‘Winners’ and ‘losers’: the impact of education, ethnicity and gender on Muslims in the British labour market

Abstract

Utilizing the Samples of Anonymized Records from the UK 2001 Census, this article presents an analysis of the differential experiences of Muslims in the British labour market as both minority- and majority-group ethnicities in Britain. Using multinomial modelling, this article examines the class distribution (using the NS-SEC scheme) given levels of education and gender. The analysis of ethnicity, age, gender, marital status and number of children in relation to employment suggests that there are no universal characterizations that can be founded on any of these independent variables. Although Pakistanis dominate the demographic profile they are not likely to suffer the greatest. Muslim Black Africans experience harsher conditions and it could be argued that there is an ethnic colour penalty that is greater than the ethnic religion penalty for Muslims. The forces of colour racism remain omnipotent, even when testing for the impact of religion on patterns of employment inequality.