In the mixed origin category, there were nine people with one parent from outside the Turkish-speaking community. Another ten had one Turkish and one Kurdish parent. Eight people had one Turkish and one Cypriot parent and only three people had one Kurdish and one Cypriot parent.

The economic conditions of the Turkish-speaking community The Turkish-speaking community is concentrated in poor areas which offer limited employment opportunities. According to the Deprivation Index, which was prepared by the Department of the Environment in 1994 (DofE 1994), Hackney and Haringey are two of the most deprived areas: Hackney was the third most deprived local authority out of 366, and Haringey the tenth. The deprivation is even more severe in some wards. According to Haringey Council Education Services and Statistics Department, 18 of the 23 electoral wards in Haringey have a higher level of deprivation than the median range for London. The level of deprivation in three wards is the same as the average deprivation level of all London wards and only two wards have a lower level of deprivation than the London average (Haringey Council Education Services and Statistics Department 1997).


It is obvious that these unfavourable local conditions affect the members of the Turkish-speaking community. However, not all members are affected by the disadvantages equally. Free school meal entitlement is a good indicator of the economic level of families and the diversity between Kurdish, Turkish and Cypriot families. Unfortunately these data are available for the Haringey schools only. Table 8.1 shows that in Haringey while more than half of the pupils are not entitled to free school meals, only 11 per cent of the Kurdish, 17 per cent of the Turkish and 36 per cent of the Cypriot pupils do not require free meals. In other words, Cypriot students are three times less likely to require free school meals, compared to the Kurdish students in Haringey. In this respect, although the Turkish-speaking students are disadvantaged, compared to the total groups of the students, the Kurdish ones are the worst off. Haringey Education Authority also collected information about the families’ social class backgrounds as defined in the 1991 national census. The data were used to measure the prosperity level of the wards in Haringey in which pupils live, rather than to measure the prosperity level of the parents in individual households. As can be seen in Table 8.2, the overall distribution of the pupils in the wards having various degrees of prosperity is very even. On the other hand, Kurdish households in Haringey are less represented in the most prosperous wards, while more concentrated in the deprived ones. Only 1 per cent of the Kurdish households live in the wards with the highest percentage of heads of households in social class one or two. The figure is 7 per cent for Turkish families and 3 per cent for Cypriot ones whereas the overall rate for all groups is 12 per cent. Apart from the deprived economic conditions which these young people confront, there is another challenge to their future employment prospect: the existence of ethnic economic enclaves as territorially concentrated clusters of businesses. The Turkish-speaking community concentrates on the clothing industry and small shop employment. In Table 8.1 Ethnic groups by free school meal entitlement among the 1997 GCSE candidates in Haringey (%) Ethnic groups

Yes

No

Total

European-Kurdish (74) European-Turkish (88) Turkish Cypriot (66) All Groups (1700)

89.2 83 63.6 47.9

10.8 17 36.4 52.1

100 100 100 100

Source: Haringey Education Authority.

146 Pinar Enneli Table 8.2

Ethnic groups and class composition of wards in Haringey Distribution of households in each ward

Class composition of wards

Highest % of heads of households Next highest % in Classes 1 or 2 Next to lowest % in Classes 1 or 2 Lowest % in Classes 1 or 2 Unclassified Total

Kurdish Turkish Turkish All households households Cypriot households (74) (88) households (1700) (66) 1.4

6.8

3

11.5

13.5

8

16.7

13.2

18.9

15.8

18.2

18.7

40.5 25.7 100

36.4 33 100

24.2 37.9 100

29.5 27.1 100

Social Class 1: Professional Occupations; Social Class 2: Managerial and Technical Occupations. Source: Haringey Education Authority.

order to analyse the intensity of this phenomenon, the following section focuses on the nature of employment relations and the position of Turkish-speaking families in the labour market, with references to the parents’ employment.

Turkish-speaking parents’ employment conditions Five visible employment characteristics are observed among the Turkishspeaking community: 1) the high rate of unemployment; 2) the high proportion of male self-employment; 3) the small number of professional employees; 4) the small number of economically active women; and 5) a clear differentiation among the people from different places of origin. The Turkish-speaking community members mostly work in the clothing industry. The other important economic activity is small shop employment such as kebab houses, small food shops and off-licences. In these workplaces, both employer and employees are mostly from the Turkish-speaking community, even sometimes from the same region in Turkey or Cyprus. For instance, at the time of the research there were about 200 families in North London from the same village in Turkey. It should be noted that the adult employment figures used here were reported by their children, though it could be assumed that the figures might be more accurate if they were gathered directly from the parents. On the other hand, because illegal employment was quite common


among the Turkish community members, when attempts were made to put these sorts of questions to parents, there was some reservation about answering, whereas the young people were more willing to answer. Employees are analysed in two different groups: non-professional and professional. The category of non-professional employees mostly includes unskilled and semi-skilled manual employees such as finishers, ironers, machinists in clothing factories, waitresses in restaurants, shop assistants in food shops, car mechanics, nursery nurses, hairdressers, bus drivers and painters. A few non-manual employees (such as a receptionist and a priest in a Turkish mosque) were analysed in the category of non-professional employees. In addition, the mothers who work in the home for a textile factory or help in a family business are analysed under the category of non-professional employees. Professional employees are accountants, teachers, interpreters, doctors and engineers. In the category of self-employed, there are clothing factory owners, owners of small shops such as kebab shops, food shops, hairdressers and dry cleaners. In the study, there are no self-employed fathers who hold a professional qualification, such as pharmacist. The main characteristics of the self-employed in the sample are the low formal qualification requirements, low barriers to entry and intense competition, which are quite common features of ethnic minority self-employment (Anthias 1983; Rafiq 1992; Ram 1993; Panayiotopoulos 1996). The unemployment rate among the fathers as reported by sons and daughters is high (Table 8.3). In general, three out of ten fathers are unemployed. Yet there are considerable differences between Kurdish, Turkish and Cypriot fathers. Table 8.3 indicates that 44 per cent of the Kurdish fathers are unemployed, compared to 22 per cent and 11 per cent of Turkish and Cypriot fathers respectively. Table 8.3

Fathers’ employment status by fathers’ origin (%) Fathers’ places of origin

Fathers’ employment status

Unemployed Non-professional employees Professional employees Self-employed, owners of small businesses Total No father: 28.

Kurdishpopulated areas (91)

Other places in Turkey (41)

Cyprus (46)

Total (178)

44 43 0 13

22 39 12 27

11 28 22 39

30 38 8 24

100

100

100

100

148 Pinar Enneli

The differences between the fathers’ employment status in terms of their places of origin follows a similar pattern in other categories as well. Although the number of fathers who have a professional job is very small (8 per cent), when compared with the number of non-professional fathers (38 per cent), it is nearly three times higher among the Cypriot fathers and none among the Kurdish fathers. The second largest group is self-employed fathers (23 per cent). Again, self-employment is very common for Turkish and Cypriot fathers, compared to Kurdish ones. It is also noted that the status of those unemployed, self-employed and unprofessional employees is not stable. The mobility between each of the employment types is very common. Somebody could be employed in a clothing factory as a machinist, then they could open a kebab shop, then after two or three years they could be unemployed. When we look at the mothers’ employment status, 65 per cent of mothers are not in employment at all (Table 8.4). The mothers from outside the Turkish-speaking community and Kurdish mothers’ low level of participation in the labour market causes an increase in the overall score, though the numbers of mothers from other groups are too small to be reliable. Only 27 per cent of the Kurdish mothers are active in the labour market. The low level of participation of some ethnic minority women, especially Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, in the labour market in Britain is not a new phenomenon (Brah 1993; West and Pilgrim 1995; Holdsworth and Dale 1997). According to the Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (Modood 1997), four out of five Bangladeshi women and seven out of ten Pakistani women are looking after the home or family. Table 8.4

Mothers’ employment by mothers’ origin (%) Mothers’ places of origin

Mothers’ employment Kurdishpopulated areas (90) Housewives 73 Non-professional 27 employees Professional employees Self-employed, owners of small businesses Total 100 No mother: 10.

Other places Cyprus Other Total in Turkey (58) countries (196) (43) (5) 62 33

53 31

3 2

9 7

100

100

83 (4) 17 (1)

65 29 3 3

100

100


Among the Turkish-speaking women various factors influence the ability of women to gain employment. First of all, most of them, especially those from Kurdish-populated areas, are uneducated and cannot speak English. Second, women are heavily dependent on jobs in the clothing industry, where intense competition necessitates low wages that are usually insufficient to pay for child care and other domestic responsibilities. Third, working at home for the factories is an option, if they have a sewing machine and a suitable place in the home in which to work and the necessary skills to use a sewing machine. Most of the women, especially the recently arrived Kurds, do not have this skill and the only way to learn to use the sewing machines is in work training. Women start work as finishers, then usually a relative or a co-villager teaches them to use the machines. But again, most of the machinists are paid on piece rates and they do not have the spare time to teach somebody, so when they do, it is as a favour. Furthermore, as in the case of fathers’ employment, the differences in terms of origin are important regarding the mothers’ employment. All Kurdish mothers are either not in employment or non-professional employees, while 9 per cent of Cypriot mothers are professional employees. As was mentioned above, people from the Kurdish-populated areas arrived only recently in the United Kingdom and most of them came from rural areas, and had few qualifications. The majority of them are refugees in this country, which creates additional uncertainty in their lives (Martin 1991; Koser and Lutz 1998). Pertinently, there is another characteristic of the enclave economy to make the labour market conditions around the young people even more restrictive. Most job opportunities are provided by other members of the Turkish-speaking community. This situation creates an employment opportunity structure dependent not only on available territorial jobs, but also on a restricted ethnic niche. As can be seen in Table 8.5, 78 per cent of non-professional employees work for a Turkish-speaking employer. Over 80 per cent of Kurdish non-professional employees, who are the people working in the clothing factories and small shops, have a Turkish-speaking employer. Although the situation seems more relaxed in the context of professional employment, still 43 per cent of them have a Turkish-speaking employer. Besides, three out of four Turkish professional fathers, such as accountants and lawyers working for the factories and shops, are employed by a Turkish-speaking person. On initial examination, the Cypriot professional fathers might seem less dependent on this ethnic niche, since four out of five of them work for non-Turkish-speaking employers. Yet most of them are hired

150

Table 8.5

Fathers’ employment by employers’ origin (%) Fathers’ places of origin Kurdish-populated areas (33)


Cyprus (16)

Total (68)

Employers’ origin

Employers’ origin

Employers’ origin

Employers’ origin

Fathers’ employment

Turkishspeaking

Others

Turkishspeaking

Others

Turkishspeaking

Others

Turkishspeaking

Others

Non-professional Professional

82 (27)

18 (6)

73 (11) 75 (3)

27 (4) 25 (1)

73 (8) 20 (1)

27 (3) 80 (4)

78 (46) 43 (4)

22 (13) 57 (5)


by their employers for jobs related to the Turkish-speaking community such as social services, education and translation. The empirical evidence presented so far has endorsed the view that the Turkish-speaking community shows various characteristics of an ethnic enclave labour market. On the other hand, it seems that the Kurdish parents are the most disadvantaged group in terms of their employment status, followed by Turkish parents, whilst the Cypriots are doing comparatively well. The following section analyses the effects of the enclave labour market conditions on the second-generation Turkish-speaking young people.

Turkish-speaking young people’s part-time work Although child labour is usually thought of as a Third World phenomenon, employment of school children is a widespread occurrence in contemporary Britain (Lavalette 1998; Mizen et al. 1999). In this study, 32 per cent of the young people have a part-time job and nearly 64 per cent of part-time job holders work during the term time (Table 8.6). A teacher stated that: I think many families are sending their children to work during the weekend, and some of the children even don’t come to the school, but work full-time in the shops. When we have called the parents, they said they don’t know their children were absent from school. But I think they do. Boys are more likely to work than girls. Forty-two per cent of boys have a part-time job, whereas only 22 per cent of the girls work part-time. But when a girl has a part-time job, she works as long hours as the boys do. For instance, a Cypriot girl working for a hairdresser talks about the difficulties she faces: Table 8.6

Having a part-time job (%) Working part-time

Yes No Total

Working during term time

Male (103)

Female (103)

Total (206)

Male (43)

Female (23)

Total (66)

42 58 100

22 78 100

32 68 100

67 33 100

57 43 100

64 36 100


The girls’ part-time work by mothers’ employment (%)

Mothers’ employment status

Yes

No

Total

Housewife (58) Economically active (40) Total (98)

24 17 22

76 83 78

100 100 100

I don’t have a chance to sit for a minute. She [the employer] pays me very little. Of course, it is bit difficult to study when you work. In other words, when both the boys and the girls are in part-time employment, their conditions might not be very different. Yet, unlike the boys, the girls also have domestic responsibilities, regardless of having part-time jobs, though a working mother may put a bit more pressure on them not to have a part-time job. As can be seen in Table 8.7, the daughters of working mothers are less likely to engage in outside work. In the case of a working mother, the daughter is not only needed to help with domestic tasks, she is also needed to take the mother’s place in other ways. Girls have to get their brothers and sisters ready for school and take them home when they finish, give them dinner and cook for the rest of the family, clean the house, wash the dishes and do the laundry, etc. Unlike work outside the home, they don’t get pocket money for these tasks, since domestic tasks are not defined as paid work, but as a responsibility. In fact, the mothers, regardless of their economic status, think that it is necessary for a daughter to learn these tasks for their own sake in the future. As a Kurdish mother who works in a textile factory put it: I will not always be with her. When she marries, she needs to clean her own home and cook for her own children. So it is better for her to start doing these things at this age. Now she sometimes complains about things, but in the future, she will thank me for teaching her how to cook and how to manage a home. Anyway, if she refused to do [it], who does she think will do this? I can’t, I am working at the factory. Unlike the girls, the boys do not have domestic responsibilities. If they do not have a part-time job, their lives are much easier than those of girls in the same position. But the life of the working boys is far from comfortable. The most important determinant of whether a child has a part-time job or not is the father’s employment status. The Turkish-speaking young people also work for their relatives or co-villagers and if they have a self-

Social Exclusion and Young Turkish-speaking People’s Future Prospects 153 Table 8.8

Part-time work by fathers’ employment (%)

Fathers’ employment status

Yes

No

Total

Unemployed (54) Non-professional employees (68) Professional employees (15) Self-employers, owners of small businesses (41) Total (178)

24 25 33 (5) 54 32

76 75 67 (10) 46 68

100 100 100 100 100

employed father, they work for him. If a child has a self-employed father, the contribution of the child’s labour is essential to the father. Table 8.8 reveals that more than half of the Turkish-speaking young people of the self-employed fathers work part-time. These young people usually receive pocket money from their fathers in return for their work in the shop. Hakan, a Turkish boy who was born here, has a housewife mother and a coffee shop owner father. For as long as he can remember, his father has owned a coffee shop. He was the only son in the family with two sisters. Hakan worked in the coffee shop for pocket money after school and stayed there until eight o’clock in the evening and at the weekends. He started work in the morning with his father and left at two o’clock in the afternoon. Hakan wants to be an engineer, yet believes he cannot achieve his aim and will probably end up working in his dad’s shop. The children of unemployed or non-professional fathers do not have part-time jobs, unless some of their relatives or very close co-villagers own a shop and need extra help. This seems to be a common experience among the young people with unemployed parents. Indeed when they work, they earn pocket money and this contributes to the family’s income and some of them even give their earnings to their mothers. A Kurdish boy, who works in one of his relatives’ barber shop after school and at weekends, said that: When we were in Turkey, my Dad worked in the bazaar in Bursa, he sold vegetables and my mum was knitting for other women in the neighbourhood in return for some cash. I was the eldest in the home and have one brother and one sister. In Turkey, I worked with my Dad. Here he couldn’t work because of some health problems. In the barber shop, I clean the floor after the customers and bring them some tea or clean ashtrays. But also I am learning to cut the hair and other stuff in time. He pays me pocket money. Sometimes I keep it, but usually I give it to my Mum. She uses it for extra expenses for my brother and sister.

154 Pinar Enneli

The children of the professional employees have part-time jobs more often than the children of the unemployed or non-professional employees. On the other hand, the nature of the jobs these children hold differs from one group to another. Middleton et al. (1988: 57) found in a survey on children aged between 11 and 16 years that although poorer children are less likely than more affluent children to have paid part-time jobs, employed poorer children tend either to have more jobs and/or work for longer hours than others. Furthermore, the professional families and their children approach part-time jobs differently from other children. Lavalette (1994) notes that out-of-school work today is, to some extent, a cross-class activity, since this type of work is now believed by the families to be a beneficial learning experience in line with many elements of bourgeois ideology concerning the morally invigorating experience of work. These positive attributes of part-time work are also detectable among the Turkish-speaking part-time job holders from professional backgrounds: Turkish girl: I wanted to spend some time outside of the house and earn my own money. I didn’t want to work in Turkish shops, so I went to all big shops at the shopping centre and asked the managers for a job. They asked me to fill application forms, then Etam offered me a job as a shop assistant during the weekends. I put the money in the bank and usually I spend it to buy some clothes or gifts for my friends. Cypriot boy: During the summer holidays, I occasionally go to my father’s office. I help him there to arrange the files, post the letters, prepare some coffee or tea. It is fun. I enjoy myself. Also if I work hard, my father gives me some pocket money too. But part-time work is certainly far from being a fun experience for those working in their father’s small shops: Turkish boy: I can say that working in a kebab shop is like going to a jail. The shop is like a prison. Because you are in the same place from 11 o’clock in the morning until two o’clock in the evening, without any break. At least I am luckier than my dad. I only have to work during the weekends. Even when you give yourself a day off occasionally, you can do nothing because you already felt so tired. That’s why I code the kebab business in my mind as a prison.


I mean, I am working all right, but it is a misery. My dad always told me that ‘the last job in this life is kebab business. If you want to save your future from this, you have to read and become a man’ [which means ‘go to school and get a good occupational career’]. The introduction to working life is very stressful for some of the Turkish-speaking young people, who believe that their experiences are not encouraging and positive. They see the employment opportunities which the community offers them as highly restrictive for their future employment prospects, which is why none of the girls wants to be a housewife like their mothers and none of the boys wants to be a shopkeeper like their fathers.

The role of schools in terms of improving employment opportunities It is important to show these young people that they can work outside of the community labour market, if they attain the necessary qualifications in schools. The Work Experience Scheme is an important tool to realize this aim. Pupils in their last year of compulsory schooling are encouraged to undertake a period of work experience as part of their education. During a placement pupils carry out particular jobs in much the same way as regular employees. Pupils observe work processes and employees going about their normal work, and undertake projects on the employers’ premises. Although there are some suspicions about WES, some of the studies show that participation in WES increases young people’s familiarity with working conditions and their confidence in schools (Watts 1983b; DfEE and OFSTED 1997; Petherbridge 1997). The basic objectives of work experience are to increase pupils’ knowledge and understanding of self and society and to help them to choose their future occupation by extending the range of occupations that the pupils are prepared to consider, and finally to enable pupils to establish a relationship with a particular employer which may lead to the offer of a permanent job (Watts 1983a: 6–8). However, Turkish-speaking young people are unlikely to enjoy these positive impacts of the scheme in terms of extending their opportunities and gaining confidence in a future career. Barton (1988) emphasizes the importance of discouraging pupils from seeking placements with family and friends wherever possible so that new experiences can be gained. However, in the case of Turkish-speaking young people, quite the opposite is occurring.


Small shops Big stores Offices Total

Where did you do your work experience? (%) Kurdish-populated areas (18)


Cyprus (17)

Mixed (11)

Total (54)

83 (15) 6 (1) 11 (2) 100

63 (5) 12 (1) 25 (2) 100

29 (5) 12 (2) 59 (10) 100

36 (4) 36 (4) 28 (3) 100

54 14 32 100

As shown in Table 8.9, more than half of the Turkish-speaking pupils who undertook placement did their work experience course in a small shop, which is typical of the employment done in the Turkish-speaking community. Only 15 per cent had a chance to work in a big store, whilst only three out of ten worked in an office environment. However, the differences between Kurdish, Turkish and Cypriot pupils in terms of work experience is striking. Just over eight out of ten and six out of ten Kurdish and Turkish students respectively worked in a small shop during their work experience course, compared to only three out of ten Cypriot students. Moreover, nearly six out of ten Cypriot students did their work experience work in an office, while only one in ten Kurdish students did so. In the first instance, the Cypriot students might seem to have a better chance in terms of their placement, yet they are still far from the opportunities with which work experience might provide them. As Table 8.10 indicates, more than six out of ten students find their placement through their family connections. This figure is seven out of ten for Kurdish students. It seems that only Turkish pupils received the school’s help in this matter, and the school managed to find work placements in an environment with which they were already very familiar. In reality, if a student already has a part-time job, their employers signed the necessary placement papers as a formality. In other words, for a week the students’ existing part-time job transforms into a work experience placement. As a Kurdish boy said about his own experience: I already worked in my uncle’s barber shop. So he signed the work experience paper, then I brought them to the school and they approved it. That’s it really. It was that easy. In other words, the schools do not give these pupils a chance to experience other employment opportunities than those already existing in the community labour market. It increases the children’s isolation in terms

Social Exclusion and Young Turkish-speaking People’s Future Prospects 157 Table 8.10

I/Family The school Total

Who arranged the place for work experience? (%) Kurdish-populated areas (18)


Cyprus (17)

Mixed (11)

Total (54)

72 (13) 28 (5) 100

38 (3) 62 (5) 100

59 (10) 41 (7) 100

64 (7) 36 (4) 100

61 39 100

of future economic prospects. This isolation is especially severe for Kurdish pupils, since they also need to overcome language barriers. The Work Experience Scheme did not overcome the feeling of exclusion among the Turkish-speaking pupils. Ironically, they have ambitions to continue their education, but still feel they might end up with their parents’ jobs. According to Biggart and Furlong (1996), within the depressed labour market conditions, young people frequently remain sceptical about the value of the qualifications they are taking, but are scared of leaving the familiar environment of the school to enter an uncertain labour market. This is exactly what is happening to the Turkish-speaking young people. Table 8.11 reveals that 85 per cent of the young people want to continue their education. The number of Cypriot young people who have intentions to continue their education is even higher than this total. In fact, none of the Cypriot young people wants to enter working life after compulsory schooling. Their uncertainty and lack of confidence is evident from a discussion with Cypriot and Turkish boys: Cypriot boy: If, let’s say, I have a doctor father, a teacher mother and a lawyer brother, can you imagine me in a kebab business? No way. They will certainly find me a proper job in an office. Have you ever seen somebody with these background in a kebab shop? I didn’t. Table 8.11

The young people’s plans after compulsory education (%) Kurdish-populated areas (92)

Continue education Start working No idea Total


Cyprus (50)

Mixed (30)

Total (206)

89

76

92

70

85

10 1 100

21 3 100

8 100

20 10 100

11 4 100

158 Pinar Enneli

Turkish boy: It is true you know. But there are other things outside of your control. PE: What do you mean with other things? Turkish boy: I mean. If I become a doctor, I can only treat other Turkish people. If I have my own surgery, probably my patients will be Turkish people. I think the others do not trust somebody originally from this country. So at the end, after all your efforts, you can only earn a very limited amount of money. I know a doctor. Only Turkish people know him and go to him. And take the teacher, they can only teach Turkish children. Only we respect them as a teacher, not others in the school.

Conclusions The current structural changes in the developed market economies bring about immigrant communities’ exclusion in terms of employment opportunities in the labour market. Immigrants have been affected more than the non-immigrant population. Most of them are pushed into selfemployment or other forms of informal community employment in the ethnic enclave labour markets. The future prospects of the second generation seem to be no better than those of their parents’ generation. Turkish-speaking young people feel that exclusion in the current labour market is pushing them to make a choice: whether to accept the jobs which their parents already do or attempt to improve their future life-chances. A considerable number of pupils are already engaged in the labour process working under very harsh conditions. This relatively early encounter with working life makes some of the young people even more alienated from their parents’ excluded employment conditions. The working conditions are pretty hard for the young people, especially the boys who help their self-employed fathers after school hours. The conditions are even harder for the girls with a part-time job. The Turkish-speaking girls have to help their mothers with domestic tasks, regardless of any part-time job they might have. In this context, the cultural focus of educational policies is far from helping these young people. It is necessary to take into account the implications of their families’ economic exclusion for the students’ school-life in order to understand their problems. This became most evident in the case of the Work Experience Scheme. It was found that most of the young people were ‘placed’ in the small shops of the


Turkish-speaking community in which they were already working on a part-time basis. Accordingly, the feeling that education would not bring exclusion to an end in their future life appears to be a fundamental factor influencing the students’ educational ambitions. The empirical evidence suggests that a proper discussion of the educational problems of the Turkish-speaking students specifically requires the implications of wider economic exclusion. Broadly speaking, as Fenton and Bradley argue (chapter 1), there is a need, now, to revisit economic aspects of ethnic difference and in particular to re-explore the relationship between the economy, ethnicity and the class structure, while accepting the importance of culture and identity. This chapter has explored the interplay of economic and cultural factors which help to confine many Turkish-speaking young people within the ‘ethnic enclaves’ within which their parents work. A limited structure of employment opportunities within economically deprived areas of London combines with ill-conceived education policies and established gender norms to channel the young people into jobs similar to those of their parents. The longest established groups (Cypriots) have wider economic opportunities and openings than the newcomers (Kurds), who are even more constrained by their lack of ‘cultural assets’ (language skills, knowledge of the system). Networks of kin- and community-based support which help in-migrants survive can serve as structural constraints for their sons and daughters. Thus the case of Turkish-speaking young people in London illustrates the complex interweaving of cultural and material factors by which class and ethnic differences are reproduced.

Acknowledgement The author would like to thank Professor Theo Nichols and Ms Jackie West for their supervision during her PhD of which this chapter is part, and Dr Harriet Bradley and Mr Surhan Cam for their constructive comments.

Note 1. There are various meanings of the term exclusion. Levitas (1998) puts all existing discussions into three categories: a redistributionist discourse primarily concerned with poverty, moral underclass discourse centred on the moral and behavioural delinquency of the excluded themselves and finally social integrationist discourse focused on paid work. In this chapter exclusion is used in the context of a redistributionist discourse.

9 Migrant Workers in the Construction Industry: The Experience of Tunisians in Modena Faycel Daly

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to explore the class position of migrant workers and their location within the labour market in the construction industry in the northern Italian city of Modena, and in Italy in general. It exposes the relationship between the discrimination and exclusionary practices that these workers have faced, their political vulnerability, and cultural and ethnic diversity. The chapter also describes how the mechanisms of marginalization within the employment relationship, which were utilized against southern emigrants after the Second World War, have been imposed on the incoming migrants. It attempts to locate racism and discrimination against migrant workers within both a cultural and a political economy framework. Cultural and economic dimensions of racism perpetuate the exploitation of the ‘new’ working class – migrants, particularly from North Africa, form a new reservoir of secondary labour. Employers engage migrant workers not only to overcome shortages of labour, particularly in the secondary labour market, but also in an attempt to displace or substitute southern Italian emigrants within the primary market. Small firms in the construction industry have used migrant workers as a source of cheap, flexible labour. In the context of economic fluctuations and instability, migrant workers are used to develop greater flexibility in terms of hours, skills, wages, labour legislation enforcement, adaptability to casualization and instability of the construction industry. Flexibility has helped the employers to increase productivity and lower labour cost by employing migrants, simultaneously reproducing traditional forms of production and labour control. Migrant workers in general, and Tunisians in particular, are transforming the 160

Migrant Workers in the Construction Industry 161

composition of the labour force in the construction industry. This replacement process involves conflictual relationships, cultural stereotyping and economic crisis. The arrival of migrants in the construction industry has been perceived by some Italians as a threat to their jobs and by others as an opportunity for promotion and an improvement in their careers. The adverse relations that Tunisian migrant workers have been facing in Modena are investigated at both the macro- and micro-level. The first section of the chapter provides some background to Tunisian migration to Italy and the increased demand for migrant labour. The second section illustrates the position of migrant labour through a case-study of Tunisians’ employment in construction in Modena. An in-depth investigation of the working conditions of Tunisian migrant workers was conducted in 1997 in six small and medium enterprises. The study highlights the exclusion and marginalization of Tunisian workers, illustrated through the day-to-day stories of the 21 Tunisian migrants interviewed for this study, revealing their frustration and disillusion. Interviews were also conducted with six employers, the secretary of the employers’ association, the director of the Cassa Edile1 and the secretary of the construction trade union in Modena. Group discussions were also held with workers during lunch breaks and in dormitories after work or at weekends.2 The research reveals the contradiction between the need for the labour power and the unwillingness to accept cultural and ethnic diversity. It is this contradiction between economic ‘inclusion’ and social ‘exclusion’ which is a central theme of this chapter. Social exclusion means lack of job promotion and career prospects, as well as denial of basic social and political rights (i.e. health care, education, housing, welfare benefit and voting) (Daly and Barot 1999).

Tunisian migration to Italy Tunisia’s involvement in international labour migration began only in the aftermath of Independence and in particular in the early 1960s, with the stipulation of immigration agreements with France and Germany. However, until the late 1960s Tunisia attracted many immigrants. In fact, until 1956, 9 per cent of the Tunisian population were foreigners, mainly French settlers, Italian emigrants and an almost equal number of Algerian refugees (Trifa 1987). The economic crisis and collapse of the agriculture reforms in the mid-1960s was a spur to Tunisian migration (Hertelli 1994). Furthermore, colonial links and labour shortages in Europe were crucial to the increase of Tunisian emigration.

162 Faycel Daly

Italy’s membership of the European Community permitted Italian migrants to obtain equal employment rights to those of indigenous workers in the traditional countries of immigration – France, Germany and the Benelux countries. To some extent, this constituted an incentive for many employers in these countries to replace Italian migrants with cheap labour from other Mediterranean countries (Castles and Kosack 1985). For instance, Germany signed bilateral labour recruitment agreements with Turkey in 1961 and 1964, Morocco in 1963 and Tunisia in 1965. However, the restrictive immigration policies and ‘stop recruitment’ strategy adopted by Germany in 1973 and France in 1974, due to the economic recession and the oil crisis of the early 1970s, made it extremely difficult for migrant workers to enter these countries legally for work purposes. In this context, Italy became almost the only door open to North African migrants into Europe, who were still able to enter the country without visas. Furthermore, strong Italian economic development, the so-called ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s, reduced the gap in per capita gross domestic product between Italy and the northern European countries. The living standards of Italians substantially improved; consequently, the economic motives for Italian emigration diminished. In 1973 Italy ceased to be a net ‘exporter’ of migrants, bringing to an end the country’s traditional role of supplier of migrant workers for other more powerful European economies. Instead, Italy has become involved in importing cheap labour from its previous African colonies (Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia) and from its neighbours in North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia). In the view of Ireland, this turnaround meant that ‘what appeared, initially, to be an elementary equation – bringing jobs and workers together in an international labour market’ has led to social conflict (Ireland 1991: 458).

The demand for migrant workers in the Modena construction industry The recruitment of migrant workers has been a stable feature of the European construction and building industries (housing development and civil engineering – bridges, roads and tunnels) not to mention agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. These have long employed migrant labour, especially in the ‘traditional’ countries of immigration (France, Germany and Switzerland). However, little research has been conducted on the role of migrant workers and their


working conditions in the construction industry. The few studies (Austrin 1980; Danesh 1995; ILO 1995) which looked specifically at the construction sector noted that the employment of migrant labour has been a stable feature of this sector. This is because although there have been considerable efforts to substitute labour by machines, new technology and hi-tech equipment, the building trade in particular remains a labour-intensive sector. Greater demand for migrant labour in the building industry took place during the reconstruction of Europe after the First and Second World Wars, following natural catastrophes and during periods of economic expansion. Migrant labour was recruited in the construction industry, both because of shortages of labour and because the native workforce refused to work in this sector, owing to the hard, dangerous and demanding working conditions. However, as Berger and Mohr state: ‘it is a specific shortage in a specific system of production, there are not enough workers willing, at the wage offered, to do the low-paid manual jobs’ (1975: 118). The construction industry is one type of industry that relies heavily upon the availability of a cheap, docile, extremely flexible and healthy young labour force for its survival. These characteristics are more likely to be found ready-made in migrant workers who, because of their political and economic disadvantages, are easy to hire and fire. Nichols has argued that ‘such real disadvantage can have effects, not simply in terms of lower labour costs but in terms of higher costs to labour’ (1986: 117). In the case of a disadvantaged group such as migrant workers, marginality and irregularity are often necessary and unavoidable conditions for finding work. Furthermore, the construction industry is mostly vacated and abandoned by Italian workers because of the hard working conditions, low wages, precarious, temporary and casual jobs that students of migration have identified as being characteristic features of the secondary market. Villa describes the labour market in the construction industry as ‘a secondary sector both because many disadvantaged workers are confined to it and because it is characterised by job instability, poor and uncertain career prospects, unstable earnings and uncertainty about future income’ (1981: 133). Moreover, cultural racism and discrimination within the Italian labour market have not only increased exclusion and marginalization, but ‘confined migrants to low-skilled and low-paid jobs’ (Phizacklea and Miles 1980: 14). Cultural racism consists of ‘the values, beliefs and ideas, usually embedded in our “common sense”, which endorse the superiority of white culture over others’ (Barker 1981). Cultural racism is apparent in the way some employers and their representatives interviewed in Modena

164 Faycel Daly

portrayed their Tunisian workers. It is also present in the negative images and stereotypes portrayed by the media which influence public opinion and increase prejudice and discrimination against extracomunitari.3 Cultural racism is clearly articulated in the political discourse and manifest of the right-wing parties, namely the neo-Fascist Allianza Nazionale and the separatist Lega Nord, who presented themselves as the custodians and protectors of the Italian identity and culture. The segmentation of the labour market has also influenced the formation of two categories of jobs: marginalized, low-paid and hard conditions, where most migrant labour is located, and well-qualified, specialized and highly remunerated, for native Italians. Therefore migrant labour has freed Italian labourers to move further up the economic scale, enabling them to improve their employment status. Demographic decline and a growing and ageing population are the most threatening factors for the survival of small and medium enterprises. Some studies show that Italy has reached zero population growth with a total fertility rate in 1991 of 1.27 and 1.25 in 1992. This is well below the replacement level of 2.1, the lowest ever recorded in any country in the world (King 1993; Bonifazi 1994). Therefore, it is likely that international migration will play a central role in determining the nature of the future population in Italy. Kazim (1991) and King (1993) attribute the causes of this sharp decline to increasing materialism and selfishness in Italian life-styles, which value the acquisition of consumer goods more than family life. In fact, material gain has become more important than having children and, as King pointed out, ‘clearly many Italians prefer to have a second home rather than a second child!’ (1993: 65). This may be true, particularly in Modena and the Emilia-Romagna region, where the birth rate is negative and many local people own a second house, either in the mountains or on the Adriatic coast. The shortage of unskilled manual labour has been striking, particularly in the construction sector in Modena where the demand for migrant workers has become vital for the survival of many small and medium firms. Indeed, for many artisans, migrant workers have become their economic saviours (Kazim 1991). In Modena, the percentage of migrant workers employed in the construction industry has increased from 5.1 per cent in 1990 to 8.1 per cent in 1994. Over 26 per cent of migrants employed in construction are Tunisian, by far the largest migrant group (Provincia di Modena 1995: 50–2). Table 9.1 outlines the high percentage of Tunisian workers in the six firms surveyed in Modena.

Migrant Workers in the Construction Industry 165 Table 9.1 1997

The number of Tunisian workers in the six firms investigated,

Name of the firm

Costruzioni Generali Due Srl Costruzioni Giovanni Neri Srl Asfalti Morselli and C. Snc Edil 95 di Morselli Silvio Impermeabilizzaz. Di Pacchioni and C. Snc Edil Baraldi Sas

Tunisian*

Total workforce

No.

%

5 4 2 7 3

15 15 17 70 60

34 27 12 10 5

2

40

5

The six employers I questioned also confirmed the shortage of labour and firmly denied that their 23 Tunisians had stolen jobs from the indigenous population, on the grounds that the Modenese would never accept such hard working conditions in the secondary and marginal sectors. One particular employer, Signore Pacchioni, told me:4 A year or eighteen months ago, the accountant who prepares the payroll gave us a list of 40 or 50 workers on the lista di mobilità [mobility register].5 My wife selected about 10 to 13 workers who fit our particular trade and satisfy our requirements. She telephoned them, but none of these workers replied to our recruitment drive. All these people are, in my opinion, either unwilling to work or are working in the black economy. That’s why there is a lot of permanent unemployment in Italy, because people are working in the black economy, and by avoiding paying social security contributions, they are able to earn more money. These are, in my opinion, the unemployed people in Italy. The refusal of the local workforce to work in the building industry and the exhaustion of the southern Italian labour reservoir have led to a labour shortage, particularly in the northern regions. Moreover, many employers, particularly in the small and medium enterprises in the northern regions, engage migrant workers partly because they can persuade them to accept illegal working conditions and therefore secure their total flexibility. Moreover, because of their political vulnerability, they are more docile and compliant. Signore Pacchioni, the owner of a waterproofing company, admitted that ‘In Italy, the Italians do not want to work. They do not want to do

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heavy jobs. They want to know how much they are going to earn and then they discuss the job.’ Migrant workers are also flexible in responding to the organizational needs of firms and/or in relation to local market demands. This flexibility, together with hard, even illegal, working conditions, appears to be crucial in defining ‘bad jobs’ in the construction industry (Frey and Livraghi 1996: 11), which Italians refuse to take even when they are unemployed. ‘The real problem with the Italian labour market is not that there are many unemployed, but that there are too few people employed in the official economy’ (Brunetta and Turatto 1996: 199). Sopemi (1995: 11) estimated that around 10 million Italians were employed in an informal job in 1995. The widespread occurrence of irregular employment can be explained, as Onorato argues, by the fact that: Italy has a labour market which stimulates illegal immigration, employers having a major interest in the recruitment of illegal foreign workers, the difference between legal and illegal workers’ wages being around 200 to 300 per cent. (1991: 10) Initially, the six employers interviewed used official channels, such as job centres, because they would not risk taking on extracomunitari. Direct contact, friendship and family networks have constituted the second most used channel for the Tunisian migrants to find a job. In particular, Tunisian migrants who have been settled in a job for a long time and gained the trust of their employers, tend to act as intermediaries and as a source of new recruitment. For instance, Karim6 moved from Viareggio, where he was working as a fisherman, because his cousin who had been working with Signore Pacchioni for the past three years, found him a job in the same firm. Trade unions, voluntary associations and migrants’ associations have been very active in helping Tunisian migrants to find jobs. Signore Pacchioni recruited two of his three Tunisian workers through the trade union. The role of community networks and social organizations is crucial to both Tunisian migrants and employers, particularly in small firms. Although most of the migrant workers employed in the six firms investigated came from Tunisia, the employers stated that they did not plan to employ only Tunisians. Though personal contact is important to small and medium firms, national origin and ethnicity are increasingly becoming a crucial mechanism for migrant labour selection and classification. Selection is based on prejudice and stereotype: some would not recruit immigrants despite the huge economic benefits they offered. It is a question of ‘racial and ethnic principle’ being of more importance than any perceived economic


benefit. A newspaper in Parma, in Emilia-Romagna, placed an advertisement which read: ‘Looking for Workers, No Extracommunitari’, while a family announced: ‘Looking for a domestic of Aryan race. Extracomunitari are invited to refrain from replying’ (Gazetta di Modena, in Rassegna Stampa Immigrazione 1996: 22). When the employer was met with a protest, he hit back by saying: I am not a racist but those from Emilia-Romagna are racists … . I work for important companies, Barilla, Braibanti, Smeg. My interest is that my workers should be good, serious and I don’t take into consideration their national origin. Six of my workers are non-European from Croatia and Slovenia. If I need more, I only have to contact friends in Slovenia. However, when he was asked if he had recruited North Africans, he replied: Yes, I had two of them. They were good, too, but they don’t suit my case, above all when they are black. They know only how to straighten bananas. (Cancellieri 1996: 22) Wallerstein argues that ‘racism operationally has taken the form of what might be called the “ethnicization” of the work force. By which I mean that at all times there has existed an occupational-reward hierarchy that has tended to be correlated with some so-called social criteria’ (1995: 33). The interviews with some of the six employers and their representatives provide a clear evidence of the ethnicization of the work-force in Modena. In fact, most employers interviewed used stereotypes or voiced prejudices against their Tunisian workers. For instance, Baraldi’s father thinks that Central African migrants work harder and are more obedient and amenable than Tunisian workers. This statement was echoed by Fernando Gibellini, the Provincial Secretary of the powerful National Confederation of Artisans in Modena (CNA), who felt that ‘migrants from Central Africa are more adjusted to the rules than the North Africans, who are less committed to permanent work’. When challenged about the Tunisians being less amenable to exploitation, he replied: In my opinion, the exploitation of workers is part of the innate spirit by the employers. It is normal for the employers to try to take advantage of what is possible from labour power. It is normal for

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employers always to ask more, because the more they ask the greater the profits they make. These claims about Tunisian migrants were denied by Enzo Morselli and Pacchioni. The latter classifies the immigrants into three categories: Three Tunisians that I currently employ and are the best; South Africans that I tried but who are not good; drug-dealers and prostitutes whom I would put on a plane and drop in the desert without parachutes.

The case study firms The majority of the six employers are self-made entrepreneurs with varied experience and from diverse backgrounds. Maintenance, which is one of the most labour-intensive sectors in the construction industry, constitutes the main activity of these firms. These were selected with the support of the left-wing trade union GCIL because they employ migrant, mainly Tunisian workers. Five had originally been self-employed or craftsmen, while Morselli Silvio had been a self-employed agricultural worker. Only Costruzioni Generali Due is a limited company. Otherwise the family and social network has always played a crucial role in the foundation of small Italian firms, including manufacturing. In an old city like Modena, general repair and maintenance is a key activity. Locally-based small firms are well adapted to this since there is limited capital expenditure on mechanical equipment and it relies on skilled tradesmen. Only one or two administrative staff are employed, though they engage technical or professional personnel, either as employees or external consultants. Generali Due employs an engineer for technical work and site supervision, while Giovanni Neri acts as supervisor with the help of a relative. He also relies on seven administrative and technical employees. The general family nature of the business means that there is little opportunity for migrants either to find promotion or even white-collar work. This can be seen as an excuse for exploitation and discrimination against an ethnic group that is also the Islamic minority in a predominantly Catholic country.

Cultural superiority and employment discrimination Almost 77 per cent of migrant workers are employed as unskilled workers, not only in building, but also in manufacturing, steel, agriculture and low-tech services (Caritas 1995: 241). In part this is because the state


refuses to recognize any qualifications and skills that they might have. Employers have the discretion to consign them to the two lowest of the building sector’s seven grades. Hence migrants depend largely on goodwill rather than their own merits. They seem to be puzzled and confused by the grading system in the construction industry. Karim, employed at Asfalti Morselli, states: There is no clear classification in Italy. Even after 100 years, it will still be very difficult to understand the grade system. I don’t know from which point they start counting; sometimes the first grade is good, but in other cases it is the last … . After nine years I still don’t know my real grade. This view was expressed by other workers, though two crane operators at Generali Due confirmed that they were in the third grade and expected to be moved into the fourth. Having taken on migrants to do the hardest jobs, employers seek to keep them at the lowest occupational level by resorting to discriminatory rhetoric to justify these policies. Discrimination, however, is not often the cause of such choices, merely the way in which it is perpetuated. Moreover, medium and large companies who cannot avoid labour regulations and trade union control subcontract some of the dirty and dangerous work to the fragile, small and illegal artisan firms owned by migrants or Italian ‘cowboys’. To pay them, they resort to ‘off the books’ payments, in other words, cash in hand. ‘The survival of migrant entrepreneurs depends heavily on the support of Italian friends, kinship and social connections’ (Zucchetti 1995: 305). The ordinary Tunisian workmen face the deskilling and bullying tactics of the foremen and employers. The foreman still holds a powerful position and he is susceptible to nepotism and widespread clientist practices. Workers are sceptical about the likelihood of foremen ever allowing them to learn or improve their skills. Salim at Asfalti Morselli illustrated the conflictual relationship: Italians will never teach anyone anything that will make you better than them … . They think that you are going to ask them for more money when you do a job very well. They will not give you that chance to ask for promotion. Thus immigrants cannot achieve their full potential: whether southerners or northerners, Italians would never accept an extracomunitario as foreman and would refuse to take orders from him.

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Even when there is a sympathetic foreman, immigrants may still be undermined by an unscrupulous supervisor. Tunisian workers are usually multi-skilled, but they end up carrying out manual and unskilled jobs, particularly in the medium and large companies. In these small firms, Tunisian workers are fully flexible and adjustable, not only to the different tasks during the site cycle, but also to the nature of the building: new or old buildings, maintenance or restoration, large or small housing units. They are carpenters, bricklayers, tile layers, pavers, plasterers and painters – whatever is required. For instance, Khames, an experienced and skilled Tunisian worker, who had spent almost half of his life working as a builder, had seen his confidence and professional life shattered by the foremen when he started working at the Generali Due. He stated: I am a builder. I worked as a builder elsewhere before I came to Generali Due. One day, the foreman asked me to plaster a wall, which I did perfectly. I think I plastered it better than many Italians would have. When the supervisor came to inspect the work he asked the foreman who had plastered the wall. The foreman replied

Figure 9.1

Skilled Tunisian migrant employed as manual worker


that it was Khames. He ordered the wall to be replastered. The foreman told me how sorry he was. I was shattered because I was there and the supervisor had not carried out a proper inspection. I was demoralized and since then I’ve lost all my confidence and I only worked as a labourer. I try to avoid getting involved in building. I think they have deliberately sought to sow an inferiority complex in us, because they do not trust us. Tunisian workers dispute that they are lazy and unproductive and assert that employers have tried to demoralize them, refusing them promotion and confining them to the lowest grades. For instance, Salah, a Tunisian worker working for Costruzioni Giovanni Neri, reaffirms this attitude: ‘I have been working as a second grade unskilled worker, since I joined Giovanni Neri six years ago.’ He adds: Sometimes I have even worked as a builder and when Signore Giovanni Neri saw me building he was surprised and said ‘Even you! You learnt how to build.’ I said I had, but he did not promote me at all or recognize me as a builder or crane operator.

Figure 9.2 of work

‘Unskilled’ Tunisian workers need to be ready to carry out any kind

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Although Giovanni Neri admitted that some of his Tunisian workers had attended building courses at training centres or colleges at home, and some were highly qualified in specialist areas such as carpentry, reinforced concrete and steel-fixing, he insisted that they made no great effort to learn and lacked the work ethic: ‘They have to deserve promotion in order to obtain it. The fact that there is no consistency could lead you to write a novel about their behaviour.’ When told about Salah’s situation and commitment, he still maintained that Tunisians did not want to learn the job and were not loyal, and countered that Salah did that job only occasionally. The fact is, as Salah explained, promoting him would mean having to pay higher wages. Tunisian workers are usually multi-skilled but they end up doing manual and unskilled tasks, particularly in the medium and large companies. It is therefore clear that employers make rational economic choices about the position of migrant workers; they seek to fill dirty, demanding and dangerous jobs with an ‘army of unprotected, atomized and easily blackmailed reserve of labour’ (Sciortino 1991: 96). Fully functional flexibility is likely to be adopted by the micro-firms, above all in maintenance and repair. Here the employers are in direct contact and maintain that the workers are skilled, intelligent and specialized. In the small firms, Tunisian workers are fully flexible and adjustable, not only to the various tasks of the site cycle, but also to the nature of the building, new or old, maintenance or restoration, large or small housing units. Employers even avoid promoting Tunisians to any supervisory position when the majority of the workforce consists of fellow migrants. They stated that the problem of promoting a Tunisian was linked to external factors as well as the ability and readiness of an extracomunitario to learn the trade and assume such responsibility. They mentioned language difficulties, unawareness of labour legislation and paperwork, not to mention the skill to deal with Italian subcontractors, as the main barriers. However, Tunisian workers are very sceptical of the likelihood that their bosses will ever allow them to learn or to improve their skills. For example, Salim states: Italians will never teach anyone anything that will make you better than they are. They do not trust you, as Karim said. They want to leave you at a lower position than themselves. They do not want to teach a lot or trust you a lot, because if they do, they think that you are going to ask them for something. They think you are going to


ask them for more money when you do a job very well. They will not give you that chance to ask for promotion. Tunisian workers are therefore bound not only to occupy those jobs refused by the local labour force, but also to remain at the lowest level of occupational and professional status. They do not have the opportunity to use their full potential, as Italian workers. Giovanni Neri offered a concise summary of the situation: The skilled labour force is in a powerful position because they are in short supply, and I cannot afford to lose them. By improving the position of the extracomunitari, I might do just that. Besides, who would then do the unskilled jobs? The IRES’ survey confirms this attitude, particularly in the Modena labour market where racism and discrimination are based on attitudes of cultural superiority: The high percentage of general blue-collar [migrant] workers is a reflection of a job supply that is limited entirely to the lower job-classification levels, which is perpetuated, albeit in a very indirect way, by the non-equivalence of higher-education diplomas. (1997: 30) Oddly enough, in Sicily migrant workers are promoted. This can be explained in two ways. First, southerners were themselves subject to discrimination in the 1960s in the North. Second, the superior attitude mentioned is much less prevalent among southerners who feel a sense of belonging to a common Mediterranean culture.

Working conditions Though the interviewed employers presented working conditions in a good light, two admitted that the work was dangerous and the pay low. Karim presented the case more precisely: I earn 1,500,000 lire per month; but if you are a very good worker, you can earn a maximum of two million lire. I have never earned that amount of money since I joined Asfalt Morselli nine years ago. I pay 500,000 lire for my rent, I pay for my car fuel, my food. In the end I can’t save anything.

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The reason for giving non-standard contracts can be attributed to: the bosses’ interest in not regularising black labour in order to save on health and social security contributions and the minimum wage, and the general vulnerability of immigrants to their employers; blackmail that led them not to seek regularization for fear of losing their jobs and not being able to find another. (Onorato 1989: 307) Thus the trade is known not only for lower wages than elsewhere, but also for widespread illegal working practices. Furthermore, caporali (illegal intermediaries who take bribes) make contact with immigrants in specific bars and squares in the morning where they choose the most suitable and strongest for the building sites. Immigrants are often blackmailed, threatened and dismissed by the caporali if they try to report their illegal status or ask for regularization. No wonder the director of the Cassa Edile describes the industry as the ‘Wild West’. Despite all this, some Tunisians welcomed the opportunity to earn more money, even by illegal payments: unlike the employers, the workers admitted that they received money fuori busta (cash in hand). Employers justified the practice on the grounds that they first wished to try out workers before taking them on permanently. They also claimed that labour laws are too rigid, making it impossible to sack an unsatisfactory employee. The unofficial trial period seems to have become normal practice and a legal way to pursue illegal employment. Another factor is age: language difficulties are rife among middleaged men. This explains in part why the three 40+ year olds at Generali Due have not been able to move job and have suffered all sorts of harassment and abuse. Not only do they have wives and children to maintain, but they are also the chief breadwinners for their families left behind in Tunisia. Older workers feel that, having been builders for so long, they cannot change. Because there is no settled and stable definition of tasks, these workers feel powerless, exploited and so alienated. Tunisian workers carry out most of the excavation, lifting and moving heavy weights. Abdallah and Khames complain that the hardest jobs within the company are reserved for them: Since I joined the company seven years ago, I do all of the cutting of bricks and hammering. I carry out all the digging with axe and shovel, to do this and that. And even when there are other new manual workers, I always do the heaviest and the hardest jobs.


They must carry out any task required and receive and execute orders even from fellow Italian manual workers. They are thus treated differently because they are considered poor Third World workers (Andall 1990), and are made scapegoats for any mistakes committed in the company. Further, government vocational schemes are decried to avoid having to train migrants, who might not understand them linguistically. Health and safety procedures are not always respected, and are positively ignored by the smaller firms. Several studies (Harvey 1995; Mayhew and Gibson 1996; Walters 1998) concluded not only that construction has one of the highest accident rates, but also that smaller-scale builders have little knowledge of health and safety regulations or definitions of what constitutes a hazard or an injury. Employers are likely to take advantage of migrant workers’ lack of health and safety knowledge. In 1990, Italian building workers went on strike against the poor health and safety record of their industry; some 300 had died on work-sites the previous year, and 21 died during building for the football World Cup in 1990 (Contini 1990: 10). Regulations vary throughout the European Union, but on the best data, the fatality rate is 11.2 per 100,000 workers in Italy in 1991, as against 6.9 in Great Britain (Health and Safety Commission 1997: 82). However, these figures include the self-employed in Italy and exclude them in Britain. Yet, since many firms employ illegally in Italy, the figure may be much higher. 67.5 per cent of Tunisians in the survey stated that they were given no induction or information about health and safety provisions. The widespread occurrence of irregular employment, particularly in the construction industry, can be explained, as Onorato argued, by the fact that: Italy has a labour market which stimulates illegal immigration, employers having a major interest in the recruitment of illegal foreign workers, the difference between legal and illegal workers’ wages being around 200 to 300 per cent. (1991: 10)

Employers and cultural stereotyping The relationship between capital and labour has always been based on exploitation: this case is compounded by racism and discrimination. In Modena, building employers have not only made working conditions more casual, unstable and insecure, but have also increased the level of competition among migrant workers on one hand, and between indigenous and migrant labour on the other. Some employers interviewed

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have used migrants’ cultural diversity as a tool to confine them to subordinate position and to increase labour flexibility. This is more marked where employers use a strictly managerial style. When asked about the work ethic, their responses were more about stereotypes and cultural superiority than work values and ethics. Maurizio Tediosi of Generali Due explained the Tunisian work culture in three ways. First, he identified work culture with the level of commitment and reliability. He felt these were not common among his workers. Second, he meant the ability to learn and become specialized. He found the middle-aged workers lazy and unproductive. Third, he commented that there was not sufficient will to master labour legislation and workplace information. Signore Baraldi agreed with this but added that ‘migrant workers are more available than Italians to work long hours and on Saturdays. So this makes for compensation.’ Many studies conducted in Modena (Daly 1990; Franchini and Guidi 1990; 1991; Caponetto 1992) confirm that the feeling of cultural superiority is deeply rooted among the Modenese, extending even towards southerners. All six employers interviewed considered themselves to be ‘pure’ Modenese. Giovanni Neri asserted that Tunisian workers lacked ‘working culture’: ‘working culture is the history that a person carries on his shoulders, so that it is not possible in just ten years to reverse the cultural positions’. Similar views were expressed by Signore Gibellini, the CNA provincial secretary, but hidden in a more sophisticated technical explanation of the ‘backward’ culture of migrants: In the migrants’ country of origin, there isn’t the knowledge of materials that we utilize: ceramics, cement and particular types of construction. It is natural for this knowledge not to exist. The old Europe has achieved this knowledge because it has been building for the past 1200 years. In the North African countries, the typology of building, as it is currently undertaken, is only ten or twenty years old. Construction knowledge and typology is not one of paramount expertise. By contrast with others, Emanuella Morselli stated that their Tunisians had learned their working system and way of thinking. This was repeated by Silvio Morselli: I am very satisfied with my Tunisian workers. Everybody tells me that I am lucky to have very good boys. Many people have had bad


experiences with Tunisians, but I cannot confirm this. All my workers are willing to work, but their willingness to learn or their learning capability is different. I have two Tunisians who are especially maestri. I should say that they are even better than our Italians. Different attitudes were expressed with regard to respecting holiday periods, religious festivals and fasting during Ramadhan. Although Maurizio Tediosi recognizes that it is only natural for workers to spend more time with their families in Tunisia, he complains that because of Ramadhan, they are not in a fit state to work and that work is held up by certain religious feasts. Abdallah contradicted that, saying that his religion ordered him to work even harder by day during the fasting period. Most workers, however, have no difficulty in having festivals off work as long as they apply in advance. Other employers felt that their workers always lengthened their holidays without permission, ignoring the fact that they are away from their families for many months and that their low wages preclude them from bringing over their wives and children. The employers rent out the houses they build, but not to their migrant workers. When it was suggested that help with housing would reduce absenteeism, the researcher was told that Italians too have the same housing problems. Immigration legislation, too, is being used as a deliberate constraint to discourage family reunion, since before bringing over their families, migrant workers must demonstrate the availability of a decent home, a permanent and legal employment contract, adequate wages and a valid permit to reside in Italy. Most Tunisians, particularly those with children, cannot afford to pay more than half their wage to rent a flat. Employers have succeeded in externalizing the burden of the social costs of the reproduction and maintenance of labour, which are borne by the sending countries. Employers are interested in buying the labour power from their immigrants and are not concerned with their housing problem, health and their family separation: by recruiting young, single people, capital and the State in western Europe were importing ‘ready-made’ workers and were therefore not required to meet their social costs of production. (Miles 1989: 62) Separation of workers from their families is an old mechanism based on the ‘guest worker system’ used in other capitalist societies (i.e. Germany and Switzerland). Italy is no exception.

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Workers’ solidarity and class relations The development of good relations between migrant workers and Italian colleagues has been affected by at least three factors. First, because migrants do not have their own meeting places, such as clubs and bars and a decent home where they could invite Italian colleagues, most felt isolated and segregated. They still live in crowded dormitories or disused buildings. Second, anti-immigration feeling and the rise of racism in public places have rendered the development of friendly relations outside work more difficult. Historically this has included southerners since the 1960s. Silvio Morselli was quite blunt: ‘Here in Modena, we are already prejudiced against Meridionali, but seeing that you are Tunisian, you are in an even more disadvantaged position.’ Third, and most importantly, unlike in manufacturing industry, workers’ solidarity in the European building industry has been traditionally fragile and often lacking in collective action. This is due to the polarization and fragmentation of the industry (Austrin 1980; Moore 1981), the temporary nature of its sites, and the ‘inability to establish any real degree of control over the labour process’ (Moore 1980: 155). Trade unions are unable to establish general terms and conditions throughout the trade and ‘the use of different contract forms can fluctuate according to the problems posed for capital and labour in particular regional labour markets’ (Austrin 1980: 302). Building workers have thus developed a protectionist and self-interested attitude not only against migrants, but even among themselves, which has fragmented the labour force (Castles and Kosack 1973: 477). The other part of the story is the ethnic diversity and political vulnerability that disadvantages Tunisians more than southern arrivals. Fear of socio-economic competition and cultural superiority which had characterized the relationship between southerners and northerners, especially during the so-called ‘economic miracle’ of the 1960s, is currently creating tensions and conflict among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable labour force, particularly southerners and migrant workers. Even where there are good relations, they are damaged by the need of the former to dominate the latter. Besides, because of the rise of racism in Modena, many migrants avoid contact because many places are becoming ‘no-go’ zones for them. Karim attributed this rise in racism among Italian workers to a tiny minority’s involvement in petty crime, and some drug trafficking. It should be pointed out that these vulnerable workers are victims of the Mafia and gangsters who control the drugs market.


The power relation between Italians and migrant workers is imposed not only because the latter occupy the lowest rank, but because the immigration policy has merely considered them as ‘guest workers’. The fact that migrant workers have no political power and are not Italian citizens puts them into a further weaker position than, for example, the Meridionali. Italian workers, particularly southerners, no longer feel that they are in a subordinate position to northerners and are no longer considered at the bottom of the labour force. These feelings of advancement and improved status generally produce some form of prejudice and a sense of domination and power, which Balibar has described as ‘class racism’. This is a process whereby indigenous workers ‘project on to foreigners their fears and resentment, despair and defiance, it is not only that they are fighting competition; in addition, and much more profoundly, they are trying to escape their own exploitation’ (Balibar 1995: 214). For instance, Brahim, a Tunisian builder at Edil 95, believes he is at a disadvantage: I have a very difficult relationship with a newly recruited southern builder. I work harder than he does, but he always tries to take credit for my work. He reports to Silvio [the boss] with his mobile phone or when they meet in the afternoon, he tells him that he did this and that … and the truth is that he did not do anything. Similarly, Khames reports: Most Italian workers, even when we talk to each other, still talk with a sense of superiority over us. They think that we are poveretti. They view us as inferior, not as equal. For instance, when the company recruits a new Italian worker, he receives better treatment and respect from the other Italian workers than I do, even though I have known them for seven years. However, a number of those interviewed do have a good working relationship with Italian colleagues (60 per cent of 150 responses). For instance, Moktar, who was recently employed by Impermeabilizzazioni Pacchioni, states: ‘I have just started working with Signore Pacchioni. My relationship with Italian colleagues is now very good. There is not any difference between Tunisians and Italians.’ Houcine and Mohammed of Edil Baraldi say: ‘We are treated as equals. There is a lot of respect between us.’ The two brothers Ahmed and Samir, crane operators at Costruzioni Generali Due, state: ‘We do not have problems

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with the Italian workers in our present company. As crane workers, our contact with them is very limited.’ The beneficiaries of any division are the employers, who not only feed the tensions but encourage the creation of what Marxists call ‘false consciousness’, whereby a working class is led to fight not against the bosses, but against the most vulnerable and disadvantaged strata of the working class. A similar situation was seen in London’s East End at the end of the nineteenth century between the indigenous population and the immigrant Jewish and Irish communities. The six employers identified different types of relationship, claiming that the relationship between the Modenesi and Tunisians was based on respect and friendship, as opposed to the conflictual relations between the locals and the southerners. Silvio Morselli showed the southerners in a poor light: Our southerners take more liberties than Tunisians. This is synonymous with intelligence. Unfortunately many of our southerners have no culture. Therefore they replace this lack of culture sometimes with arrogance and ignorance. Because in my opinion the Meridionali are far less educated than Tunisians. Claudio Baraldi expressed almost an identical view, as did Giovanni Neri, stating that the southerners have none the less more advantages than Tunisians and invariably took advantage of the North Africans’ vulnerability. Again, evidence showed this not to be entirely true and that the owner’s brother had quarrelled with all his migrant workers. It appears that both migrant and Italian workmates are unaware that they are being set against each other. Employers have succeeded in dividing the working classes into three categories: at the top end there are northerners, in the middle southerners and at the bottom the new powerless and vulnerable class grouping, namely migrant workers of all categories: legal, illegal and clandestine. The lack of class solidarity between these three working-class strata in the construction industry may be used as a divisive tool against each other. It appears from the interviews with Tunisian migrants that the trade unions were complacent in this division and disorganization of the working class in the building industry.

Conclusion The hard working conditions and the shortage of labour have determined the high demand for migrant workers in the construction


industry. However, these workers have been used as a marginal and flexible source of unprotected legal and illegal labour. They were used as a tool to increase the elasticity of the labour market, as well as to keep wages very low and curtail trade union power. The chapter has also highlighted that the construction industry is one where flexibility has meant exploitation of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable strata of the working class, whether southerners in the early 1960s and 1970s, or the new marginalized migrant workers of today. The diffusion of the ‘informal economy’ and illegal employment practice in Italy, as well as ‘the rise of flexible forms of production, has created all sorts of niches for which “marginal” forms of inexpensive and flexible labour (women, children, part-time workers, and foreign immigrants) are apparently ideally suited’ (Iosifides and King 1996). Indeed, migrant labour has constituted a new marginalized workingclass segment needed to refuel the reservoir of the informal economy with low-paid, unprotected and highly flexible labour. Moreover, the fragmentation of the internal labour market in the industry under discussion has produced a divisive impact on workingclass solidarity and unity: ‘Workers’ solidarity becomes a weapon against immigrants, and loses its effectiveness in the struggle against the employers’ (Castles and Kosack 1973: 119). The old capitalist ‘divideand-rule’ principle has been used in the building industry as a means to perpetuate exclusion, exploitation and discrimination against migrants in general and Tunisians in particular. In fact, Italian workers feel that migrants have threatened their well-consolidated working conditions and have endangered their interests. The case of Tunisian workers in the construction industry in Modena clearly illustrates how cultural racism and economic exploitation came together to construct a new workingclass segment constituted of migrants, particularly from North Africa. The employers use many tactics to undermine migrant professional capability and to reserve qualified, specialized and supervisory occupations for Italians. The former’s acceptance depends largely upon their acquiescence in performing menial and unwanted tasks. This strategy will be hard to sustain in view of the dynamics of the labour market in building and the growing number of local workers who refuse to accept hard working conditions, low remuneration and high job instability. Nevertheless, employers will try to buck trends. The image of immigrants as a threat to jobs among Italian workers is part of a wider economic, political and social conception of the immigration phenomenon in Italy. Migrant workers are still marginalized, not only in the labour market but also in terms of political and civil rights.

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Notes 1. The Cassa Edile is a building fund, contributions to which come from both the employers and the employees. Employers have to pay 23 per cent of wages to this fund. Employees benefit from this fund in various ways: protection against delayed wage payment, illness, specialist examinations and treatments, unemployment, accidents, integrated pension, holidays, etc. Registration in this fund is statutory for all employers who must declare and register all their employees. 2. Dormitories and emergency centres (i.e. barracks, caravans, containers and tents) have constituted the only public housing offered for immigrants. High rent and racism in the private housing market, and shortages of public housing, have forced immigrant workers to stay in these dormitories. Moreover, only the lucky ones who fulfil the rigid requirements of the Council Office for foreigners and surmount the long waiting list, end up in one of the 27 dormitories in Modena Province. To apply for a place in these centres, migrant workers need to have a residence permit and regular employment. However, the waiting list is very long and migrants may wait for up to two years before they finally obtain a place. Three to four immigrants have to share 15 m2 crowded rooms, paying between 150,000 and 200,000 lire each per month. Almost two out of three Tunisians surveyed are still living in a precarious, overcrowded situation or are homeless. Married and engaged migrants are penalized twice. They cannot apply for family reunification because dormitories and hostels are not recognized by the Questura as a family residence. 3. An extracomunitario means literally non-European but it is only used by Italians to denote migrant workers from non-European developing countries. For example, migrants from the United States, Switzerland or Japan are not considered as extracomunitari. It is also often used in a pejorative way (i.e. ignorant, uncivilized and criminals). 4. All quotations used from Italian and Arabic interviews have been translated by the author. 5. Lista di mobilità is a special register held at the job centre for workers who were employed in medium and large industrial companies and lost their jobs. Once registered, these unemployed workers must be available for future employment if they want to keep their unemployment benefit. 6. The employers agreed that I should use their real names. I avoided using the names of Tunisian workers in order to preserve their anonymity.

10 ‘Not Just Lucky White Heather and Clothes Pegs’: Putting European Gypsy and Traveller Economic Niches in Context1 Colin Clark

Introduction: Gypsies, Travellers and the significance of commercial nomadism2 Nomads and the state nearly always represent a conflict of interests, a conflict of government. But the prospect of ever greater numbers of nomads is evidently especially problematic in a small, densely populated post-industrial nation where land is at a premium and where, despite massive transformations in wage-labour and life-styles over two decades, the majority of people remain committed to the concepts of private property and inheritable wealth. Commercial nomadism is a historically recurrent form of economic and social adaptation (Griffin 1993: 12). This chapter examines the changing nature of what has been termed ‘traditional’ (and ‘unknown’) Gypsy livelihoods in Europe. It argues that gaujo (non-Gypsy) views of what constitute ‘Gypsy work’ identify only a fraction of the economic opportunities and work niches that Gypsies pursue and inhabit. Contemporary gaujo notions of how Gypsies make a living – such as hawking and fortune-telling – are only the more public and ‘visible’3 dimensions to the Gypsies’ economic world and take little account of their flexibility and adaptability to changes in the wider economy during the ‘booms and slumps’ of, for example, the 1970s and 1980s. The economic opportunities of the 1990s have seen many Gypsy families succeed in a variety of ways, some of which will be discussed in this chapter. The main theme is that many Gypsies and Travellers have adapted well in commercial capitalist economies such as Britain. One of the main strategies for this success lies in their ‘labour market’ flexibility 183

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and ability to manipulate and manoeuvre their ethnic identity(ies) in and out of gaujo sight. In order to maximize their chances of economic prosperity a series of ‘ethnic images’ is often deployed, each one being adopted in particular environments and circumstances. Key aspects of Gypsy and Traveller culture and tradition also facilitate this; for example, the rejection of wage-labour and the subtle values and codes governing dealings with gaujos. Thus, by mobilizing a series of ‘images’ in relations with gaujo customers the upper hand is always with the Gypsy. In this context, there is a clear connection between culture/ethnicity and class/economy: by manipulating ideas and images of ethnicity, Gypsies maintain their work niche and flexibility, and can prosper. This is not always apparent to non-Gypsy commentators. The ‘logic’ of progress, development and modernity has often, wrongly, been equated with the assumed long-term redundancy (on a global scale) of Gypsy economic life and the tendency for the nomadic to settle (McVeigh 1997). In reality, the continuing ability of Gypsies to adapt to changes in the wider economy has led to the partial sidelining of socalled ‘traditional’ occupations in favour of newly emerging opportunities which lend themselves to the economic niche that Gypsies so successfully inhabit: the arena of mobile multi-/flexi-skilled familybased self-employment (Okely 1975a; Lockwood 1986). It is this very diversity and flexibility of working arrangements which ensure that they have not, historically, become part of the urban working class (Cozannet 1976; Gmelch 1977: 35). The anti-development assumptions regarding Gypsies manifest themselves in a variety of forms across Europe. Goulet and Walshok (1971), for example, infamously classified Spanish Gitanos as ‘underdeveloped marginals’, whilst Vesey-Fitzgerald (1973: 245) rather prematurely predicted that the ‘long long history of the Gypsies of Britain’ was coming to an end. Nearly three decades on, that history is still being made and recorded despite what Fraser historically refers to as: a diaspora of a people with no priestly caste, no recognised standard for their language, no texts [of] beliefs and a code of morality, no appointed custodians of ethnic tradition … no promised land as a focus for their dreams. (1992: 44) So how then have the Gypsies not only survived but actually prospered in (post-)industrialized Europe and achieved such a striking dominance in commercial-nomadic niches? I answer these questions by examining what are the underlying principles behind ‘work’ for Gypsies, identifying

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just how important self-employment is to Gypsy families and how work is tied into wider questions of ethnic identity. I outline a model of ‘ethnic images’, building on Okely’s (1979) and Lucassen’s (1993; 1998) framework, which Gypsies use in their dealings with the gaujo customer; and illustrate this model with some examples from different parts of Europe. First, however, we need to clarify the relationship between Gypsy and Traveller ethnicity, ethnic identity and economy.

Ethnicity, ethnic identity and economy: a myriad of muddled relationships The romantic stereotype of the Gypsy as an exotic and noble primitive, wandering unconstrained as the mood takes him [sic], tells us very little about the way Roma [Gypsies] have managed to exist. (Guy 1975: 203) Guy is quite right. Moreover, such a stereotype tells us a lot about those who perpetuate it and those who believe in it. It will become clear that Gypsies are very aware of the notions that potential gaujo customers have about them. Indeed, they rely on these notions and assumptions in order to generate a sale or a service. But first, we need to examine the way in which ethnic identity for Gypsies and Travellers is affirmed and reproduced through self-employment.

Ethnic identity and self-employment: a question of boundaries As an ideal, Gypsies and other Travellers operate largely independently of wage-labour; their niche being occupations that gaujos have been less able or willing to take on. For example, Lucassen (1998: 156) uses four categories to discuss ‘Gypsy occupations’: trading, crafts, entertainment and seasonal wage-labour. In Britain, many Gypsies call themselves ‘general dealers’, which in practice can cover all four of Lucassen’s somewhat rigid categories. The advantages of family-based self-employment and mobility have allowed Gypsies to fill unexpected gaps in the market, where that market is uneven and the establishment of a large-scale or permanent business is simply not good economic sense. Okely (1975a: 114) has summed up this ‘character’ of Gypsy occupations as ‘the occasional supply of goods, services and labour to a host economy where demand is irregular in time and place’.

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A list of all occupations that Gypsies engage in is rather less important than considering the aspects that are common to all. However, here are some: hawking of manufactured gaujo and Gypsy made goods; antiques, carpets, cars, horse dealing; seasonal goods (e.g., at Easter, Christmas); the clearance of goods and waste, such as most consumer durables as well as rags and old clothes, etc.; external building work and repairs, such as tarmac laying and gardening work (Acton and Gallant 1997: 23); temporary and/or seasonal farm work, such as fruit and flower picking, potatoes, etc.; market trading at car boot sales and outdoor markets (a ‘boom’ area according to McCarthy and McCarthy 1998: 51); entertainments, music, performance and fortune telling (what Lucassen [1998: 168–9] calls ‘emotional services’). Such diverse, but connected, occupations illustrate Gypsy adaptability to changes in the host societies’ economic fortunes. For example, the move from horse-drawn wagons to motorized transportation in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the most significant shifts of the twentieth century for Gypsy economic life; the work radius increased significantly as a result. It does not end here, though. Arguably, the latest technological innovation which has fuelled the Gypsy economy has been wider access to affordable mobile telephones. Indeed, the Cardiff Gypsy Sites Group estimates that approximately 50 per cent of Traveller families in England and Wales now have access to a mobile telephone for business purposes (Wheeler 1998: 171). Recent anecdotal evidence from Save the Children fieldworkers who work with Travellers in Scotland tends to suggest that this figure is perhaps on the low side.4 Likewise, the now defunct Telephone Legal Advice Service for Travellers (TLAST), based at Cardiff Law School, was purposely established as a telephonebased ‘access to justice’ service due to the recognition by both TLAST and the funders of the project (the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Nuffield Foundation and Cardiff Law School) that this type of service was the most convenient and suitable for Gypsies and Travellers. Both the car/van and mobile telephone have enhanced their nomadism and economic opportunities as they can travel greater distances than previously and can accept or reject jobs over the telephone whilst on the road. It must be remembered though that their nomadism has been restricted in other ways, especially by legislation, most recently the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (Clements and Campbell 1997; Bucke and James 1998). Likewise, stopping places free from gaujo harassment have become few and far between. This is not due to land shortage but rather to much tighter controls on land use, especially regarding caravans (Morris 2000).


Another shift has seen many Gypsy families move from rural to urban settings. The decline of farm work and other such rural industries has led to much diversification and Gypsies are now primarily located in, or on the fringes of, urban industrialized centres (Gropper 1975; Sibley 1990). This has always been true to some extent, but the urban location is now much more dominant and pronounced. It is in the southern locations that the bulk of Gypsy (especially English Romanichal) populations are to be found, though as Gmelch and Gmelch (1987: 136) note: ‘Travellers can be found in virtually every British city today.’

Ethnicity at work To progress we need to examine the relationship between ethnicity and work. Dealings with gaujos are done according to the Gypsies’ terms, wherever possible. Wage-labour is the exact opposite for Gypsies; it is seen as submitting and working to gaujo orders and instructions with restrictions placed on location, times and types of work undertaken. Accepting welfare, as is the case with many gaujos, has become a fact of European Gypsy life in the 1980s and 1990s and is largely equated with begging and thus not so degrading (Tillhagen 1967; Okely 1975a). However, wage-labour is still beyond the pale for most Gypsies and gaujos’ inherent stupidity and servitude are displayed for all to see by accepting wage-labour and the restrictions this brings with it; it is seen as the ‘tie that binds’. However, when entered into by the Gypsy it is invariably temporary and ethnicity, in a sense, could be said to be ‘suspended’. This will be given some attention later in the chapter. This fundamental rejection of wage-labour demands in its place two things (Okely 1979): diversification in occupations and less specific wide-ranging skills.

Diversity in occupations You should have five or six occupations these days. That way, if one don’t work out, you can change to another, and keep on changing until you find something that will work. You’re bound to hit on a way of making money sooner or later. (Canadian Roma, quoted in Salo 1981: 77) The quotation above illustrates the importance of diversity and flexibility in occupations for Gypsies. However, this diversity goes unrecognized by

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the gaujo. Industrialization has exoticized the so-called ‘traditional’ Gypsy occupations. In this way, ‘real’ Gypsy crafts/skills are exaggerated and romanticized by both seller and buyer to meet each other’s expectations, whilst those who break up old cars and cookers at the roadside are dismissed as ‘bogus tinkers’ and not ‘genuine’ or ‘true-blooded’ Romanies. It is simple for Gypsies to see that by having a spread of occupations wealth will follow, whilst poverty results from over-specialization in only one or two work areas. Occupations in terms of time and place should be easily transferable. For Gypsies, fixed locations and restrictions are not welcomed or desired. Indeed, Gypsies would find current academic debates about work and insecurity amusing; the gaujos are only ‘insecure’ about their work situation because they are so unprepared and overspecialized to deal with changes in the wider labour market and thus accommodate the new ‘flexible’ labour markets that Gypsies have always adapted to and relished (Vail, Wheelock and Hill 1999).

Multi-skilled abilities A series of easily picked-up and dropped wide-ranging skills are necessary to pursue a (viable) commercially nomadic way of life. Amongst older adults, for example, illiteracy has been compensated for with such alternative skills. Younger Gypsies are, in many ways, even more fortunate as they will be in a position to incorporate both these family-taught ‘alternative skills’ and some degree of gaujo education (Clark 1997a; Okely 1997a). These alternative skills include the following: knowing the local economy and gaujo client base; manual dexterity, mechanical ingenuity and embracing new technology and industry; possessing a highly developed and trained memory; clever salesmanship and bargaining skills; showing opportunism in choice of occupation (knowing what jobs to accept and reject and how high to price the job, etc.); and, most importantly, flexibility in role-playing (i.e. being able to wear different ‘hats’ and being fluid and constructive about one’s ‘ethnic image’ and identity). Temporary wage-labour is sometimes seen as a necessary evil at particular times of the year. The (partial) acceptance of wage-labour by some Gypsies and Travellers gives us an insight into the complicated class structure and gendered relations of production between and within different Gypsy groups (see Salo and Salo 1982; Piasere 1987). The hierarchy within Gypsy communities along class lines can be quite pronounced. For example, richer (male) Gypsies consider farm work as ‘feminine’ work and are loath to take it on (Okely 1983).


Wage-labour relationships amongst Gypsies are likewise avoided; they work with but not for other Gypsies (Salo 1981). Work partnerships can be formed for big jobs occasionally and the income is then equally divided (Mulcahy 1988). Gypsies will employ tramps or ‘dosser’ gaujos though and exploit them efficiently. As Sibley (1981: 56) puts it: ‘To the Traveller, the settled community appears passive and exploitable.’ They are given arduous work, paid poorly by way of return and are always kept at a distance from Gypsy society; this is the basis for order and control over the host gaujo society. It is evident that Gypsy work expresses and clarifies their isolation and separateness from the gaujo: it is a social and political boundary clarified via economics. However, given the gaujo persecution of them as nomadic caravan dwellers the Gypsies feel entitled to earn a living from gaujos in a way that suits them (Yoors 1967; Kornblum and Lichter 1972). At one and the same time the Gypsy is both dependent on the host settled community, yet manages to turn this fact into a profitable advantage. This is quite some achievement. We can see then that the ‘ethnic image’ presented to the gaujo is variable and adjusted to the needs of the situation and context. It is a fine example of what could also be termed ‘impression management’ (Silverman 1982). For example, Piasere (1987) conducted fieldwork amongst the Xoraxané Roma in Italy and examined their adaptive responses to changing socio-economic environments (moving from the Kosovo I Metohija region of the former Yugoslavia to Verona). He noted that these responses included fundamental changes in their own economic organization which, in turn, led to ‘spectacular’ shifts in their social organization and family/extended family structures. However, no matter the specific group or location, in general terms it is a common feature that in economic relationships, Gypsy/Gypsy work is ruled by notions of equality and within an unwritten, but ‘known’, framework of rules. No such framework exists for Gypsy/gaujo exchanges (except for wariness on the part of the Gypsy). Though superiority over the gaujo is one of the fundamental tenets of Gypsy life, this does not always lend itself to be operationalized in every encounter.

Unpacking the ‘ethnic images’: (anti-)wage-labour, self-employment and Gypsy economic niches We now move on to examine the range of ‘ethnic images’ available to commercially nomadic Gypsies and Travellers in different parts of Europe.

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1 Reproducing ethnicity: exchanges at the horse fair This relates to what could be thought of as ‘internal’ Gypsy identity and (‘self’) ethnic image. That is, the image which is ‘real’ and is to be kept within the family and community, shielded from gaujo society. One example of this cultural reproduction rests on bartering between kin and between groups distant to each other (but still classified as internal economic exchange). The horse fair is a case in point; representing the interplay of economic and cultural factors in ethnic exchanges. At the horse fair, the principle of exchange rests on the ritual of ‘chopping’ or ‘clapping’ hands to secure the deal. Prestige is involved as well as rituals: from my own recent fieldwork at Appleby in Cumbria, it was evident that horse trading is to do with affirming or reproducing identity as much as making a good ‘chop’. There is a common code involved in the ‘chop’ and both parties know the rules that govern their actions; though a small crowd is usually present to witness the event as well. In some cases, where the ‘chop’ might run into a few hundred or thousand pounds, a ‘middleman’ is usually present to oversee the deal and to encourage each of the parties to make a deal (Acton and Gallant 1997: 26). This person is usually given a small cut of the final price to ‘buy a drink’. The chop is, without exception, exclusively male. Likewise in Hungary, the anthropologist Michael Stewart (1990; 1992) has observed that Gypsies acquire horses to sell them on for a profit; not for breeding or working the land as the native Magyars do. Gypsies in Hungary are traders between the users of the horses. They are, in their own words, ‘forroske save’ (‘boys of the market’) (1992: 97). Stewart’s fascinating in-depth account of a chain of events at a horse fair in one Hungarian town demonstrates that neoclassical ways of examining market behaviour are not appropriate to this event: the market day is divided in two, the buying and selling to the customers and then the swapping of horses between themselves. Gypsy/Gypsy deals are regulated by ‘swaps’ (or the ‘chop’) and shouting matches. Part-exchanges are the norm. The similarity between Stewart’s analysis and Okely’s analysis is striking: both note the special position and status accorded to the horse in Gypsy culture and state that individual and family prestige and position, not just monetary wealth, are dispensed on the basis of the horses that one buys and sells. When dealing with gaujo customers the horse is just a commodity to be sold for profit, but for a Gypsy/Gypsy deal the horse takes on a much more powerful and symbolic role. It is a metaphor for success, honour, rank and (male) pride (Erdös 1959).


Of course, Gypsy women are not involved in this type of economic activity. This may be because Gypsy social structure is more concerned with female pollution taboos and codes of conduct rather than internal economic exchange as a means of reproducing and enhancing ethnic identity for females (Miller 1994). ‘She’ is self-employed and acquires food for the family (Vukanovic 1961; Okely 1975b). In some contexts, (paid) working is not demanded by Gypsy men (according to Gypsy women). None the less, there is no word in Romani for ‘retirement’ and it is an unknown concept within most Gypsy families; everyone is ‘productive’ from early childhood until either mental or physical incapacity. There is always work to be done. 2

Enhancing ethnicity (the ‘Gypsification’ of identity)

‘Enhancing ethnicity’ involves the external ‘Gypsification’ of identity; that is ensuring that one looks the part of the assumed ‘true Gypsy’. In these economic situations, it is in the best interests of the Gypsy to proclaim one’s ‘genuine’ identity in order to meet the expected gaujo (in this instance romantic) stereotypes of what constitutes ‘Gypsy work’. Such ‘traditional’ occupations have principally revolved around entertainment and performance, accompanied with the selling of ‘Gypsy trinkets’ and suitably ‘rural’ handiwork. In Britain, it is the ‘lucky white heather and clothes pegs’ of the title of this chapter that often spring to the gaujo mind. The mistaken gaujo belief that Gypsies originate from Egypt has been manipulated to the advantage of the Gypsy in many economic settings and exchanges. For example, as fortune-tellers Gypsies have historically drawn upon gaujo notions of the ‘mystical East’ in order to play the part expected of them. Contemporary ‘Gypsy’ fortune-tellers merely need to dress for the part and act according to gaujo stereotypes. Indeed, it is less the ‘supernatural’ abilities that the Gypsy fortuneteller does or does not possess that are important, more the ability to dress for and play the part well and make a series of observed and welleducated guesses as to what is happening in the gaujo client’s life. This reading of the gaujo’s life is a skill learnt from childhood. A number of classifications and sub-classifications occur in order to correlate age, occupation, class and gender with the client’s displayed tensions, anxieties and preoccupations. In this way the ‘picture’ is built up in order to convince the gaujo that the price to be paid to the fortune-teller is but a small one in order to ‘know’ the future. Many studies have examined the role of fortune-telling and its relative economic importance and unimportance to Gypsy families (Gropper

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1967; 1975; Salo 1981; Williams 1982). These studies also reveal that whereas Gypsy to gaujo readings are largely seen as ‘educated guesswork’, the readings that occur between Gypsy and Gypsy are seen, by some, as being significant and having power. Here, the role is given to older women and notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ luck are employed: ‘certain people, places, objects and ideas’ can act as metaphors and symbols of this ‘luck’ (Miller 1997: 6). By contrast, those objects hawked to the unknowing gaujo have no such connotations, being merely ‘cheap rubbish’. As with horse-dealing, a strict sexual division of labour is apparent when considering fortune-telling: Fortune telling is for her, and to feed the kids, in case you don’t make anything. Cars are for you, in case she doesn’t make anything. (Canadian Roma, quoted in Salo 1981: 78) For men, the performance of fortune-telling is not only not lucrative but women better inhabit the occupation as it confirms and meets the ‘Gypsy woman’ stereotypes of the gaujo. However, in some parts of Europe the romanticized occupation of knife-grinding may be combined with a form of fortune-telling (Lucassen 1998: 161). For men, the role of musician can be much more rewarding and the ‘image’ of expert violin or guitar player can be a source of a good income from gaujo audiences (Silverman 1982). For example, from conducting extensive fieldwork in the rural Eastern part of Slovakia, Hübschmannová asserts that: Playing music at the weddings (bijav) and baptism (bona) of gadze [non-Gypsies], at village fairs and village entertainments, was an exclusive monopoly of Roma lavutara [musicians] … ‘those Roma who knew how to play would eat; those who did not know would not eat’. (1984: 9–10) Lucassen (1998: 167) goes as far as to suggest that ‘this [musical performance] is probably the profession most associated with Gypsies’. He may not be wrong. 3 Debasing ethnicity: roles to be played to meet gaujo expectations Debasing ethnicity is principally about turning gaujo ‘exotic’ and romantic stereotypes of Gypsies on their head. That is, those ‘ethnic images’ which remind the gaujo that he or she is superior to the ‘savage nomad’ are actively played out; those of ‘scavenger, beggar, pauper,


fool’. A good example of the way in which Gypsies can ‘present’ one such image to the gaujo whilst being sure of their own ethnic image is the case of what is sometimes called ‘scavenging’ or, in another discourse, ‘recycling’. This is but one part of the more ‘visible’ aspect to the economy of Gypsies and Travellers. This contribution to the environment and economy has often been hidden behind antiGypsy/Traveller stereotypes. With some justification many Gypsies and Travellers claim that they were ‘the first Greens’ (Clark and ÓhAodha 2000: 6–7). For example, older Travellers will talk about collecting old beer bottles, washing them out and selling them back to the pubs in the earlier part of the twentieth century. More recently, recycling of metal and tinsmithing has been dominated by Travellers; for example, they have ‘been the vanguard of recycling in Ireland’ (DTEDG 1993: 1). Another pertinent example of ‘playing’ the debased ethnicity role in order to generate an income comes through what Piasere has termed ‘asking’ and ‘gathering’ (begging). In the Italian context Piasere observes that: The Xoraxané have established ambivalent relations with the sedentarist. On the one hand, as foreigners without residence permits and legal occupations they are constantly harassed by police, who try to send them back over the border; on the other, the survival of a type of Catholic conformity, in which the giving of alms is seen as a deed of Christian charity, enables them to occupy the ‘begging niche’… (1987: 114) In other parts of Europe, as well, the shabbily dressed ‘Gypsy woman’ who presents herself, with children, as a destitute wife and abandoned mother makes a good beggar (and also meets the gaujo stereotype of Gypsy men as abusive and irresponsible rogues). A Gypsy man making similar demands on the passing gaujo may well find himself up in court faced with an assault charge.5 It is important to make clear here that for many Gypsy groups begging in itself is not ‘debased’, but the image required to make the operation credible and economically successful has to be. In a similar way, the ‘image’ of the ‘illiterate Gypsy’ serves a purpose. It not only allows the Gypsy to plead ignorance when confronted by bureaucratic paperwork (such as eviction or court notices), but also serves to remind the gaujo official that his or her way of life is the civilized and proper way (when the Gypsies, having pleaded ignorance,

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then insist that they will ‘settle down’ and ensure their children learn to read and write ‘proper’). Here the debased image has to be shortlived and the returns carefully calculated, for gaujo scorn can only be taken for so long before the ‘inner’ Gypsy mode of expression (respectability) is once again reverted to. 4

Suspending ethnicity: seasonal wage-labour In general, any employment that requires close contact with nonGypsies or puts a person under the direction and authority of a nonGypsy is avoided. This kind of employment is considered marime (polluted) because it requires some kind of commitment to American society and contradicts important values of Rom society. (Sutherland 1975a: 72)

Suspending ethnicity is temporarily entered into by Gypsies in order to soften the paradox of gaujo-controlled wage-labour. At certain times during the year, and in certain circumstances for some groups of Gypsies, wage-labour has to be undertaken as there is no other available option. This is done with great reluctance and is presented as a temporary ‘stop-gap’ until the norm of self-employment is resumed. The self’s ‘ethnic image’ is ‘frozen’ to avoid the dilemma, restrictions and inherent contradictions of working for a gaujo employer. The submission to the decisions and commands of the gaujo are swallowed like a bitter pill. Usually there is some form of written, or at least verbal, contract between the parties involved; this giving credence to Gypsy claims as to the temporary nature of the unbalanced relationship. This is, in essence, the livelihood of last resort for Gypsies. This suspension occurs in order that the Gypsy’s internal ethnic identity is not compromised by the intrusion of the gaujo. It is closely related to the following ‘ethnic image’, that of hiding ethnicity (or ‘passing’). 5

Hiding ethnicity: ‘passing’ as a means to an end Although their settlement pattern and their economic activities place these [Kalderash in Paris] Gypsies in permanent contact with non-Gypsies, the Rom have developed a strategy which allows their ethnicity not to be perceived during contact. This strategy of ‘invisibility’ favors affirmation of their ethnic distinctiveness. (Williams 1982: 315)

Hiding ethnicity involves, as Williams notes, becoming ‘invisible’ to the gaujo and passing as ‘one of them’. For some Gypsy and Traveller


groups, especially those not conforming to the ‘black hair, brown eyes’ image of the ‘real Romany’, ‘passing’ can be quite easily achieved when compared to other ethnic groups. In some circumstances, for example, when sedentarization occurs or when the ethnic group is abandoned, this can become a permanent state of being. However, for many Gypsies who are commercial nomads, this ‘passing’ is an economic strategy that can be ‘worn’ or ‘removed’ on an almost day-to-day basis. Here there is yet another gender distinction. For women, as we have seen earlier, it literally ‘pays’ to ‘Gypsify’ one’s identity for the sake of the fortune-telling client, whilst for men it is prudent to ‘de-Gypsify’ one’s identity, wearing ‘proper’ clothes which help fulfil their role as respectable small businessmen or traders. So, whilst Gypsies are completely ‘unknown’ to gaujos, all the psychological nuances of the gaujo are known and manipulated by the Gypsy for economic gain. Indeed, on the basis of prolonged contact with gaujo society, Gypsies are only too aware and ready to formulate their considered responses to the gaujo who is involved in any exchange with them. What is essential here, for the Gypsy, is the oral communication and impression to the gaujo customer of trustworthiness and genuineness. This achieved, the gaujo need for written references or estimates for the job in hand may be of only secondary importance. Here again, the widespread use of mobile telephones removes the need for a fixed ‘office’ and place of business. 6 Ethnicity as a ‘non-variable’: the irrelevance of ethnicity for economic exchange Ethnicity as a non-variable means just that: in some exchanges with the gaujo ethnicity is not an issue to be considered and, on the face of it, is not relevant to the business at hand. This is usually the case when the ethnic identity of the Gypsy is ‘known’ to the gaujo trader or customer and therefore ‘exotic’ enhancements to that identity are not required for transactions. Such regular patrons may include gaujos who are horse dealers, owners of scrapyards, builders who subcontract work out, the tarmac manufacturer and the farmer who employs the same extended families every summer. In order to get ‘special deals’, such as extended credit terms or extra weight in tarmac, the Gypsy will aim to individualize the economic relationship (whilst always staying in control). Although bargaining skills are crucial here, both Gypsies and gaujos will be aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses; they are alert to what is ‘a good deal’ for each other and will avoid any transparent exploitation so as not to risk the mutually beneficial relationship.

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This situation is as close, I would argue, as the Gypsy/gaujo relationship comes to being symbiotic. However, the critical ‘ethnic boundary’ between Gypsy and gaujo is not breached in any way; boundaries are still guarded and these types of economic relationships are very much the exception. In this context, what the gaujo primarily perceives as ‘friendship’ the Gypsy perceives as good common business sense.

Conclusion The essential feature of the Gypsy economy is not a particular set of occupations, these have changed over time, but a particular kind of economic relationship with the host society. (Gmelch 1982: 351) This chapter has combined the empirical with the theoretical. Empirically, by drawing on a variety of European sources, it has shown, on one hand, that Gypsies and Travellers have always adapted their occupations to the needs of their settled customers around them. Scrap metal and seasonal agriculture work, which were more ‘visible’ in the 1960s and 1970s, have now been complemented by contract tarmac work, landscape gardening and tree-lopping, fence and gate repairs, antique dealing, music, painting and so on. Traditional hawking, whilst not completely vanished, has been complemented by other trades such as carpet-dealing and selling goods at markets, car boot sales and other local sales. Some seasonal occupations, for example whelk-gathering on the east and west coasts of Scotland or daffodil picking in the south-east of England, still continue. Gypsies and Travellers have responded to industrial and technological innovations; better vehicles and cheap mobile telephones now allow them to commute further afield on a daily or few-day basis. The symbolism of the horse fair and importance of recycling have also been discussed in this chapter. Theoretically, I have attempted to outline how gaujos and Gypsies themselves view ‘Gypsy work’, how and when these views converge or diverge and how work is crucially linked to wider questions of ethnicity and ethnic identity. I have argued that ethnicity is not to be confused with ethnic identity. In this context the latter rests on group self-ascription whilst the former is more to do with a sense of ‘difference’ and the ‘ethnic images’ presented to the gaujo, which can take on a number of manipulated forms. The ways in which Gypsy ethnicity (and ‘images’) are manoeuvred in and out of gaujo sight help ensure Gypsy adaptability and success in commercial capitalist economies.


Gypsies are, of course, alert to gaujo expectations of Gypsy ethnicity and normality; these must be supplied and fulfilled whilst maintaining their own views on their ethnicity and way of doing things. This calls for great skill and self-awareness. Many Gypsy occupations have been neglected by the gaujo because they choose to define Gypsies in exotic or demonized terms; truly they are either ‘saints’ (enhanced ethnicity) or ‘sinners’ (debased ethnicity). However, it is clear that these are but two of many options available to Gypsies in how they construct themselves and arrange and organize their working practices and identities in any given host society. Development and education policies promoted by multicultural states have created new opportunities for Gypsy economic activity; such as the Gypsy children in Sutherland’s American study who creatively failed IQ tests to receive state grants for their families (Sutherland 1975 a and b). Gypsies have prospered both under paternalist efforts to absorb them and on the host societies’ need for the exotic. It is no surprise that where different Gypsy ‘ethnic images’ are presented, the gaujo is unaware and confused in his/her views on what constitutes a ‘true Gypsy’ way of life. Crucially, it is this fundamental gaujo misunderstanding that lends itself so well to Gypsy profit and survival in a contemporary European political economy of nomadism.

Notes 1. I would like to thank the editors of this volume, Steve Fenton and Harriet Bradley, for including a chapter that considers the economy and culture of Gypsies and Travellers. So often they are forgotten and rendered invisible when talking about ‘race’ and ethnicity (see note 3). I also thank them for their useful guidance, sharp editing skills and general help in preparing this chapter for publication. Thanks also – as ever – to Judith, Margaret and Mum. 2. Note on terminology: readers will no doubt be aware that the terms ‘Gypsy’, ‘Traveller’ and ‘Roma/Rom’ are not ‘neutral’ terms. They are very problematic to define but, for the purposes of this chapter, I will outline below the commonly cited definitions that were employed by the Minority Rights Group in their influential Report entitled Roma / Gypsies: A European Minority (Liégeois and Gheorghe 1995). Gypsy: Term used to denote ethnic groups formed by the dispersal of commercial, nomadic and other groups from within India from the tenth century, and their mixing with European and other groups during their diaspora. Traveller: A member of any of the (predominantly) indigenous European ethnic groups (Woonwagenbewoners, Minceiri, Jenisch, Quinquis, Resende,

198 Colin Clark etc.) whose culture is characterized, inter alia, by self-employment, occupational fluidity and nomadism. These groups have been influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, by ethnic groups of (predominantly) Indian origin with a similar cultural base. Roma/Rom: A broad term used in various ways, to signify: (a) Those ethnic groups (e.g., Kalderash, Lovari, etc.) who speak the ‘Vlach’, ‘Xoraxane’ or ‘Rom’ varieties of the Romani language. (b) Any person identified by others as ‘Tsigane’ in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey, plus those outside the region of East European extraction. (c) Romani people in general. However, it should be noted that these definitions are contentious and some critical attention must be given to them. In Britain, there are four main groups of Gypsies and Travellers. In their own languages they are the Romanichals (English Gypsies), the Kalé (Welsh Gypsies), the Nawkens (Scottish Travellers) and the Minceir (Irish Travellers). Added to these main groups there are various groups of Romanies who have come to Britain from different parts of Central and Eastern Europe and a group of nomads rather specific to the United Kingdom who have been called New (Age) Travellers. All together they number about 120,000 (Kenrick and Clark 1999: 21). 3. The issue of ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ is an interesting one to consider. The idea applies not only to their economy (known and unknown occupations) but also, for example, to their presence in the academic ethnic and racial studies literature. Let me briefly demonstrate this. The Policy Studies Institute study on Ethnic Minorities in Britain (Modood et al. 1997), for example, is the most comprehensive and detailed examination of the contemporary ethnic minority experience of Britain. However, like its three predecessors, it fails even to mention in the index or footnotes the 120,000 Gypsy and Traveller population of Britain. Such invisibility in an intellectual ‘space’ that should be theirs contrasts with their ‘visibility’ when it comes to accusations of ‘aggressive begging’ on the streets and underground network of London or when a roadside encampment is established on the outskirts of a Home Counties village (see Morris 2000). The other irony here, of course, is that in the economic field if their occupations were more generally known and ‘visible’ to the settled community, Gypsies would not be able to exploit them so effectively. 4. Private correspondence and conversations between the author and Michelle Lloyd of Save the Children Fund, Scotland (17 March 2000). 5. Similarly, many New Travellers I spent time with during fieldwork in the early 1990s suggested to me that going ‘tapping’ (begging) with a dog was a useful mechanism for helping passing shoppers to part with their loose change (Clark 1997b). ‘The English love their animals,’ as one New Traveller in the West Country wryly put it to me.

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Index African American, 18, 22, 29 America/USA, 5, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 35, 37, 84, 98, 99, 101, 102, 108, 114, 122, 123, 133, 135, 138, 141, 182 American dream, 101, 104, 105, 112, 113 Asian-American, 98–102, 104–9, 111–13, 115, 116 asylum seekers, 90, 91 Bangladesh/i, 4, 25, 38, 87, 89, 90, 97, 148 Benelux, 162 Britain/ish, 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 15, 24–8, 31, 34, 37–40, 42–9, 52, 55–7, 59, 60, 62, 66, 72, 82, 83, 87–90, 92, 94–8, 122, 123, 124, 130, 134, 135, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 148, 151, 175, 183–5, 187, 191, 198 Canada, 20, 122, 135, 138 capital, 12, 15, 16, 22, 24–6, 44–9, 53, 56–62, 71, 72, 74, 77, 81, 87, 91, 105, 110, 113, 121, 168, 175, 177, 178 capitalism/ist, 3, 12, 16, 17, 32, 42, 46, 48–51, 72, 81, 84, 115, 177, 281, 183, 196 Caribbean/s, 20, 24, 26, 33, 35, 38, 41, 56, 59, 75 caste, 21, 39, 76, 122, 135, 136, 138, 139, 184 Central/Latin America, 25, 41 China/ese, 4, 20, 21, 28, 38, 101, 105, 107, 109, 116–18 Christian, 21, 52, 83, 109, 110, 137, 193 class, 1–6, 9–12, 14, 15, 19–34, 38, 44, 46–50, 52–4, 56, 57, 61–70, 73–9, 82, 98, 99, 104–6, 111, 112, 114–17, 122, 127–30, 142, 145, 153, 159, 160, 178–81, 184, 188, 191

class analysis, 1, 2, 6, 9, 38, 39, 114 class consciousness, 1, 12 class, the death of, 63 class relations, 9, 12, 26, 38, 42, 48, 66, 98, 142, 178 class structure, 2, 21, 23, 24, 29, 63, 122, 159, 188 classification, 36, 38, 76, 77, 139, 166, 169, 173, 191 colonial/ism, 20, 23–5, 32–6, 41, 45, 46, 48, 51, 56, 59, 61, 62, 98, 161 commonwealth, 45, 46, 47, 59 community/ies, 4, 11, 18, 19, 22, 24–6, 28, 51, 54, 72, 75, 80, 82, 83, 88, 94–7, 122–5, 128, 130, 131, 133–41, 143–6, 148, 149, 151, 155, 156, 158, 159, 162, 166, 167, 180, 188–90, 198 culture, 1, 2, 5, 9–13, 15–20, 23, 30, 35, 39, 50, 51, 70, 75, 77, 81, 83, 95, 97–101, 106, 108–11, 114, 115, 117, 122, 132, 141, 142, 159, 161, 163, 164, 173, 176, 180, 184, 190, 197, 198 culture communities, 11, 18, 19 Cypriot, 75, 144, 145, 147–9, 151, 155–7, 159 diaspora, 75, 124, 139, 141, 184, 197 Durkheim, Emile, 17, 30, 34, 67 emigration, 161, 162 employee, 27, 93, 129, 146–9, 153, 155, 168, 174, 182 employer, 27, 46, 80, 85, 90, 100, 110, 146, 149, 151–3, 155, 156, 160–3, 165–70, 172–7, 180–2, 194 employment, 15, 23–9, 59, 63, 66, 68, 74, 80, 84–7, 89–93, 97, 100, 117, 127, 131, 144–9, 151–3, 155, 156, 158–66, 168, 174, 175, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185, 189, 194, 198

219

220 Index ethnic identity, 6, 18–20, 87, 88, 184, 185, 191, 194–6 ethnicity, 1–7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18–31, 33, 34, 37–42, 54, 64–6, 68–70, 72–9, 82, 97–9, 114, 142, 159, 166, 184, 185, 187, 190–7 European Union, 3, 80, 81, 84, 85, 115 Fanon, Franz, 36 Foucault, Michel, 10, 42, 49, 60–2 Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, 25, 148 France/French, 25, 39, 40, 49, 82, 83, 88, 92, 93, 115, 161, 162 Gastarbeiter, 25, 86 gender, 1–5, 11, 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 48, 53–5, 64–6, 68–70, 72–9, 92, 94, 95, 127, 159, 188, 191, 195 German/y, 22, 25, 39, 83, 86, 88–91, 94, 95, 97, 121, 144, 161, 162, 177 global capital/ism, 16, 84, 121 globalization, 5, 14–6, 22, 27, 29, 55, 81, 84, 87, 96, 115 Guevara, Che, 36 Gujarati, 122, 135, 137–9, 141 Gypsies, 5, 6, 128, 183–98 Hall, Stuart, 33, 41, 48, 54, 55, 77, 97 Hindu, 122, 135–8 Hispanic, 29, 106, 107, 116 identity, 1–3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 18–20, 30, 43, 51–5, 57, 64, 67, 73, 75, 77–84, 87, 88, 94–7, 99, 112, 115, 124, 125, 133–8, 140–2, 159, 164, 184, 185, 188, 190, 191, 194–7 illegal, 24, 85, 90, 91, 146, 165, 166, 169, 174, 175, 180, 181 immigration/grants, 3, 10, 21, 23, 25, 35, 36, 38–40, 43–7, 49, 51, 52, 55–63, 80, 82, 85–92, 95, 96, 101, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 115, 117, 118, 121, 125, 127, 128, 130–2, 135, 137, 158, 161, 162, 166–70, 174, 175, 177–82

India/n, 20–2, 24, 25, 33, 34, 38, 45, 56, 90, 98, 107, 109, 116, 122, 124, 126, 128, 129, 134, 135, 137, 139, 140, 197, 198 individualism, 14, 16–19, 22, 30, 34, 99 inequality/ies, 13, 50, 64–7, 70, 73, 95, 100, 111, 133 informal economy, 24, 90, 91, 181 Ireland/Irish, 162, 180, 193, 198 Islam/ic, 18, 81–3, 92, 94–7, 118, 168 Italy/ian, 5, 25, 88–92, 131, 160–6, 168–70, 172, 173, 175–82, 189, 193 Japan/ese, 21, 101, 107, 109–11, 116, 182 Jew/s/ish, 19, 20, 24, 36, 62, 75, 105, 112, 117, 118, 180 Korean/s, 101, 102, 107, 109–11, 116, 117 Kurd/s/ish, 24, 26, 137, 144, 145, 147–9, 151–9 labour, 3, 4, 12, 16, 19–27, 29, 30, 32, 38, 45–7, 49, 55–63, 65–8, 72, 74, 76, 77, 80, 85–8, 90–6, 121, 123, 129–31, 133, 136, 141, 142, 146, 148, 149, 151, 153, 155–8, 160–9, 172–9, 181, 183–5, 187–9, 182, 194 labour market, 26, 27, 38, 58, 65–8, 72, 76, 77, 80, 88, 90–6, 123, 129–31, 136, 142, 146, 148, 149, 155–8, 160, 162–4, 166, 173, 175, 178, 181, 183, 188 Latino, 18, 105 law, 91, 186 legal, 12, 40, 59, 60, 85, 86, 90, 166, 174, 175, 177, 180, 181, 186, 193 London, 5, 45, 46, 59, 62, 63, 87, 90, 91, 143, 144, 146, 159, 180, 198 Marx, Karl, 9, 12, 30, 34, 42, 43, 60, 63, 71, 72, 74, 98 Marxism/t, 1–3, 9, 11–16, 32, 33, 36, 39, 41–5, 48, 52, 55, 58, 61, 63, 65, 66, 69, 70, 98, 180

Index 221 Middle East/ern, 22, 24, 82, 83, 121 minority/ies, 1, 5, 10, 19–21, 23, 25–30, 33, 35, 40, 42, 65, 67, 68, 76, 78, 81, 86, 89, 90, 92, 95, 98–102, 104–6, 108, 109, 111–14, 116–18, 121, 127, 131, 142, 143, 147, 148, 168, 178, 197, 198 mobility, 124, 130, 140, 185 model minorities, 112, 116 modernize/d/ing, 20, 94, 138, 139 modernist/m, 9–14, 29, 30, 43, 48 modernity, 12, 17, 49–52, 56, 61, 62, 81, 82, 84, 87, 96, 97, 184 Muslim, 5, 21, 39, 80–4, 88–97, 122, 125, 135–8, 140 Muslim voices, 80, 81, 83, 84, 88, 96, 97 nation (nation-state), 1, 23, 40, 50, 51, 54, 56, 83, 95, 113, 115, 133, 183 national, 4, 10, 16, 22, 27, 38, 39, 45, 46, 53, 55, 59–62, 74, 80, 82, 86, 107, 111, 112, 115, 117, 127, 145, 166, 167 nationalism, 3, 47, 53, 54, 72, 83, 89, 90, 92, 115 native American, 99 neo-Marxist, 9, 15, 65, 98 neo-Weberian, 9, 65 Pakistan/i, 25, 38, 56, 82, 89, 90, 94–7, 122, 124, 126, 128, 137, 139, 140, 148 phenotype, 35, 36 plural society thesis, 28, 31, 33–6, 41 political Islam, 81–4, 97 postcolonial, 10, 21, 24, 36, 41, 82, 122 postmodern frame, 43, 44, 48–55, 57, 61, 63 postmodernity/ist/ism, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 29, 42, 48, 50, 63 poverty, 63, 67, 88, 100, 102, 106, 109–11, 117, 159, 188 race, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 21, 27, 31–3, 36–44, 46–9, 52–5, 58, 60, 62–4, 66, 76–8, 97–9, 115, 167

race relations, 9, 37, 42, 97 racism, 1–4, 10, 11, 26, 27, 29, 37, 38, 42–4, 46–50, 53, 54, 57–61, 65, 69, 92, 93, 96, 98, 99, 115, 122, 140, 141, 160, 163, 164, 167, 173, 175, 178, 181, 182 refugee/s, 24, 45, 122, 123, 128, 130, 131, 133, 137 Rex, John, 5, 9, 11, 30–2, 36–8, 40, 42 Roma, 20, 24, 128, 189, 192, 197, 198 self-employed/ment, 87, 91–3, 100, 108, 110, 116, 117, 146–8, 153, 158, 168, 175, 184, 185, 189, 191, 194, 198 sexism, 3, 4, 65 sexuality, 11, 13, 42, 48, 49, 53, 57, 58, 61, 63 Sivanadan, A., 5, 43–9, 53–5, 58, 60 social capital, 24, 25, 81 social differentiation, 9, 11, 15, 17, 29, 30 social mobility, 1, 5, 14, 24–9, 98, 100, 101, 104, 106, 108, 110–14, 116, 117, 125–30, 141, 142, 148 social stratification, 64, 65, 70, 71, 77, 79 South Africa/n, 5, 24, 30–3, 41, 59, 168 state, 5, 13, 16, 24, 27, 44–9, 51, 53, 55, 57–63, 72, 76, 82, 83, 87, 88, 133, 168, 177, 183, 197 Sweden/ish, 24, 40, 121, 122, 124–41 Swiss/Switzerland, 88–91, 93, 162, 177, 182 Travellers, 183–9, 193, 194, 196–8 Tunisia/n, 5, 160–2, 164–82 Turkey/ish, 5, 25, 26, 39, 90, 91, 94, 95, 97, 131, 142–9, 151–9, 162, 198 Turkish Cypriots, 144, 145 Ugandan Asians, 121, 122–4, 130, 131, 135, 141 underclass, 5, 15, 24, 29, 38, 67, 159 unemployment, 27, 29, 59, 63, 85–7, 90–2, 100, 127, 131, 146, 147, 165, 182

222 Index Weber, Max, 9, 11, 12, 15–7, 30, 33, 34, 42–4, 48, 50, 65–8, 70 welfare state, 39, 40, 57, 63, 121, 131, 133, 136 West India/n/ies, 34, 45, 56, 98, 117

workers, 5, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 32, 33, 39, 44–6, 55, 56, 58, 59, 72, 80, 85, 88–91, 96, 97, 99, 108, 117, 129, 143, 144, 160–82, 186 Worsley, Peter, 83, 84

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