Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- About the authors
- List of abbreviations
- one Introduction: the social transformation of East London
- two Changing economy and social structure of East London
- three Changing ethnic and housing market structure of East London
- four Moving on, moving out, moving up: aspiration and the minority ethnic suburbanisation of East London
- five Social reproduction: issues of aspiration and attainment
- six The limits to parental decision making under conditions of constrained choice
- seven Reputation and working the system
- eight Conclusions: achieving aspiration?
- References
- Index
four - Moving on, moving out, moving up: aspiration and the minority ethnic suburbanisation of East London
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- About the authors
- List of abbreviations
- one Introduction: the social transformation of East London
- two Changing economy and social structure of East London
- three Changing ethnic and housing market structure of East London
- four Moving on, moving out, moving up: aspiration and the minority ethnic suburbanisation of East London
- five Social reproduction: issues of aspiration and attainment
- six The limits to parental decision making under conditions of constrained choice
- seven Reputation and working the system
- eight Conclusions: achieving aspiration?
- References
- Index
Summary
‘This area of London has always been a place that people aspire to, the first stop for people who are immigrants, so they come in to the East End and they work very hard in not very pleasant jobs, then they save enough money and they want to move to here then a lot of them will move on again, they’re not going to all stay here, a lot will want to move to more rural areas.’ (White British, female, Central Redbridge)
Introduction: aspiration, education and mobility
‘Aspiration’ (safely escorted by scare quotes) and its offspring, upward social mobility, were at the heart of New Labour's project. Not for nothing did former Prime Minister Tony Blair state in 1997 that his priorities for New Labour were ‘education, education, education’. Aspiration thus offered some hope of ‘getting on’ (rather than simply ‘getting by’) to groups who were not previously on the radar of the major political parties as well as enabling New Labour to connect with a wider electoral community that had largely been neglected by the political establishment. In effect, Blair built on Nye Bevan's concept of ‘poverty of aspiration’ and successfully incorporated the idea of aspiration as New Labour territory. Gordon Brown consolidated this; for example, in his first speech to the Labour conference as Prime Minister he claimed that:
‘I want a Britain where there is no longer any ceiling on where your talents and hard work can take you … where what counts is not what where you come from and who you know, but what you aspire to and have it in yourself to become … a Britain of aspiration and also a Britain of mutual obligation where all play our part and recognise the duties we owe to each other.’
Brown reiterated this in a newspaper article in 2010: ‘This is a country of aspirational individuals who, given half a chance, want to get on and not simply get by’ (Brown, 2010). Brown thus continued the Blair focus on the translation of aspiration into achievement through education (Limb, 1999).
These ideas did not easily fit into the sociological truisms that underlay the politics of the postwar era – of collective advancement for the working class through the trades unions or the individual hopes of the more or less established middle classes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethnicity, Class and AspirationUnderstanding London's New East End, pp. 91 - 116Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2011