Tag: migration

Analyse two ways in which migration has affected household structures (10)

How to get full marks for a 10 mark ‘item’ question in sociology A-level.

This question cam up as part of the families and households option in A level sociology paper 2 (topics in sociology), June 2017.

Item C

In the 1950s, most immigrants into the United Kingdom came from Commonwealth countries such as India and Jamaica. More recently, many immigrants have come from European countries such as Poland. May immigrants are young adults seeking work. 

These migration patterns have affected household structures. 

Applying material from Item C, analyse two ways in which migration patterns have affected household structures in the United Kingdom. 

Answer (hints and tips)

Point one – has to be about the variation in Caribbean and Indian household structures… quite easy I think… Of course you could talk about both separately.

Point two – asks that that you talk about more recent structures, drawing on Polish immigration.

What kind of household structures could you discuss?

  • Number of people in the household – so single person, or multiple occupancy.
  • The relationships between the people in the household – married or not? Friends or families? Ages?
  • Gender roles in those households – domestic division of labour
  • Numbers of adults and children (e.g. single person households)
  • Matrifocal/ Patrifocal household
  • The relationships between people in one household and other households (maybe a useful way to demonstrated analysis)
  • Generational variations…

So a potential answer might look like this:

Point one – focusing on Caribbean and Indian migration

  • Caribbean households – 60% single parent families
  • Link to male unemployment/ racism in society
  • matrifocal households
  • Contrast to Indian households
  • Higher rate marriage/ lower rate divorce
  • But later generations – divorce more likely
  • Discuss Mixed race couples

Point two – focusing on European migration

Almost certainly less you can say about this! But as long as you’ve made the most of the previous point, you could easily get into the top mark band… 

  • Younger age structure
  • More likely to have children and be married
  • Higher proportion of married families with children
  • Probably more shared-households – younger people without children sharing.

Commentary

This is a pretty straightforward question on a sub-topic within demography on how migration has affected family life in the U.K. so absolutely fair enough to ask it as a question.

However, it does concern me that the AQA’s online specification explicitly directs teachers to really dated material, and most of the text books focus on this, while this exam question expects students to know about recent events relating to migration and the family which are neither on their online specification or in any of the major A level text books.

I think the AQA needs to relax it’s focus on that really dated material (the classic question on ‘Functionalism and the Family’ in the same paper is a good example of how students are expected to know in-depth this stuff from the 1950s) if it’s going to demand a more contemporary focus.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a contemporary focus, just all that dated material that was such a waste of time students learning (like Pahl and Volger FFS), just in case it came up. This is a real problem because it makes sociology lose credibility, undermining the discipline.

Critics might say this problem emerges from the fact that whoever sets the agenda for the AQA families and households syllabus is something of a timeserver who can’t be bothered to update the specification appropriately by cutting down all the dated material. They might cite as evidence for this the fact that the specification hasn’t really changed significantly in 30 years.

Full answer from the AQA 

Below is an example of an abbreviated (by me) marked response to this question, which achieved a top band-mark, 10/10 in fact!

The example is taken from the 2017 Education with Theory and Methods Paper (paper and mark schemes available from the AQA website).

The Question with Item 

10-mark-question-item-sociology

The Mark Scheme (top band only)

10-mark-question-item-mark-top-band-sociology.png

Student Response:

Item C points out that most immigrants come to Britain from commonwealth countries such as Jamaica. Bertod did a study of Caribbean families which found a type of individualism: the norm that people had to right to be free within marriage even if they had a child with the other person. This meant many Caribbean fathers chose not to stay with the mother of their children, leading to an increase in lone parent families.

Thus it follows that the increase in Caribbean immigration has lead to an increase in single parent families which is up from 10% in the 1970s to 23% today.

Item C also says that immigrants come from India. A study by Ballard found that South East Asians have collective, traditional values and tight knit extended families which support traditional family values – women having many children and being in the expressive role, and men in the breadwinner role, with close ties to grandparents.

This should mean an increase in traditional extended families in the UK due to Indian immigration, however the statistics do not confirm this as the divorce rate has increased dramatically since the 1970s. This does not support the idea of increased traditional families as these value marriages.

However, functionalists argue that divorce can be healthy as it there is better quality relationships in surviving marriages and remarriages.

Examiner Commentary:

Mark: 10/10

aqa-sociology-paper-2-commentary.png

KT’s commentary:

  • This is overkill, easily 10/10!
  • Apparently 4 students died instantly of boredom on seeing the question because of reference to yet more sociology from before their parents were born. 

Source:

A-level
SOCIOLOGY
Feedback on the Examinations
Student responses and commentaries: Paper 1 7192/2 Topics in Sociology
Published: Autumn 2017

NB – this document is NOT available on the AQA website, but any teacher should have access to it via eaqa. I’m sharing it here in order to make the exam standards more accessible, and to support the AQA in their equality and meritocratic agendas, because there will be some poor students somewhere whose teachers aren’t organised enough to access this material for them. 

Cultural Globalisation

Food, tourism, the media, sport, are all examples of cultural globalisation

Cultural globalisation refers to the rapid movement of ideas, attitudes, meanings, values and cultural products across national borders.

The process of cultural globalisation is a dynamic one which implies the emergence of a global culture which influences and possibly transcends local cultures and shapes people’s values, tastes and everyday activities where ever in the world they may be.

Some easy examples of global culture include the emergence of global sporting events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, and the globalisation of food through international companies such as Mcdonalds and CocaCola.

Global culture may be transmitted and reinforced by global communications systems such as the internet, the growth of global popular culture, increasingly global consumption patterns, and increased tourism and migration.

Global institutions such as Transnational Corporations and the United Nations may also play a role in spreading global culture.

This post considers some of the main drivers of cultural globalisation before looking at two contemporary events: the Coronavirus Pandemic and the 2020 American Election and considering whether they can be regarded as being part of cultural globalisation in any way.

Examples of cultural globalisation

Any process which involves an increasing movement of people or ideas across the world can be regarded as an example of cultural globalisation including:

  • Increasingly global consumption patterns: where people around the world consume similar products in similar ways, such as with the rise of global shopping malls, fashions and food.
  • Global events: more counties taking part in global sporting events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, and more people watching and travelling to these events.
  • The growth of global popular culture: more people accessing media products through Netflix for example.
  • Increasing migration: increasing numbers of people choose or are forced to permanently migrate from one country to another.
  • A rising global consciousness: this might be a sense of us living as a ‘global village’ or a sense of more uncertainty emerging with ‘detraditionalisation’ and a ‘global risk consciousness’.
  • Global institutions and global values? The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights could possibly be the starting point for a new set of global values.

Converging Global Consumption Patterns

Today you can go to pretty much any major city in the world and share in a similar ‘consumption experience’. Also, more and more people in Asia and South-America are coming to enjoy high-consumption lifestyles like in the West – car ownership and tourism are both on the increase globally for example. Central to this is the growth of similar styles of shopping malls, and leisure parks which provide a homogeneous cultural experience in different regions across the world.

globalisation consumerism

Food

The globalisation of food is one of the most obvious examples of cultural globalisation – food consumption is an important aspect of culture and most societies around the world have diets that are unique to them, however the cultural globalisation of food has been promoted by fast food giants such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Starbucks. The spread of these global food corporations has arguably led to the decline of local diets and eating traditions.

cultural globalisation

Sport

The Globalisation of sport  is another fairly obvious example of cultural globalisation – think of all the international sporting events that take place – most notably the World Cup and The Olympics, and Formula 1, which bind millions together in a shared, truly global, ‘leisure experience’.

Migration

Migration is an important aspect of cultural globalisation, and in this sense, this process has been going on for several centuries, with languages, religious beliefs, and values being spread by military conquest, missionary work, and trade. However, in the last 30 years, the process of cultural globalisation has dramatically intensified due technological advances in both transportation and communications technology.

The Global Village/ Global Consciousness

Individuals and families are now more directly plugged into news from the outside world – some of the most gripping events of the past decade have unfolded in real time in front of a global audience. According to Giddens this means that more and more people have a more ‘global outlook’ and increasingly identify with a global audience – for example, television reporting of natural disasters in developing countries result in people in wealthier countries donating money to charities such as Oxfam to assist with relief efforts.

Giddens developed the concept of ‘Cosmopolitanism’ to describe this process of an emerging global identity.

A criticism of Giddens is that some people perceive increasing globalisation as a threat to their ways of life and retreat into Fundamentalism and/ or Nationalism as a defensive response, suggesting that Globalisation could go into reverse…

Detraditionalisation

In his classic 1999 text, Runaway World, Anthony Giddens argues that one consequence of globalisation is detraditionalisation – where people question their traditional beliefs about religion, marriage, and gender roles and so on. He uses the concept of ‘detraditionalisation’ rather than ‘decline of tradition’ to reflect the fact that in many cases people continue with their traditional ways of life, rather than actually changing them, but the very fact that they are now actively questioning aspects of their lives means cultures are much less stable and less predictable than before globalisation, because more people are aware of the fact that there are alternative ways of doing things and that they can change traditions if they want to.

The above processes are related to growth of urbanisation, especially the growth of global cities which have highly educated, politically engaged middle classes.

Global Risks/ Global Risk Consciousness

Ulrich Beck (1992) argues that a fundamental feature of globalisation is the development of a global risk consciousness, which emerges due to shared global problems which threaten people in multiple countries – examples include the threat of terrorism, international nuclear war, the threat of global pandemics, the rise of organised crime funded primarily through international drug trafficking, and the threat of planetary melt-down due to global warming.

On the downside, the constant media focus on such global problems has led to a widespread culture of fear and increasing anxiety across the globe, which has arguably contributed to things such as Paranoid Parenting and Brexit, but on the plus side, new global international movements and agencies have emerged through which people come together across borders to tackle such problems.

disneyfication

Coronavirus and global consciousness?

It’s debatable whether Coronavirus has fostered an increasing sense of cultural globalisation – while in one sense the virus doesn’t discriminate across cultures, and many countries are working in similar ways to combat the virus (lockdowns, facemasks), it’s difficult to argue that the closing down of borders and the restriction of international travel fosters globalisation!

And people seemed to have turned to the national governments, their nation states, to guide them through the pandemic, which hardly seems like a ‘global response’…>?

Having said that Nation States have been taking guidance from the World Health Organisation, a global institution, and Bill Gates seems to be a leading proponent of vaccinating our way out of this crisis, which has to be done on a global scale for it to be effective, so there is an aspect of the global to the way we are managing this crisis!

The 2020 American Election: A Global Event?

Another recent event which shows how ambiguous cultural globalisation can be is the reaction to the 2020 United States general election – while this is a national election, it certainly was a global event, watched by hundreds of millions of people the world over, so it was a global event.

However, judging by the mixed reactions, we can hardly call this evidence of a unified consciousness – there’s a lot of division amongst world leaders over the result.

Signposting

This post has primarily been written for sociology students studying the Global Development module, a second year option within A-level sociology.

Cultural Globalisation is one type of globalisation, and students may like some of these other posts below:

Globalisation – Key Concepts and Definitions

Factors Contributing to Globalisation

What is Economic Globalisation?

What is Political Globalisation? It’s

Sources used to write this post:

Chapman et al (2016?)* Sociology AQA Year 2.

Giddens (2009) Sociology.

*No publication date provided in text!?!?@”?!

How Does Globalisation Impact Family Life?

Globalisation is a key concept within A-level sociology, and students may be asked to consider how it affects family life.

One possible question which may come up on the families and households exam paper is:

Outline and Explain two ways in which globalisation may impact family life in the UK (10)

A good strategy to answer this question is to pick two different aspects of globalisation and discuss how these influence different aspects of family life. For more specific advice on how to answer these see ‘10 mark questions‘.

For example I would choose economic globalisation and migration as my two aspects of globalisation. Then I would discuss how these lead to a variety of changes to family life.

It is generally good advice to avoid overlap between your two points.

This post is written as a summary answer to the above exam question. For a more in-depth look at this topic see: Globalisation and Family Life.

Two ways in which globalisation may impact family life

One aspect of globalization is increased immigration to the UK. This has affected family life in the following ways:

  • There are more ethnically diverse families as British born people form relationships and families with people originally from other countries.
  • This means there are more families stretched across borders. This could mean more travel abroad to maintain family connections, for those who can afford it.
  • There are more people sending money to other countries if their partners have not come to Britain with them.
  • Immigrants have higher birth rates so this has positively affected the dependency ratio.
  • One downside of the above may mean increased pressure on public services.
  • Increased immigration doesn’t necessarily mean increased integration. Migrant families may remain relatively isolated in their own communities.
  • For very wealthy families, some have taken advantage of cheap migrant labour to employ cleaners and child carers.
  • In extreme cases this is related to an increase in modern slavery, hidden in the domestic sphere.

Another aspect of globalisation is a more globalised economy.

  • In general this has resulted in economic growth in the UK. This is correlated with lower birth rates and a smaller family size.
  • Recently increased amounts of university students from abroad means fewer places for British children. Some choose not to go to university, which could increase the number of households with young adults.
  • There has been a shift in manufacturing abroad. This means a decline in traditional male jobs, more equality between men and women in relationships (link to topic 5)
  • There are more financial crises (‘credit crunch’) – more divorce/ family instability (link to topic 2).

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module.

For more information on exam advice for the AQA’s A-level sociology please see my page on essays and exams.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Don’t Fall in Love with a Foreigner, at least if you’re poor.

It’s official – the poorest 40% of UK citizens aren’t allowed to bring their foreign born spouses to the UK…

The Supreme Court recently upheld a decision that breaks up families in which a UK spouse earns less than £18.6K and is married to someone outside of the EU.

The government regards such poorer families as a “burden to the state” and so forces its own citizens who fall in love with non-EU citizens to shove off and set up their family life elsewhere.

According to research conducted by Oxford University, nearly 40% of the working UK population wouldn’t be eligible to live here with their non-EU partner – that breaks down to 27% of men and 55% of women. The majority of young people don’t earn enough either. And the statistics are worse if you have a child. So, if you’re a young women and you fall for a handsome stranger from a distant land, it is highly unlikely the Home Office will allow you to remain in this country if you want to live together.

This is a nice link to the families and households topic, showing how immigration and cross-cultural marriage is only for the rich. The poor, it seems, are doomed to marry locally. It’s also a nice tie-in with the social class and family sub-topic.

Demography – Families and Households Topic Overview

Topic 7: Demography

Demography refers to the study of the causes and consequences of changes to the size and structure of a society’s population. There are generally three things which can change the size and structure of a population – birth rates, death rates and migration, and these three things make up the three major sub-topics.

As with marriage and divorce, we break this down into discussing the reasons for the changes and then consider the consequences. A final additional topic here is migration patterns, which we deal with separately.

Subtopics

7.1: Reasons for changes to the Birth Rate

7.2: Reasons for changes to the Death Rate

7.3: The consequences of an Ageing Population

7.4: The reasons for and consequences of changes to patterns of Migration

Key concepts, research studies and case studies you should be able to apply

  • Birth rate

  • Death rate

  • Dependency Ratio

  • Total fertility rate

  • Infant Mortality Rate

  • Child Mortality Rate

  • Life Expectancy

  • Healthy Life Expectancy

  • Demographic Transition

  • Immigration

  • Emigration

  • Net Migration

  • Push Factors

  • Pull Factors

Possible exam style short answer questions

  • Suggest two reasons for the long term decline in birth rate (4)

  • Suggest changes in the role of women that may explain why they have fewer children (4)

  • Suggest three consequences of the decline in the birth rate (6)

  • Suggest three reasons for the long term decrease in the death rate (6)

  • Suggest three problems society may face as a result of an ageing population (6)

  • Suggest three ways in which the elderly might be represented in stereotypical ways (6)

  • Suggest three ways in which society might respond to the challenges of an ageing population (6)

  • Suggest three pull factors which might attract people to immigrate into a particular country (6)

  • Suggest two push factors which might explain patterns of migration (4)

  • Identify two changes in the patterns of child-bearing over the last thirty years (4)

Possible Essay Questions – You should plan these

  • Examine the reasons for, and the effects of, changes in family size over the past 100 years or so (24) (January 2012)

  • Using material from item B and elsewhere assess the view that an ageing Population creates problems for society (24) (June 2014)

The reasons for and consequences of changing patterns of migration

Trends in migration

  • From 1900 to the Second World War the largest immigrant group to the UK were Irish, mainly for economic reasons, followed by Eastern and Central Europian Jews, who were often fleeing from persecution.
  • Before the 1950s very few immigrants were non-white.
  • By contrast, during the 1950s, black immigrants from the Caribbean begain to arrice in the UK, followed during the 1960s and 70s by South-Asian immigratnts from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
  • Since 2001 the main sources of immigration to the UK have been as follows:
    15% UK citizens returning home-ownership
    30% from the European Uniion (mainly Polish)
    30% from New Commonwealth countries such as india

To what extent is migration responsible for UK population growth?

  • In short, it’s not all about increased immigration, it’s more complex!
  • For most of the 20th century, the growth of the UK population was the result of natural increase (more births than deaths). Until the 1980s the numbers of people emigrating was greater than the number of people immigrating
  • More recently, however, and especially since the turn of the Millennium (around the year 2000), there has been an increase in net migration, reaching a peak in 2011 of just over 250, 000. However, this recent increase in net migration is mainly due to the decrease in emmigration, rather than an increase in immigration.
  • Finally, there has been a mini baby boom in the UK since the year 2000 which is responsible for about a third of the increase in recent population growth. However,

Explaining the reasons for immigration to the UK

In order to explain immigration, you have to look at both push and pull factors.

  • Push factors are things llike escaping poverty, unemployment or persecution.
  • Pull factors include things like better opportunities for jobs, study, a higher shtandard of living, more political and religious freedom and joining relatives.

The main pull factors to the UK in recent years have been:

  • To study at university (and also resulting in short term immigration only)
  • For employment – NB historically this is the major reason, and yes this does explain Polish immigration to a large extent but it’s also worth noting that many early migrants from the Caribbean and South-Asia were recruited by the British government to fill labour shortages in the UK – so quite literally pulled to the UK.
  • To be with family members.
  • The most significant push factor has been to seek asylum from Persecution. The most significant recent wave of this type was when 30 000 East African Asians escaped racist persecution by Iid Amin in Uganda in the 1970s. More recently Britain has accepted thousands of refugees fleeing persecution from several countries.
  • Another significant push factor is the high levels of unemployment in some southern and eastern European countries – Spain for example has youth unemployment of around 50%.

Explaining the reasons for emmigration from the UK

Historically the UK has been a net exporter of people. Two of the main reasons for emmigration include:

  • To take advantage of better employment opportunities
  • To have a higher standard of living – To benefit from the lower cost of living abroad in retirement.
  • If we go back into long term history, we could even add ‘colonial conquest’ to list – much early emigration was linked to the British Empire’s desire to control resources in other parts of the world.

The consequences of immigration for the United Kingdom

To follow!