British (English) society from an immigrant’s (mine actually) perspective, part 1

British society seems to be more stratified socially than in my native Poland. Demography is also much more diverse. Big cities like London or Birmingham seem to be dominated by immigrants, migrants, naturalised British and their descendants.  That ethnic and cultural mosaic has different economical, social and political flavours – depending where you look. 

Generally, in terms of income, most migrants – especially perform low-paid and unskilled jobs but there are also quite a few working professionals and shop/restaurant owners.  Migrants/ immigrants and their descendants tend to be more religious than native British, sometimes with strong social and political views; for example, Islamic Londonistan would serve as an infamous example of attempts to introduce Islamic Sharia Law - recently through bullying 'Sharia law zone' stickers. In fact Sharia courts already exist throughout England as a clrear parallel judiciary system in civil (for now) cases. Another negative phenomenon is ghettoisation resulting in whole areas dominated by particular ethnic group and pressure to create more faith schools.


It must be said however, radicals who do not want to integrate remain a minority within minority. Most immigrants try to integrate and get along with others around. 

While integration seems to be a vocal political problem within muslim communities it remains a social one for most ethinc groups. Immigrants who work with other immigrants in some cases have almost none contact with English language - there are many people who have been living in UK for years but they still don't speak English. I am not surprised: low-educated economical refugees often in their forties from small towns and villages across, let's say, eastern Europe; working long hours and performing low paid jobs among others like them - their contact with English is none. When they come back home they have enough energy to watch TV in their national language, eat something and go to bed.   

Old, industrial, and low-skilled white British working class has been severely affected by deindustrialisation and some communities have disintegrated leaving thousands of those who have never worked and have always lived on benefits. Additionally, those people were neither able to compete with more committed and mobile workforce coming from abroad nor motivated to it by easily accessible system of benefits. And then they become the Poor. In my perception this group is especially prone to various social diseases: addictions, junk food, petty crimes and clearly visible poor sense of fashion – or rather, a complete lack of it. They are uneducated and tend to have heavy local accents. By the way, addictions to drugs and alcohol affect heavily people from across social stratum, not just lower not-working anymore class, and often degrading people to living on benefits and supporting housing. Many people who end like this come from dysfunctional families but not always. Sometimes they were doing fine or coming from good families but they lost everything after affair with drugs followed by episodes of living on the street and crime to feed addiction. 

English working class and middle class are people who work, have families, have a car or even two, have morgage. Small business, office workers, technicians, engineers. 

Upper middle class – working professionals, business owners.

Upper class and royalty – aristocrats, prince William, the queen. 

Being in England for a while I am pretty much able to tell the difference based for example on hearing the language: Spoken English of the Poor is totally different than English spoken by educated upper classes. By the way, anybody wanting to train himself or herself in ‘the proper’ English, can take elocution lessons, which are quite expensive. Another way to tell who is who, or who aspires to become (or experience) who, is to see where those people do their shopping and what they wear. A scarf in Primark can cost £4 while in a posh shop in Cheltenham a similar one costs £40. 

To see a chart with a little bit different and more detailed social class specification, click here. 

MG