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Ethnicity, Class and Aspiration: Understanding London's New East End

The title of this book suggests an interesting and insightful volume investigating the intersections between ethnicity, class and aspiration. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that the title is somewhat misleading: ‘Middle class, ethnicity and educational aspiration’ would be a far more accurate title given the content. The book is structured around eight chapters. The first deals with the substantive issues of the book, outlining the concepts that will and will not be addressed. The omissions that are highlighted include the voices of the working class, for which the authors are largely unapologetic. ‘[O]ur focus is on the relatively advantaged who have survived the impact of de-industrialisation . . . as opposed to the absolutely deprived whose fate has dominated much social science writing’ (p. 16). There is, however, a large difference between these two polar groups into which a large proportion of the population fit, individuals who are neither the absolutely deprived nor the relatively advantaged. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the changing economic and social structure of East London. This chapter provides an uncritical overview of the mechanics of change, leading to the conclusion that the white working classes were replaced by elements of the working and middle class ‘drawn from a mosaic of ethnic groups, many of whom had a more ambivalent view towards the state than those [white working-class workers] they had replaced’ (p. 53). Chapter 3 links the housing market with the changing ethnic structure of East London. The authors highlight the apparent contradiction between the increasing proportion of ethnic minorities not only owning homes but also in the private and social rented sector. This reviewer considers that these trends are not contradictory, but indicative of the increasing proportion of ethnic groups in the whole of the East End demonstrating the ability to access levels of the housing market. The remaining four chapters use data from a large ESRC project to elicit information from residents of the East End about educational aspiration. Chapter 4, entitled ‘Moving on, moving out and moving up’, investigates the nature of the aspirations that parents hold for their children and how they transfer these aspirations into practice through residential and school search strategies. Through qualitative interviews the authors report the differences between ethnic minorities with regard to the type of occupations that they hope their children will enter, and the differences between the aspirations of firstgeneration immigrants to merely ‘keep their head above water’ as opposed to the move towards middle-class employment that they wish for their children. Again the issue of replacement rather than displacement is writ large through this chapter. In a footnote,