The Further Education Experiences of Young Males of Pakistani-Origin: A Case Study

This thesis is a case study that explores the further education experiences of young males of Pakistani-origin at Bradford College in the north of England. Bradford is now a de-industrialised city but it originally attracted the first-generation Pakistani migrants in large numbers to its textiles mills in the 1960s. This study seeks to address the following research questions: To what extent does an FE setting meet the aspirations and motivations of Pakistani-origin students to complete their courses and to progress further while negotiating any impending obstacles during their study? To what extent does the students’ cultural or class background enhance or impinge on their learning or educational experiences of an FE college? How does the FE experience correspond with the student perceptions and expectations of their past or post-college trajectories?

Despite FE’s marginalised status, it remains popular with BAME students, this along with concerns for achievement gaps for Pakistani-origin students, the paucity of research literature on Pakistani-origin students’ FE experiences and the new application of segmented assimilation theorisation - for all these reasons the study is intended to make original contribution to knowledge.

The data was gathered from 26 students and 10 staff who participated in face-to-face semi-structured interviews. By utilising the theoretical framework of ‘segmented assimilation’ (Portes & Zhou, 1993) which theorises three distinct paths open to second-generation migrant children- they can either join the middle classes in the mainstream for an upward assimilation, or they join a downward assimilation into the poor section of the host community, or lastly, they can continue to have economic successes while still continuing to hold their cultural values. In addition to these, there are three other factors that can affect the pace of assimilation- the government’s existing policies towards migrants, the strength of prejudice towards immigrants in the host community and the presence of co-ethnic groups in the host community – these three factors are referred to as the ‘modes of incorporation’. These concepts are applied to FE experiences of the males of Pakistani-origin in this study.

The study found that the FE experiences are not always upward assimilation trajectories, as students with low grades, or poor educational experience are vulnerable to downward assimilation while high ability and motivated students are likely to succeed in their studies and follow an upward assimilation path. The study also found that the socio-economic conditions in the city impacted on the youth most adversely.