Introduction
This chapter deals with the social, economic, and spatial mobility of the Caribbean and other ethnic populations in Britain between 1948 and 2000. It draws comparisons, on the one hand, with the Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi populations and other recent ethnic minorities in Britain, and on the other hand, with the African-American population in the United States. The Caribbean population is taken as the best available comparator for the African-American population in the UK/US analysis. The thrust of the chapter is that the British Caribbean male population is economically disadvantaged but socially integrated, while the Caribbean female population has a bimodal distribution, being both socially and economically more marginalized than Caribbean males in its lower levels but economically more advantaged in its upper levels.
One of the illuminating, if tendentious, generalizations about ethnic minorities in Britain has been to divide them into the Jewish and the Irish models of settlement. In broad terms, the Irish model is seen as having been more blue-collar, manual-labour dominated, council-house-tenured, and inner-city located, while the Jewish model is seen as white-collar, self-employed, owner-occupied and suburban. The Irish model (pace Mary Hickman, this volume) is similar to and convergent with the population as a whole. The Jewish model has been seen as pluralistic, maintaining its cultural distinctiveness despite economic integration. As with most broad generalizations, there are many exceptions, but it nevertheless is an instructive framework.