The Increasing Racial and Discriminating Practices - Essay Example

?Similarity between the experiences of minority ethnic groups in the UK labour market Around 90% of UK population consist of whites (British) and theremaining 10% of population constitute to the minority ethnic groups in which the major minority ethnic groups are Black Africans, Black Caribbeans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Chinese. However, very negligible number belongs to Hispanic and other minority ethnic groups. Three decades ago, the British majority was in higher numbers and thus dominated the labour market of UK. This dominance created a major class difference between the whites and minority ethnic groups especially in terms of obtaining employment. Whites always had good percentage of people having better jobs as compared to non-whites. To be more specific, the major professional and managerial based jobs were mainly held by the whites. Non-whites found to have been struggling in the labour markets of UK and thus majority of non-whites either remained unemployed or self-employed. However, in the last decade, the dynamics of UK labour market has experienced significant improvements. These improvements have emerged as a result of increasing employment rates of minority ethnic groups especially Black Africans, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis over a period of around 30 years (Cohen and Kennedy, 2007, p.16). The major reason behind this is the improvement in educational credentials and professional skills of these minority ethnic groups. Despite having such improvements, still the majority of jobs, attainments and occupational trainings are mainly provided to white British population and the other minority ethnic groups are found to have been obtaining jobs quite narrowly especially at managerial and professional level. With the increasing racial and discriminating practices prevailing in UK labour market, the gap between the whites and non-whites in labour market still exists effectively. Undoubtedly, tremendous amount of growth can be experienced in terms of non-white men getting closer to their white counterparts in getting jobs. However, this situation is quite disappointing in case of non-white women getting employed as compared to white women. For Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, the scenario of getting employment among women is worse than expected such that their employment rate is even blow 30%. Even though there are more bright prospects available for the minority ethnic groups in terms of achieving better jobs than before due to their higher educational professional background, yet their living conditions are unable to portray these bright prospects. As a result, the minority ethnic groups preferred to get self employed rather than going after the managerial positions as the future prospects for the whites are readily available for them as compared to minority ethnic groups, most of them are Chinese and Indians. The other minority group comprising Pakistanis and Bangladeshis remained stick to their original preference of self employment such that they are mainly working under specific sectors which include small retail business, fast food restaurants and taxi driving occupations. The way these minority ethnic groups are viewed and perceived among UK social classes, is the major reason behind such discrimination that occurs with the minority ethnic groups in the labour market. Having non-British origin has created immense difficulties for those minority ethnic groups, due to which they are unable to reach at the higher executive level positions even though they are well equipped in terms of their educational background (Macionos and Plummer, 2008, p.22). Ethnicity itself has become a greater hurdle for the graduates belonging to minority ethnic groups to avail employment opportunities and getting higher positions in their jobs. Their efforts are declined even though they have tried to mitigate the impact of their ethnic background by acquire high quality education and training. Similarly, in terms of receiving salaries and earnings, minority ethnic groups are far behind from their white counterparts such they receive a substantially less income than that received by the whites; however, this difference is mostly present among the men as the women belonging to minority ethnic groups receive closer compensation as compared to white women. Minority ethnic groups continued to suffer with this discrimination in terms of receiving less amount of pay as compared to the whites mainly due to their contribution in the labour market of UK. Doing overwork and receiving less pay has become a common characteristic of the minority ethnic groups of UK despite having similar educational achievements (Abbott, 2005, p.3.) Some of the important facts that can be noticed regarding the working age of the labour force of UK include that percentage of labour force that are of working age of Bangladeshis, Black Africans and Pakistanis are 20%, 40% and 30% respectively which are less than the British labour force of working age whose percentage is more than 50% (Ridge and Wright, 2008, p.2). Not only this, a higher trend of Bangladeshi and Pakistani women going to university can also be observed, yet the likelihood of these women reaching at the higher posts and executive level positions is very low as compared to Indian and white women. The discrimination faced by minority ethnic groups in labour market of UK is not limited to the immigrants of those minority ethnic groups who migrated from their respective countries and started living in UK, but also their next generation who born in UK but having the same minority ethnic background. Among all those who are born in UK whether they are Whites, Blacks, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians and Chinese, the one who is preferred over all these ethnic background is the white man. The predominance of whites in the labour market of UK does not allow other minority ethnic groups to flourish in the labour market and thus provides more opportunities to the whites despite having lesser educational achievements as compared to their non-white counterparts. Consequently, due to such presence of inequality in labour market of UK, the poverty level of the minority ethnic groups is in fact worse than expected. So far as the employment rates are concerned, Indians and Chinese communities have improved a lot and they are much closer to the Whites as in 2001 such that the situation was quite adverse in 1991. On the other hand, the employment rate for Black Caribbean remained substantially lower due to their low educational credentials. So far as the employment rate with respect to women is concerned in UK, the rate has been improved significantly such that Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian and Black African women showed better employment statistics as compared to white women. However, Chinese and Black Caribbean women could not leave any impact regarding their employment rate and it remained fairly stable between 1991 and 2001 (Fulcher and Scott, 2011, p.1). Thus, in UK the discrimination prevailing in labour market is mainly caused by predominant culture of whites in the overall labour market, social classes, level of education and the gender. Generally, Asian women are highly discriminated due to the fact that they are women and they do not hold higher educational background. The above mentioned factors are the root causes for the current discrimination that has been imposed upon the minority ethnic groups which is effectively brining in more poverty as well as depriving them from the opportunities that they truly deserve. The major reason for this is the likely threat that whites face of losing the key executive and managerial positions if they left those positions for minority ethnic groups. The other main reasons for such inequalities are inability of whites working under a minority ethnic manager as well as the inability of the minority ethnic groups to speak English which in fact contributes a lot in the UK labour market. References Abbott, P. et al., 2005. Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives. 3rd edition. London: Routledge. Bradley, H. et al., 2000. Myths at Work. Cambridge: Polity.  Cohen, R. and Kennedy, P., 2007. Global Sociology. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Fulcher, J. and Scott, J., 2011. Sociology. 4th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Macionos, J. and Plummer, K., 2008. Sociology: A Global Introduction. 4th edition. Harlow: Pearson. Ridge, T. and Wright, S., 2008. Inequality, Poverty and Wealth. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press. Read More