Do second-generation ethnic minorities, those born and brought up in Britain, increasingly adopt British attitudes, values and ways or life, or do they, as some commentators have claimed, remain isolated from the mainstream? This study maps the extent of generational change among Britain's ethnic minority population and explores the underlying processes involved. It asks whether generational change has been in the direction of greater integration, or whether some minorities been slower to integrate, perhaps as a result of the prejudice and discrimination from the white British that they have encountered or because of desires to maintain ethnic values and resist Western practices. The study draws on the most recent and most authoritative British data to answer these questions. Chapter authors include leading authorities both from Britain and America, including Mary Waters (Harvard), Lucinda Platt (LSE) and Anthony Heath, CBE (Oxford and Manchester) as well as a new generation of young scholars. It will be essential reading both for students and scholars working on ethnic relations and for policy-makers and the wider public interested in questions of social cohesion, multiculturalism and integration. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Do second-generation ethnic minorities, those born and brought up in Britain, increasingly adopt British attitudes, values and ways or life, or do they, as some commentators have claimed, remain isolated from the mainstream? This study maps the extent of generational change among Britain's ethnic minority population and explores the underlying processes involved. It asks whether generational change has been in the direction of greater integration, or whether some minorities been slower to integrate, perhaps as a result of the prejudice and discrimination from the white British that they have encountered or because of desires to maintain ethnic values and resist Western practices. The study draws on the most recent and most authoritative British data to answer these questions. Chapter authors include leading authorities both from Britain and America, including Mary Waters (Harvard), Lucinda Platt (LSE) and Anthony Heath, CBE (Oxford and Manchester) as well as a new generation of young scholars. It will be essential reading both for students and scholars working on ethnic relations and for policy-makers and the wider public interested in questions of social cohesion, multiculturalism and integration. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Social mobility has long been one of the central topics of sociology. It has been the subject of major theoretical contributions from the earliest generations of scholars, as well as being of persistent political interest and concern. Social mobility is frequently used as a key measure of fairness and social justice, given the central role that modern liberal democracies give to equality of opportunity. More pragmatically, policymakers often consider it a force for economic growth and social integration.    However, discussions of social mobility have increasingly become dominated by advanced statistical techniques, impenetrable to all but specialists in quantitative methods. In this concise and lucid book, Anthony Heath and Yaojun Li cut through the technical literature to provide an eye-opening account of the ideas, debates and realities that surround this important social phenomenon. Their book illuminates the major patterns and trends in rates of social mobility, and their drivers, in contemporary western and emerging societies, ultimately enabling readers to understand and engage with this perennially relevant social issue. 

This book provides a timely reassessment of the relationship between social research and social reform. A. H. Halsey's work on educational opportunity is a particularly significant example of the study of this relationship, and his retirement from the directorship of the Department of Social and Administrative Studies at the University of Oxford provides an opportunity to review his contribution to date. It has been a rare oeuvre, combining a strong moral commitment to egalitarian social reform with a vigorous concern for evidence and quantitative research. In this book leading scholars attempt to come to terms with Professor Halsey's contribution by offering essays in their own specialisms that reflect his continuing influence on their work. The range of subjects covered reflects the breadth of his influence and interests: Canon Barnett on ethical socialism; changing conceptions of social work; community and citizenship; social groups and movements within both State and market; an assessment of European Poverty Programmes; the reform of secondary education; options for reform of post-16 education and training; higher education policy in Britain and the USA; social mobility and meritocracy; the role of social research in community development; women's studies in sociology, and the role of evaluation research in social policy in the USA and Sweden. In the face of current scepticism about its effectiveness, Social Research and Social Reform provides important evidence on the influence of social research and suggests new ways in which its relationship to social reform should be viewed.

Growing up in Diverse Societies provides a comprehensive analysis of the integration of children of immigrants in England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. It is based on the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), which included harmonised interviews with almost 19,000 14-15-year-olds. Growing up in Diverse Societies studies the life situation, social relations, and attitudes of adolescents in different ethnic minority groups, and compares these systematically to the majority youth in the four countries. The chapters cover a wide range of aspects of integration, all addressing comparisons between origin groups, generations, and destination countries, and elucidating processes accounting for differences. The results challenge much of the current thinking on the state of integration. In some respects, such as own economic means, delinquency, and mental health, children of immigrants are surprisingly similar to majority youth, while in other respects there are large dissimilarities. There are also substantial differences between ethnic minority groups, with the economic and cultural distance of the origin regions to the destination country being a key factor. For some outcomes, such as language proficiency or host country identification, dissimilarities seem to narrow over generations, but this does not hold for other outcomes, such as religiosity and attitudes. Remaining differences partly depend on ethnic segregation, some on socioeconomic inequality, and others on parental influences. Most interestingly, Growing up in Diverse Societies finds that the four destination countries, though different in their immigration histories, policy approaches, and contextual conditions, are on the whole rather similar in the general patterns of integration and in the underlying processes.

When this volume was first published in 1976, exchange theory had recently come into the fore in sociology as an attempt to develop systematic theories of social behaviour comparable to those which economics had developed. In doing so it borrowed from many different intellectual traditions including economics and anthropology, behavioural sociology and on the traditional concerns of sociologists and social psychologists. Dr Heath provides a systematic exposition of the principle components of exchange theory, and goes on to give a critique of these theories, paying particular attention to the success of their empirical applications. He concludes that exchange theory, despite its limitations, has an important part to play in the development of social science and is one of the most promising theories available. Rational Choice and Social Exchange will be of interest to anyone concerned with the development of social science and in particular to students of sociology, anthropology, psychology and political science.