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This paper examines how immigrants' proficiency in speaking English, and preference for retaining their native tongue as the language of the home, affect their occupational attainment in the Australian labour market. In particular, it investigates how well three approaches - an assimilationist approach, a Neo-Marxist approach, and an ethnic enclaves approach - account for differences among groups in how important language usage and skill are in occupational mobility. The data are drawn from the 1981 Census public use sample. The findings show that monolingual English usage is of no benefit in the labour market and that weak English skills harm the occupational opportunities of some groups much more than others, a finding that is fully consistent with the ethnic enclaves approach. Generalising from the differences among Australian immigrant groups, the paper provides some hypotheses about language effects among immigrants to industrialised societies more generally, and develops some hypotheses about conditions fostering development of ethnic enclaves in such societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of working class or subordinate consciousness and its relation to the dominant value system has been a central component of the research into actors' 'images of society'. This paper offers an empirical contribution to this topic via an examination of the conceptions of the economic system held by samples of Australian managers and shop stewards. Previous research has suggested that the consciousness of members of subordinate groups is inconsistent or contradictory in that lower class actors provide a mixture of support for and rejection of dominant values. The evidence reviewed here lends support to this finding but by focusing more closely upon the categories, vocabularies and frameworks which make up the actors' images of the economy, the paper attempts to offer a more satisfactory explanation of how such inconsistencies can appear, one which highlights the role of language as a mechanism in ideological incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first findings of a survey carried out in Melbourne, Australia. It attempts to test hypotheses based on the embourgeoisement thesis, and its variations, in a social system with a strong equalitarian ideology and compulsory arbitration for all sections of the work force. It assesses the economic differences between white collar and blue collar workers and also the difference between these groups and a middle class group. It also compares the Australian situation with America and Britain. It finds a significant difference between blue collar and white collar income rates, total income medians and career income medians, as against the apparent near parity of the situation in Britain and America. These differences are not mitigated by wives' earnings or income from other sources. There is an almost complete dichotomy between these groups and the middle class group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]