SHAFAQNA – A new report by the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) has found that young Muslims living in the UK are facing enormous social mobility challenges.
Analysing barriers to improved social mobility for young Muslims in education and employment, the report states that young people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi experience the greatest economic disadvantages of any faith group in UK society, despite more likely to succeed in education and go on to university than other groups of the same age.
Social mobility challenges faced by young Muslims reveals that 19.8 per cent of the Muslim population, aged between 16-74, are in full-time employment, compared to 34.9 per cent of the overall population, with 18 per cent of Muslim women of the same age bracket economically inactive, compared with six per cent of the overall population.
The report recommends that the Department for Education should put in place a careers strategy that promotes informed and inclusive choices by pupils, free from stereotypical assumptions, and that business bodies should promote greater awareness and take-up of good unconscious bias, diversity, religious literacy and cultural competence training by employers.
Alan Milburn, chair of the SMC, said: “This report paints a disturbing picture of the challenges they face to making greater social progress.”