Whiteness, Migration and Integration into the British Labour Market

This paper explores the situation of new groups of immigrants by focusing on various categories within the heterogeneous group of individuals which comprise the White population. We combine information on country of origin, ethnicity and religion derived from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) to subdivide the White-British, White-Irish and White-Other categories into nine groups, each of which comprises at least 0.1% of the LFS sample. The analyses contrast the recent labour market experiences of eight of these with those of the Christian White-British majority (who form 73.6% of the LFS sample studied). We then investigate labour market outcomes such as over-qualification, unemployment, longer-term unemployment, discouraged worker effects, part-time working and forced part-time work. The participation of the Christian Eastern European group is markedly different to the other categories in terms of likelihood of working part-time either through choice or because they were unable to find full-time work, and they are less likely to become discouraged workers. We suggest that this is because their motivation in migrating to the UK is work related and they are unlikely to remain if the desired employment is unavailable.