Family Capital and Pathways to Inclusion

Using a longitudinal outlook, the project investigates the outcomes and trajectories of ethnic minority inclusion within schools; the labour market; and civic and political life in Britain and Canada, as well as the role that 'family capital' plays in determining these inclusion patterns.

Social cohesion is perceived as an important social goal within academic and policy circles. A crucial precondition to this goal is social inclusion, i.e. ensuring that individuals become full members of society by accessing societal resources and institutions. In recent decades, fast-growing ethnic diversity has led to intensifying policy and academic debates on how this is affecting processes of social inclusion and cohesion. Examining the factors influencing ethnic inclusion has thus increased in importance. The project contributes to this debate by exploring the dynamics of ethnic inclusion into the economic and civic-political spheres and the interplay of these two separate but closely connected spheres. It also investigates how these lifelong processes are shaped by family capital, i.e. a broad and complex range of cultural, social, economic and political influences that are created within the family context. More specifically, the research addresses four core questions:

  1. What are the pathways to socio-economic and civic-political inclusion of ethnic minorities into British and Canadian institutions?
  2. What role does family capital (financial, human, social and cultural) play?
  3. What are the best ways to address the differentials in family influences?
  4. Do different policy environments generate different types of outcomes?

In order to answer these questions, the study draws on available secondary data sources (including Understanding Society and the Millennium Cohort Study in Britain and the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth and the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics in Canada) and uses advanced longitudinal and multilevel methods of data analysis.

Project website

Funder

  • Economic and Social Research Council (Secondary Data Analysis Initiative – Phase 3)

Grant amount

£163,438

Manchester people

  • Silvia Galandini (Co-Investigator)

Affiliates and partners