Britain has long been home to migrants from Ireland (which until 1921 had been part of the United Kingdom). More recently, it has seen major inflows from a number of less-developed countries such as Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Hong Kong that had formerly been part of the British Empire. While there is some reason to believe that the Irish experienced some discrimination in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century or before, evidence implies that the Irish, both first and second generation, now compete on equal terms with the indigenous British. The ethnic penalties experienced by the visible minorities from the less-developed members of the Commonwealth have declined markedly in the second generation, but all the major visible minorities still find it more difficult to obtain jobs commensurate with their qualifications than do the various white groups, even in the second generation. Continuing discrimination against visible minorities is likely to be a major part of the explanation for the difficulty in gaining employment.

This paper uses fresh data to confirm and extend our original findings (Britten and Heath, 1983) which were criticized by Goldthorpe ( Sociology, November 1983). Given that the manual/non manual divide has little relevance for women's jobs, we demonstrate that office work and sales work entail very different conditions of employment for women, although the market situation of both groups is inferior to that of men in manual work. The career paths for women across three distinct labour markets (semi-professional, office and unskilled) demonstrate women's attachments to particular kinds of work in spite of interrupted employment histories. It is concluded that the intermittent nature of women's employment does not detract from our approach. In fact we show that women's qualifications have a more significant association with their careers than do their husbands' class positions. Using a new class schema, we confirm the importance of women's jobs in explaining their voting and fertility behaviour.

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This chapter introduces the economic, social, and political aspects of Indian modernities. It considers the question of uneven modernisation and studies the sphere of politics. The Indian economy and reform is discussed in detail as well.