Ethnicity in education research on British born ethnic minorities Demetris Hadjigeorgiou City Univer

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Ethnicity in education research on
British born ethnic minoritiesDemetris
HadjigeorgiouCity University

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• Ethnicity as Social Capital useful in
  explaining ethnic minority academic
  performance from bottom-up
• Must be sensitive so as not to
  essentialise ethnicity

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Outline

• Overview of themes in early literature
• Recent encouraging trends
• Ethnicity as Social Capital
• Avoid essentialising ethnicity

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Overview of themes in ethnic minority educational
research

• Family background, including class racial
  disadvantage blackness
• School processes, role of teachers
• Pupil characteristics, language problems
  self-perception

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More positive trends in ethnic minority education

• Increasing recognition of complexity diversity
  in ethnic minority academic performance

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Achievement by ethnic group GCSEs in England 2004

• 5 A-C GCSEs in Britain
• Chinese 1st generation low human financial
  capital
• Indians Pakistanis 10 more likely to achieve
  this when control for class

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First Year Full-Time Part-Time Students, 1997-98
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Ethnicity as Social Capital

• Ethnicity unfashionable in 1970s and into
  1980s
• Work in America on ethnicity as social capital.
  Combination of cultural capital social capital
  (Modood, 2004).
• Can encourage academic performance through
  communal effect and shielding children from
  developing similar attitudes to other pupils from
  disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Characteristics of ethnicity as Social Capital

• Family support
• Embededness in ethnic group
• Intergenerational closure

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Family SupportMean scores of Year 13 pupils
decisions to enter Higher Education

• Chinese parents UK (Francis Archer, 2003)
• Greek-Cypriot parents UK

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Embededness in Social Group

• Geographical concentration
• Many formal and informal networks
• Lack of sense of Britishness

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Intergenerational Closure

• Continued importance of family to many ethnic
  minorities in the UK
• Muslim community (Archer 2003) Chinese
  community (Francis Archer 2004)

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Avoiding essentialism

• Ethnicity as Social Capital can appear to
  essentialise ethnicity
• New ethnicities literature
• Particular problem for minorities such as Asians
  portrayed as static and traditional
• Considerable intra-group variation e.g.
  Pakistanis Bangladeshis

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• Negotiating between family, community and
  external influences e.g. local youth cultures
• Use of different capitals in different situations
• Developing understanding on class status within
  communities

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• Questions?
• D.G.Hadjigeorgiou_at_city.ac.uk