Objectives
Key objectives
1. To theorise concepts of ‘identity’ (individual and collective) and ‘community’ (e.g. work-based, ethnic, cultural, faith, political) in relation to minority ethnic workers in the workplace.
2. To explore whether minority ethnic workers are choosing community-based BME organisations or community networks (both inside and outside the workplace) as an alternative to seeking help or advice from trade unions or other organisations (e.g. CABx, CRE, law centres) and whether this is a matter of positive choice or negative experience.
3. To map the extent to which community-based BME organisations are involved in supporting BME workers to address work-related issues, exploring whether there are barriers that prevent BME workers joining, seeking advice or getting involved in trade unions.
4. To evaluate the attitudes of trade unions to working with community networks and the nature of that support and to map the extent to which such initiatives are happening in practice.
5. To explore the potential for joint working between community-based BME organisations and trade unions to address the under-representation of some BME workers in trade unions, and the potential for challenging social exclusion by developing new organising approaches in sections of the labour market where many BME workers are located (thus widening the scope of representation at work for groups of workers who are currently marginalised).
Research questions
1. Problems at work
To whom do ethnic minority workers turn for help, support and representation when they have problems at work?
- people in the workplace community (managers, colleagues, trade unions)?
- support organisations in the local community (e.g. CABx, law centres)?
- social networks within their ethnic communities (family, friends)?
- or other forms of community organisations (e.g. faith, cultural, political, social)?
2. Trade unions
- How can trade unions become more inclusive to BME workers, whose needs may differ from much of the current union membership?
- How might trade unions engage in partnerships with community organisations to challenge social exclusion?
- Are there barriers to engagement in trade unions for BME wokers?
- If so are these widespread?
- Do they have geographical specificity?
- Are new ways of organising around BME workers needed in order to provide greater representation for employment-related issues.
3. Identity
- How are collective identities are constructed among differentially racialised workers?
- What impact this has on their ability to access support for workplace problems.?
- Do these new ‘othered’ identities create feelings of community inclusion and trade union exclusion (as a consequence of racism) leading ‘cultural’ identities to take precedence over class identities?
- What happens to their (conscious or not) class identity?
- Indeed, is it possible to separate out cultural from class identities?
- To what extent does identity construction become important among minority ethnic groups, particularly among those who look inward for help and support?
4. Community and social networks
- How are ‘communities of coping’ or new forms of migrants’ shared social capital formed and sustained?
- Do people use social networks based on identification with communities to access work-related advice?
- If so, how and why do people use social networks based on identification with communities to access work-related advice?
