ABSTRACT
Young black women, whatever the occupational status of their parents, maintained high social-class aspirations. A detailed consideration of working-class West Indian migrant cultural characteristics suggested that second-generation West Indian migrant women were influenced by their parents' orientation to work and education. Positive attitudes towards education and the lack of constraint on female labour-market participation within West Indian families, it was found, accounted in part for young black women's high social-class aspirations. A crucial factor in shaping the distinct occupational aspirations of young black women was the experience of schooling. The presence of high aspirations in the context of continuing labour-market inequality acts as a clear indictment of the failure of a meritocratic ideology to provide a more egalitarian society. Inequalities based on race, gender and class remain an integral feature of this society in spite of its ideology of meritocracy.
