Migrant Vocational Mobility

Introduction

The factor of mobility which could be catalysed by employment related education, such as that of vocational education, is a considerably extensive subject. This generally involves aspects such as the occupational mobility concerning the changing of profession, transition from educational fields to working environments and social mobility. For those studying social work, seeking social work dissertation help can provide valuable insights into these dynamics. This final component of the entire structure of mobility is significant from the perspective that social mobility, on part of the disadvantaged groups such as those comprised by the migrant communities in the European context, could impart an extensive and profound impact on the social fabric of the multicultural and multi-ethnic countries of Europe such as that of the United Kingdom.

The dimensions of vocational education assisted social mobility could be identified to be multiple in number. The aspect of international migration is markedly different from that of the internal commuting or migration of personnel in a cross border manner. Thus, the implications are also profound and much extensive regarding the impact of such migrant communities which could become evident upon the social fabric of the host country. Regarding the corresponding study, the country of the United Kingdom would be focused upon since the incidence of international migration from different continents has been consistently adding to the general ethnic and demographic diversity within the population base of the UK in the previous five decades. According to Bathmaker et al (2016), the United Kingdom had been always considered to be one of the prime destinations of international migrants and various disadvantaged ethnic minorities which now formulate the overall structure of the UK populace, had been constituted by the migrant population and most of these migrant minority groups had been residing at the United Kingdom for considerably long durations. The post World War Two migration from the various former British colonies or the current Commonwealth nations had contributed to the development of various sections of the migrant population at the United Kingdom. From an academic and chronological perspective, according to Bertaux and Thompson (2017), various different dimensions are responsible for the current socio-economic disadvantaged conditions of the migrant ethnic minority groups. These could be understood to be the income, educational background, achievement of employment and living conditions.

The consequential diversity which has emerged within the UK social fabric could be further comprehended as the cumulative effect of the factors which are directly related to the processes and different phases of migration as well as the economic, human and social capital of the migrant communities which have been invested within the UK social structure. As per the opinion of Cantor (2017), such extent of socio-economic and human capital of the migrant communities have to be evaluated from the perspective of the effect of differential opportunities which could be availed over the entire period of time through which the process of migration had taken place concerning the arrival of the migrant populaces at the UK. This could be further assessed, as has been observed by Eichhorst et al (2015), concerning the factors such as the general age group of the under privileged migrant communities, the duration of time which has been spent by each of the migrant minorities within the United Kingdom, the different possibilities regarding the experiences which the under privileged migrant have had to encounter and the incidences of discrimination and racism which could have been prevalent at various points of time during the attempts by the disadvantaged migrant communities to gain lateral social mobility, These factors are responsible to shape the current social position of the migrants within the UK. However, one of the most significant aspects in this regard has been observed by Erel (2016) to be that of the exact locations of settlement and geographical mobility prospects of such disadvantageous migrant communities within the United Kingdom, including that of the Eastern London region where one of such migrant communities, having been comprised of the African migrants, could be found. The characteristics of such particular localities where the migrant population at UK could be concentrated, are of vital significance since the socio-economic opportunities available at these places in conjunction with the various general environmental prospects, tend to emerge as the critical determinants of the course of mobility, both in terms of social and geographical, of the migrant communities which are under privileged at UK.

Main body

In this respect, the deterministic approach regarding the evaluation of comparative determination of the social and economic origins and dynamics between the migrant and non-migrant communities at the UK, could be considered to the effect that the characteristics of the human capital invested by the migrant population, in terms of educational qualification, especially, could be outlined to be the instruments of either ascending or descending social mobility for such disadvantaged migrants. Explanations regarding the outcomes and the diversity concerning these groups could be better developed in this regard as well when the effect of Vocational Educational Training or the VET could be analysed from a research perspective. Thus, at the onset of such discussions, Favell (2015) has suggested that it is of critical necessity that addressing some fundamental questions should be undertaken. These questions could be identified in the manner of the best possible methods through with the investigation into the possible patterns of the ethnic migrant community based intergeneration social mobility could be performed, the processes through which the backgrounds of the social classes formulated by the migration impacts as well as the ethnic identity based particularities of such communities could be evaluated and finally, the procedures through which the impact of the mediation of educational achievements by the under privileged migrants of different nationalities could be comprehended and categorised. Such impacts are to be considered in terms of the effects which these could impart upon the subsequent generations of the various migrant groups. The research of Hanushek et al (2017), highlights the fact that educational affiliations are prime sources of the determinants regarding the patterns of different intergenerational social mobility scenarios which could be observed within the migrant populaces of the UK. Furthermore, the aspects of intersections of the habitation locations and distinct social environmental impacts such as experience of discrimination could as well influence the upward mobility of such migrant populations. The element of economic and social disadvantages could be envisaged to be critical from the perspective of driving home the efficacies or particularities of the impacts of Vocational Educational Training on the disadvantaged migrant ethnic minority groups of the UK.

Furthermore, the question of education assisted social mobility of the disadvantaged migrant groups at the UK has been consistently gaining the attention of the research focus from different perspectives since this specific aspect of the social transformation and stability based dynamics of the United Kingdom could be considered to be responsible for contributions towards the attainment of the maximised potentials for growth regarding the current national and international socio-economic conditionalities. Heckman and Mosso (2014) has observed that economic growth and expansion of the gross national income improvement possibilities are considerably time consuming and uneven processes. This could be better explained from the perspective of the imbalance between regional excess production capacity and dearth of human resources within the United Kingdom. Under such perspectives, it could be observed that some specific socio-economic conditions within the UK could be devoid of the capacity of growth and production while other particular regions could be undergoing excess capability and dearth of investment regarding such capacity scenario. The significance of vocational educational training could be ascertained from the factor that maximisation of human resource investment potentials could only be a reality if the unhindered flow of the human resource capitals, in the form of skilled and experienced as well as semi-skilled working personnel, could be facilitated towards the sectors which could provide the highest rates of return on such investment of human resource capital. This could equalise the balance between excess demands and excess supply in the form of providing the unemployed with the vacancies which they would be required to fulfil. This could further provide the progression platform to the disadvantaged and under privileged migrant communities since the availability of particular tradecraft as well as technical knowledge and information through the vocational educational training could enable the migrant working population and the associated subsequent generations to contribute profoundly and significantly towards the establishment of a much better functioning and developed society within the social precincts of the United Kingdom. In the subsequent research study, the focus has been generally concentrated on the overall efficacy of the role of vocational education in enabling the marginalised sections migrant communities of UK to obtain intergenerational social mobility in terms of the current conditionalities of the host country of UK.

From the research perspective of Herbert (2016), the ethnocentric and contra-identification theory of social mobility could be developed on a multipronged approach which could outline the research perception that the lateral mobility of social groups or communities such as those of the migrant communities currently residing in UK, could be determined through the shifts and rankings of multiplicity of dimensions such as patterns of occupations and social influence by the particular communities under consideration. One particular factor has to be kept in mind in this regard that for such perceptual promulgations of the ethnocentric and contra-identification theoretical constructs, the perceptions of the individuals have to be oriented towards the acceptance of other members of the society as equals and also as qualified and sensible enough to formulate direct working associations.

From such as theoretical perspective, according to Iveson and Deary (2017), the Vocational Educational Training courses could be segmented into four different categories. The first one could be identified as the vocational education which could be provided at the pre-employment phase where the personnel from the subsequent generations of the migrant communities could be provided with the information regarding the gaining of initial and primary entry into the targeted fields of employment. Kubal (2016) has observed that in most of the European countries including that of the United Kingdom, these courses of vocational educational trainings are mostly furnished through a joint mechanism involving the schools and workplace based impartation of on the job learning processes and such services are mostly operated by the UK national Ministry of Education and other non-governmental institutions such as philanthropic and human resource development groups.

To this effect, the second category is related to the advancement of the training upgrades which is performed for the purpose of enhancement of the skills and abilities of working personnel, involving both the migrant workers from disadvantaged groups as well as the non-migrant workers and this is particularly oriented towards benefiting the employed personnel. This factor is of grave significance since this could administer the migrant working personnel the opportunity to select from a range of available options of different job prospects and this also could negate the constriction of having to be engaged with only singular job prospects which has been observed, as per the research of Li and Heath (2016), to be the case of occupational preferences amongst the migrant working populace. The social mobility factor also gets enhanced in this respect since the availability of differential capabilities and acquisition of skills which could be taught under the vocational educations courses, could equip the migrant community members to exercise the likelihood of engagement in preferential jobs for them. This could be analysed from the perspective of greater efficiency improvement involving the unskilled or semi-skilled members of the migrant working communities. The focus is always on the swiftly changing technological directives and work processes which have a direct bearing on the overall employment environment which currently could be in existence at the post global economic recession conditions. The consequential outcomes of such changes could be comprehended in the manner of greater complications in the current occupational fields which the current jobs with considerable greater remuneration could be endowed with. Thus, regarding the UK based corporate and industrial sectors, it is always necessary for any unskilled or partially skilled employee to learn and become sound in terms of utilisation of the latest technical novelties so that availing the greater complicated and precision performance based tasks which could yield greater dividends in terms of social mobility and income enhancement, could become less of a difficulty especially for the members of migrant communities who could be explicitly hampered concerning their dearth of training in operating in a technologically demanding work environment.

The third category provides the perspective of reinforcement in terms of previously provided vocational education. This is particularly beneficial for the migrant communities who have been disadvantaged in terms of having to lose their occupation and employment. Thus, it is pertinent to understand that retraining or reinforcement of the migrant workforces through providing vocational education courses to the entire range of demographic assets of such migrant communities is purposefully oriented towards assisting the personnel who could have already gained any form of experience in the general or specialised labour market. According to McKnight and Reeves (2017), this could as well be reflective of the absence of any direct connotation or resonance from the developmental perspectives regarding the occupation which the migrant working personnel could be undergoing at the time of reception of such vocational educational training.

Finally, the research of Pugacheva et al (2016), highlights the category of vocational educational training oriented towards providing remedial solutions to the existential contingencies experienced by the socio-economically migrant community members. To be more specific, such remedial vocational educational courses and task specific training are effectively formulated for the purpose of empowerment of the marginalised migrant community members in terms of accessing of better and more financially potent occupational options. The integration of the migrant community based working personnel in the mainstream labour communities and employee reservoir could be considered as another objective in this regard, as has been propounded by the research of Samuel and Hadjar (2015). In this context, the focal point of vocational education impacts on the targeted personnel could be underlined in the measure of empowering and reinforcing the individuals or entire communities who could have been devoid of any form of earning or employment for a considerably long period of time, such as semi-skilled working personnel who could have lost their jobs due to the advent of the global economic recession and the subsequent slowdown in the UK national economy. Another focal point in terms of the improvement of the human resources in this regard is to provide sufficient educational reinforcement to the disadvantaged migrant community members who could have never been in a position to attain any practical work experience. These are mostly the section of the populace which generally depend upon public income or government subsidies such as the students or terminally unemployed.

However, according to the comprehensive research of Wrench, Rea and Ouali (2016), the overall architecture of vocational Educational Training could be broadly categorised into two procedural segments. These are primarily developed with the objective of catalysing social mobility dynamics amongst the migrant and marginalised as well as financially and social disadvantaged groups, residing at various flash points within the United Kingdom. The segments could be outlined as the Initial Vocational Educational Training (IVET) and the Continuous Educational Training (CVET). As per the observations of Erel (2016), the IVET characteristics are primarily related to the generalised vocational education as well as training of particular tradecrafts which can be provided at the earliest phases of learning and education processes, primarily to new students and learners. This phase is mostly the preparatory phase for the prospectus employment seeking personnel and thus precedes the working life initiation on part of the migrant workers under consideration. However, Favell (2015), has stated that there could be particular vocational educational training which could be provided to the migrant workforce personnel immediately after the entry into the occupational engagements could take place. These could alternatively be considered to be analogous to IVET as well. Hanushek et al (2017), has expanded this concept to include the propositions that IVET could be implemented at any specific levels within any organisation and could as well involve the extension of the educational institution based vocational training or include alternate training courses in the format of work disciplines based apprenticeships.

According to the research of Heckman and Mosso (2014), CVET is perceived as to be related with the specific vocational educational areas which the working personnel of the migrant communities could avail while they could be undergoing their work tenures. The orientation of the CVET is meant to be towards assisting partially or unskilled workers through three distinctive processes. The first one has been outlined by the opinions of Herbert (2016), as that of updating the knowledge or information of the employees under consideration. The second one could be understood to be the acquisition of new capabilities and skills such as those associated with technical domains, so as to enable the trainees to avail greater career progression opportunities within differential operational fields. The final one could be comprehended as the continuation of both the personal as well as professional development of the recipients of such vocational educational learning. The second and third categories of CVET are of critical importance since these two could specify the extent to which the availability of vocational education could offer social mobility opportunities for the disadvantaged learners including the migrant community members of the United Kingdom. The continuing vocational education as well as training could further offer the opportunity to learn throughout the duration of life and could extensively encompass various fields of education and learning such as those of formal and informal nature.

Conclusion:

At the conclusive stage, it is necessary to contextualise the points which have been effectively deliberated upon throughout the preceding study. The points of consideration have been primarily the deliberations regarding the differential elements of social mobility as a definite and tangible idea, the delineation of the conditions and the effects of the same on the current social structure of the UK based migrant communities which could be considered to be socio-economically disadvantaged and finally the discussions regarding the various facets of vocational education and training. The study has also concentrated upon the critical aspects of vocational educational support and has highlighted the most probable and evidence based approaches through which the prospect of gaining social mobility opportunities by the migrant and disadvantaged community members could be realised.

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