First generation immigrants vs British class system

[classmisfit]

I am starting this thread simply out of interest, I am not outraged, hurt or looking to provoke a bun fight. Lighthearted to an extent, but I really want to hear genuine opinions.
For the native British mumsnetters, do you have an opinion about how your non-native friends and acquaintances fit within the Great British Class System? First generation immigrants, I mean. If yes, are there any external "markers" you are paying attention to, in the absence of the usual accent / went to private school / second countryside home etc.? What are they (even if very shallow and superficial?) What they wear / what they drive / where they live / fluency in English / the school their children attend?

My curiousity is triggered by yesterday's conversation with a (relatively new, a year or so) acquaintance who automatically assumed that I am uneducated and unemployed (and was suggesting "ways out" for me, completely uninvited). She was probably just trying to be kind and helpful, but it felt a bit patronising from my side. And, analysing some encounters over years, it wasn't the first occasion. So it made me think whether I am sending any specific vibes?

@classmisfit - is that because under communism all jobs and professions were treated and paid equally, so became the same?

I'm no expert but on farmers but I think you get old farming and landowning farmer families, and also tenant farmers and newer farmers, who don't own the land.

@SchrodingersImmigrant - I suppose maybe it's a bit of both. Doctor's often come from families of doctors. I imagine working class pupils may be more encouraged into nursing or physio as a profession. It's a terrible statistic, and the medical schools should address it.

You do have to get high grades to get into medical school, and it takes years to qualify. That automatically excludes poorer students and students who could not focus fully on their secondary education.

Not to derail but I used to LOVE Herriot when I was a child!
I wanted to be a vet because of him. Then I nearly threw up when vet was cleaning under our dog's ripped skin. And taht was it.

I don't remember how vets are viewed there. Never registered anything. Not as respected as human doctors though. Teacher's pay is shit there. Teachers in here are quite well paid afaik. Newly qualified starts at about 24k and that's not bad.

@NeedToKnow101 tbh I don't see how they could help if someone got bad grades at secondary. How do you prove it was x issue. There should be prevention from the begining, rather then attempts to mitigate later. But that prevention would be in gov hands so.... Yeah.

@HannahStern

Because your response belongs there?

@maurya comments were disgusting. They needed to be called out as such. And sometimes, blunt language is the correct tool.

@SchrodingersImmigrant
Same for me re Herriot. His contribution to converting foreign kids into anglophiles is probably very underappreciated

@NeedToKnow101
The bias was actually even in the opposite direction, "working class" occupations were paid significantly more compared to the "intelligentsia" ones. So a factory worker was usually materially better off than a doctor, an engineer or a professor. Dictatorship of the proletariat, you know. It does not mean that there wasn't any education/ culture related snobbery, but it was not in the form a British person would easily recognise. For example, my parents are still, somewhere deeply inside, uneasy about the idea of earning decent money for your work, because during their formative years "poor" and "intelligent" were, by and large, synonyms.

Don't forget state apartments. My GF was a miner so they got cheaper apartment. It was still 5 of them in a 2 bed flat, but better than nothing.

Were you a satellite or deeper in @classmisfit?

Maurya’s comments weren’t “disgusting” as you put it @serenada. They were just an insight into a different world and a different mindset.

It irked some Mumsnetters that she proclaimed herself upper class, but that’s the thing about being an aristocrat in every culture - their history is well-documented and has been for centuries. It’s a binary state, but the rest of us muddle along reading (or more accurately misreading in the case of immigrants) ‘markers’ or ‘signals’.

I thought the most interesting point about her post was about being treated better by dressing herself and her house to match her UMC husband.

I hate myself for it (something so forelock tugging about it) but I’m definitely intimidated by UMC people.

[quote Fressia123]@NeedToKnow101 I'm Mexican. Political classes do have plenty of darker skinned members. Our greatest statesman (Benito Juarez) was an indigenous shepherd from Oaxaca. There's a lot of discrimination based on skin colour. If you're darker skinned (and have money) you'll most likely be called new money or related to any of the thousands of corrupt politicians.[/quote]
That's good to know that about Benito Juarez's background @Fressia123. I don't know much detail about Mexico and South America, just bits and bobs.

@SchrodingersImmigrant
One of the 15 republics, but not a posh one

@breadcakebiscuits

Then you are ignoring the conciliatory tone and grandstanding. And she (and you) have missed the point massively: an aristocrat would never write something like that and Brahmin culture is not aristocratic in the UK for specifically the reason I outlined - it is part of a caste system that created a group of 'untouchables' - it was this kind of thinking the Anglican faith was trying to moderate against. A social, cultural class system that is at odds with a Christian faith based on equality.

I am not Anglican, btw and under no illusion that it was this simple in India but grandstanding on the basis @maurya outlined is nauseating to me. She didn't articulate her feelings, that 's the point - she articulated her frustration that she wasn't seen as the superior being she sees herself as being (as someone else astutely pointed out). I have a similar background but would never use it to look down on others - that is completely anathema to the core beliefs inherent in those identities.

I like to think of myself as being very broad-minded but I am beginning to see how many horrible conclusions I jump to, even though the rational part of my brain knows it’s not sensible.

If someone were to say Filipino... I would say nanny

If someone were to say Russian... I would say hooker

I’m embarrassed, and grateful for this thread.

That wasn’t what I took from her post at all @serenada, but let her come back and tell us. I don’t think she was “grandstanding” - she was telling us about being mistaken for her children’s nanny!

You know all these threads that appear on here about how to look expensive or how to make your house look expensive?

They’re the acceptable face of social aspiration aren’t they?

Applying to medical school when you’re WC is too far a reach, so your teachers palm you off with nursing as a career.

Applying to medical school when you’re WC is too far a reach, so your teachers palm you off with nursing as a career.
Yes, I heard this from many people and it is mind-boggling.
I also noticed that there is a visible difference, for example, in how middle-class SEN children are treated compared to working-class ones. I cannot shake off the feeling that difficulties of the working class children are more often attributed to bad parenting rather than the underlying condition.

@breadcakebiscuits

We have just spent the last 20 years in education trying to change that - and we have largely. When the Labour government got in in '97 they wanted more teaching assistants from local communities in the schools. The idea was that children could see people they knew in a 'teaching' role rather than as a cleaner/dinner lady and it would give them some inspiration. In schools teaching assistants are referred to as teachers in front of the children.

Student loans (by no means a perfect solution) were meant to liberate w/c communities as was the payment made for 16/17 year olds to encourage them to stay on at school and mitigate against pressure from parents to go to work and contribute. Initially, many lower income students were also given additional funding.

We always had a path through the education system in this country that enabled w/c/low income pupils to come through - always. And up until student loans you could get a grant. Poverty of aspiration is real and immigrants children always used that path to get through to the professions - it just wasn't widely known about. Lastly, the universities make sure that when people come out (on to graduate schemes, etc) that they are equalised ( companies often pay off student loans/ have wardrobe allowance/subsidise rent) Not all, obviously. The opportunities are there in UK society, but have been closing of late. Part of the problem is the rhetoric based on disadvantage compared to the the super rich rather than looking at the mechanisms that enable people to access that wealth. Sunak is a good example and whoever said the focus on his parents as aspirational professionals is part of the narrative is right but he also then took the opportunity he got and aimed high (which a good education should encourage you to do).

I have noticed of late, something that makes me feel very uncomfortable. This desire to leapfrog over certain people and groups in society because the person thinks they are superior when they are not and do not understand how British society works. We are much more structured than many countries, particularly in London and much of what we have built in to the system in recent years was designed to protect the vulnerable and low income from people standing on their heads for the short period they are in the country , making quick money. It is as old as the hills, we are used to it and see through it and people here have fought to protect their children from it, which includes your children when they attend school here. And the people who really have suffered and still lack much redress here are the black community who time and time again, are looked down on by new arrivals because of the politics of race. There can be no place for that in 2020, in the UK. None.

You all sound to me as though you consider yourselves as informed, educated people but actually, you have bought into the superficial veneer that you have found here (British society according to James Herriot books? rural society for a start) and are now trying to navigate your way through and the w/c, who see through it, are not buying it. they are far more discerning than you give them credit for.

This desire to leapfrog over certain people and groups in society because the person thinks they are superior when they are not and do not understand how British society works.
Ah see - precisely! This! This is pretty much why I was asking the question I did.
Could you tell me why the quoted is undesirable? You see an opportunity (for education in this case, as discussed) - you take it, nothing to do with a perception of being "superior", there are other motivations, ranging from purely financial to a genuine hunger for knowledge. What is wrong with that? Why is "knowing your place" so important? (because that's what the quote effectively boils down to).

I am not even sure what are we being told off for here. For complaining that we are automatically viewed as uneducated and poor even though we are not? Or because we dared to question British classes?

@SchrodingersImmigrant

I am not even sure what are we being told off for here. For complaining that we are automatically viewed as uneducated and poor even though we are not? Or because we dared to question British classes?

I learned a long time ago that my place in the UK will never change because I’m a brown immigrant, I also learned that to compare my own status where I am from to my status in the UK is essentially a thought crime for some people in the UK. Those people being snobs of course.

Wrt immigrants (particularly South Asian) I have noticed that regardless of their social status in society, they all have very high educational aspirations for their children. I don't find this translates across into white British counterparts, who are much more likely to think that university of certain professions "are not for us".

@SchrodingersImmigrant
I only understood that reading Herriot when I was 6 or so was quite inappropriate. I can't unread it now, unfortunately.

I am genuinely interested in why it seems to touch a nerve with quite a few posters. Is it because being "sharp-elbowed" - for a lack of a better word - is a social transgression? I.e. there is a social queue that I and other immigrants don't see, and trying to reach for a certain social good is perceived as queue-jumping? (apologies for bluntness, but from the point of view of a complete outsider, there IS a lot of truth in the queuing stereotype)

I am not even sure what are we being told off for here. For complaining that we are automatically viewed as uneducated and poor even though we are not? Or because we dared to question British classes?

I’m baffled too!

Just to add that @SchrodingersImmigrant is an awesome user name .

the person thinks they are superior when they are not and do not understand how British society works.

I’d venture they know exactly how British society works (and works against them) which is why they’re adapting their appearance and manner instead of just being themselves.

serenada, I agree people should not jump to conclusions about anyone but I have noticed differences between the black teenagers from African families at free paying marjority non-wite (BAME) school where my sons went and some black teenagers from ther famiiles who do not have the same family wealth etc. I noticed it on my business trips to Lagos too - I met female lawyers there who were about to send their children at 313 to English boarding schools. They are on the whole better educated and better off and a higher social class than some from other black backgrounds in say London.

I didn't think the Brahmin person above said anything wrong - let people say how they feel., Most countries have some kind of pecking order, class or caste. In the midst of the Chinese cultural revolution they sent the sons of doctors and the intelligensia to work as street cleaners and the like to try to break that cycle of privilege but I doubt it worked very well.

You need high A level grades to become a doctor in the UK and that is possible for children from working class backgrounds - just look at where I live - majority BAME area of London and we have NHS doctors and dentists coming out of our ears as those local families put so much effort into helping their children become those professionals, even if you are putting 4 full time cornershop earnings (and plenty of other jobs) into one set of school fees never mind all the work the children do out of school in weekend classes and the like.

I think that what @serenada is saying is that as the class system anywhere is based on oppression of the lower' class, why should someone deemed 'higher' class in any society, think they are owed deference or better treatment (by anyone), and be offended if their 'class' isn't recognised and deferred to, when the concept of class is based on oppression everywhere.

Apologies Serenada if that is not what you mean!

@breadcakebiscuits

I am not even sure what are we being told off for here. For complaining that we are automatically viewed as uneducated and poor even though we are not? Or because we dared to question British classes?

I’m baffled too!

Just to add that @SchrodingersImmigrant is an awesome user name .

Thank you😁