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Despite predominantly lower social class origins, the second generation of established immigrant groups in the UK are now attaining high levels of education. However, they continue to experience poorer labour market outcomes than the majority population. These worse outcomes are often attributed in part to their disadvantaged origins, which do not, by contrast, appear to constrain their educational success. This paper engages with this paradox. We discuss potential mechanisms for second‐generation educational success and how far we might expect these to be replicated in labour market outcomes. We substantiate our discussion with new empirical analysis. Drawing on a unique longitudinal study of England and Wales spanning 40 years and encompassing one per cent of the population, we present evidence on the educational and labour market outcomes of the second generation of four groups of immigrants and the white British majority, controlling for multiple measures of social origins. We demonstrate that second‐generation men and women's educational advantage is only partially reflected in the labour market. We reflect on the implications of our findings for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two significant moments in sexual minority citizenship in England and Wales in relation to one of the Marshallian sets of rights, namely, civil or legal rights, focusing specifically on the Sex Offences legislation and policing practices. The first moment that will be examined here is the process whereby homosexual acts were decriminalized in the 1950s and 1960s: here special attention will be paid to the recommendations made by the Wolfenden Committee. The second moment is one we are currently experiencing, which is associated with the inclusive policing of sexual minority communities (especially lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities) under the provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and in the review of Sex Offences, especially in the consultation paper (Home Office 2000) and White Paper (Home Office 2002) associated with this review. Privacy and toleration dominate the first moment, at the same time it shall be demonstrated that privacy is also central to the British Sexual Citizenship literatures that have emerged in sociology in the post Wolfenden context. However, as the title suggests, the second moment under examination points to the emergence of a rather more extensive sexual minority citizenship beyond the boundaries of ‘homosexual privacy’ (which British Sexual Citizenship Studies is not currently engaging with) and perhaps even beyond the boundaries of toleration through ever more ‘inclusive’ policing strategies and through the review of sex offences in which many discriminatory laws are being ‘de-homosexualized’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents some key findings of qualitative research with older primary school children in Wales on their attachments to places and cultures. There is discussion of children's perspectives on the global, national and local arenas. We argue both that there are continuities with adult perspectives and that the children's views on place and identity need to be understood in the context of the social location of middle childhood. The study shows children making relatively little use of culturally-filled categories of local, national and global place-identifications. The differences they articulate are largely framed in terms of divisions between groups of people rather than in the characteristics of place, and generally related back to the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on social capital has explored trends in membership in voluntary organizations. However, there is currently little robust evidence on such trends in the UK since the 1970s, nor is there any analysis of whether participation bridges social divisions or accentuates them. This paper explores trends in participation in England and Wales since 1972 using data from the Social Mobility Inquiry of 1972 and the British Household Panel Survey of 1992 and 1999. We are concerned with social exclusion mechanisms in social capital generation in Britain over the three decades. Using binomial and multinomial models to 'unpack' the effects of socio-cultural factors on civic participation and on different types of associational membership, we test the thesis of across-the-board decline in social capital by Putnam (2000) and that of rising levels of middle-class social capital versus consistent low levels of working-class social capital by Hall (1999). The results show significant socio-cultural-gender differences, a relative stability of middle-class participation, and a rapid decline in the working-class access to social capital. We challenge the established accounts of both theses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prison system of England and Wales relies on a number of measures, said to be 'merely administrative' in character, to maintain order in its establishments. In this paper the official discourse on order and control in prisons is examined and the characteristic methods of identifying 'control problem' prisoners are criticised. The processes by which 'control problems' are socially constructed and then entered into the official discourse are explored through an analysis of 'disciplinary transfers' -- especially the use of the Circular Instruction 10 of 1974 procedure whereby prisoners can be transferred to special cells in local prisons for a 28 day 'cooling off' period. The analysis is based on observations carried out in five prisons and interviews with both prisoners and security staff as well as documentary records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes trends of social mobility in England and Wales. Speculations about trends of social mobility have been prominent in contemporary commentaries on the condition of England, and on the changing structures of highly industrialized societies. Empirical research has given little support to expectations that definite changes would be observable when rates of social mobility were compared over time. The theory that in the U.S. the closing of the frontier and the consolidation of corporate capitalism must have reduced movement up and down the social scale has been questioned by recent research. And the contrasting notion, common in Western Europe, that economic, political and educational changes must have increased chances of social ascent and descent has also been empirically challenged. These studies have made little impact on the general debate about contemporary social stratification. But such evidence has also been only partly relevant to some major issues of the debate. For while the data relate to patterns of social mobility prevailing yesterday, the debate has often in effect centered on those patterns which may prevail tomorrow. It is possible that the occupational experience of those who are still only children or adolescents today will follow new lines–in consequence particularly, it has been suggested, of recent changes in educational policy.

Recent studies of social mobility have documented that not only who your parents are, but also where you grow up, substantially influences subsequent life chances. We bring these two concepts together to study social mobility in England and Wales, in three post‐war generations, using linked Decennial Census data. Our findings show considerable spatial variation in rates of absolute and relative mobility, as well as how these have changed over time. While upward mobility increased in every region between the mid‐1950s and the early 1980s, this shift varied across different regions and tailed off for more recent cohorts. We also explore how domestic migration is related to social mobility, finding that those who moved out of their region of origin had higher rates of upward mobility compared to those who stayed, although this difference narrowed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares vertical mobility in Dublin and England and Wales as displayed in mobility tables using the seven class categories developed by Goldthorpe (1980). A model is developed which demonstrates the pattern of vertical mobility in each country and also allows us to measure the extent of class inheritance as distinct from class self-recruitment. The data are used to test the FJH thesis, and some differences between Dublin and England and Wales — in their degree of ‘openness’ and in the relative standings of the different classes — are examined. Patterns of relative mobility are found to differ quite strongly between the two with Dublin being considerably less open than England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the discrepancies in the functioning of health centres in England and Wales. Although the so called failure of health centres arose from a variety of factors operating at national and local level, it was caused in the main by the limitations on capital expenditure required by the central government. The attitude of the British Medical association (BMA) also demands consideration, for its views and actions have influenced family doctors whose cooperation determines the success of every health centre scheme. That general practitioners can refuse to work in centres derives from their status as independent entrepreneurs. It is in fact, crucial that, whatever the profession's approval of the concept at a high level of generalization, BMA resolutely opposed the widespread provision of centres by local authorities during the planning stage of the Service. Poor communications have also affected health centre schemes. Lack of early consultation with the doctors is reported from some of the centres that came into existence.

The article addresses the interrelationships of community and occupation in the fishing industry at Hull, and in particular their relevance to the practical problems of recruitment and planned urban redevelopment as well as to the wider theoretical issues in these fields of industrial and urban sociology. Industrial sociologists have so far confined their attention to the more basic industries, notably coal-mining and steel, and fishing has remained sociologically unexplored. By comparison with the industries mentioned above, fishing occupies only a minor part of the economy. Thus in 1951, fishermen accounted for only 0.1 per cent of the total male working population of England and Wales. Even in Hull, the port which lands the most fish, the proportion of the working force so engaged was only 2.8 per cent, though fishing is the largest single industry in the city. A research project was initiated, in April 1954, by the Social Studies Department of the University of Hull. The project was broadly conceived as a community study, rather than as a study in industrial sociology. This conception of the project was based on what is common knowledge in Hull--that the fisherman inhabit a particular area of the city, and that they constitute to some extent a separate community.

The article discusses the significance of the 1904 religious revival in Wales. Religion probably exercised a greater influence on the lives of the people of Wales during the last century than was the case in England or in any other Protestant country. One might say that the Nonconformist chapels and their ministers exercised an influence in Wales comparable with that of the Roman Catholic Church among the peasants of Ireland or Spain: it was the basis of the social and the cultural pattern of life of the Welsh people. Socially and culturally, and often politically, their lives were centered on the chapel. Politically, socially and culturally, class differences in outlook coincided with religious differences, and this cleavage was intensified by a language barrier. Nonconformity had obtained this unique position in Wales as a result of the Methodist Revival of the eighteenth century. This movement had given Wales, for the first time in its modem history a national church--the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales--and had given the Welsh people a new interest in religion. The Reformation had left the Welsh people comparatively unmoved. The Puritan movements had barely touched the lives of the lower classes in Wales, and the comparatively few Baptist and Independent Churches which had been founded in Wales during the seventeenth century, had been English in character and had served the needs of a small middle class only. It took the Methodist Revival to awaken Wales to a new consciousness of religion and to make her people feel that churches and chapels could be things which belonged to Welsh life.

The article traces the changes in social class by changes in occupation through a preliminary examination of the social grading of occupations in England and Wales. A survey of a large random sample of the population on a nationwide scale is being carried out in order to discover possible evidence of class mobility by change of occupational grade with changing circumstances, also by comparing the grades of parents and their children, and by change of grade on the part of women on marriage if the grade of occupation of the husband differs from that of the wife's father. The grade of occupation first entered is largely determined by educational opportunity, and particulars as to education as well as occupation will be collected in the random sample survey. The inference to be drawn from the examination of this material is that there is no major difference of opinion among those we have tested as to the social grading of selected occupations. While there may be minor differences in judgment and in variability of judgment between men and women, young and old, drawn from different social levels, in their ranking of certain occupations or grades of occupation, these differences on the average do not appear to be highly significant.

In this paper, we revisit King and McDermott's 1990 article on the social construction of 'control problem' prisoners and their management in high security prisons, in the light of our recent research on the location and building of trust in contemporary high security prisons. We examine how religious and race identities are now deeply implicated in the construction of risk, and we describe the procedures for and some of the consequences of managing the new risks of radicalization and extremist violence in prison. The analysis is based on observations and interviews with staff and prisoners in two main and two supplementary maximum-security prisons in England and Wales., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

Drawing on an analysis of qualitative interview data from a study of formalized same-sex relationships (civil partnerships) this paper examines the enduring significance of marriage and family as social institutions. In doing so, it intervenes in current debates in the sociology of family and personal life about how such institutions are undermined by reflexivity or bolstered by convention. Against the backdrop of dominating sociological frames for understanding the links between the changing nature of marriage and family and same-sex relationship recognition, the paper analyses the diverse and overlapping ways (including the simple, relational, strategic, ambivalent and critical ways) in which same-sex partners reflexively constructed and engaged with marriage and family conventions. My analysis suggests that instead of viewing reflexivity and convention as mutually undermining, as some sociologists of family and personal life do, it is insightful to explore how diverse forms of reflexivity and convention interact in everyday life to reconfigure the social institutions of marriage and family, but do not undermine them as such. I argue the case for recognizing the ways in which 'reflexive convention', or reflexive investment in convention, contributes to the continuing significance of marriage and family as social institutions., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

This paper explores the ways in which the work-life balance choices made by heterosexual couples differ in different generations, how such choices are gendered, and the extent to which 'individualization' provides an adequate conceptualization of the effects of social change on heterosexual couples. It argues that processes of individualization need to be seen in the context of changing social institutions, and that it is the de-institutionalization of 'the family' and the life course that is leading to a de-gendering of work-life balance choices. The paper draws on findings from a restudy of the family and social change and a study of the gender dimensions of job insecurity both of which were carried out in the same geographical location. The studies provide evidence of generational change in work-life balance choices and increasing occupational differentiation between heterosexual partners. This leads to a situation where increasingly choices are made which blur gendered boundaries and which has been made possible by a process of de-institutionalization of the male breadwinner family. Our findings support the contention that processes of individualization are more apparent amongst younger than older generations and that, because of changes external to the family, there is more negotiation and pragmatism amongst younger generations about work-life choices.

This paper explores women's and men's work orientations in conditions of job insecurity, arguing that it is time to move beyond essentalist conceptions of work orientations and central life interests in order to understand the significance of paid work in people's lives. Data from a qualitative study are presented which show that the significance of paid work and the priority given to home and work are affected by experiences of job insecurity, changing domestic circumstances and stage in the life cycle and that this is the case for both women and men. Conversely, the significance of paid work can affect how job insecurity is experienced and its impact on individuals and their families. The assumption that men's work orientations are homogeneous and that work is their central life interest is not supported by the findings presented here and it is argued that the significance of work in men's and women's lives is more variable than has hitherto been recognized. To capture this variability it is time to move away from the acrimony of the debate over women's work orientations and notions of a central life interest which underpin it.