England Social Stratification

Social Stratification

Classes and Castes. Class is the primary way in which people approach social stratification. The upper class (the landed gentry, the titled nobility, and members of the royal family) has roughly the same social position it has had since the nineteenth century, when the middle classes began to compete successfully with the landed interests for influence. However, the upper class lost official political influence (and credibility) in the twentieth century. The major change in England's social identity structure has been the shrinking number of workers in manufacturing and the increasing number of people who work in service industries. White-collar and other service workers have replaced blue-collar workers as England's economic backbone. Consequently, the middle class has increased in size and wealth, and home ownership has increased, while union membership has declined dramatically, along with the size of the traditional industrial working class.
Most workers expect unemployment at some point in their careers, especially the unskilled and uneducated. In 1983, only 5 percent of non-manual workers were unemployed. In contrast, skilled manual workers experienced 12 percent and semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers 23 percent unemployment, and manual workers combined accounted for 84 percent of the unemployed.
England is becoming a society of the included and the excluded. There has been a sharp rise in long-term unemployment. The nature of work in a fluid economy does not support long-term employment

A busy street in Scarborough, York. English architecture is a unique blend of old and new.

for low-skilled and moderately skilled workers, and this is reflected in the rise in part-time (24.7 percent of the 1999 workforce), and multiple-job workers. Homelessness has become a fact of English life, with 102,410 families in England accepted as homeless in 1997 alone. The richest class has increased its share of the national income and national assets. In 1995, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population owned half the assets controlled by households. In 1997 the income of the top 20 percent of households was four times that of the bottom 20 percent. Meanwhile, those earning less than half of the median doubled between 1979 and 1998, reaching 10 percent.
Ethnic minorities have not fared well in the new economic environment. For all minority men, unemployment was 17 percent in the period 1986–1988, for example, compared with 10 percent for whites. Ten years on, in the period 1997–1998, unemployment rates of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and blacks were more than three times those for whites. Indians, on the other hand, have faired better, currently occupying a central position in the middle class as entrepreneurs and in the professions, enjoying chances of employment more comparable to whites.
Symbols of Social Stratification. Many of the traditional symbols of social difference have undergone change. Clothing and other consumer goods historically were indicators of class, but are now more ambiguous. Most consumer goods are widely available, and the clothing and fashion industries recycle styles so quickly that rank and clothing do not always correspond. Education, which used to be a clear way to divide people into classes, has also lost some of its defining power. Private primary and secondary schools increased their share of school age children through 1990, and higher education has expanded the number of places available to those who want postsecondary training; by the mid 1990s more than 30 percent of students age eighteen were attending a university. Oxford and Cambridge have been accepting students from an increasingly broad socioeconomic spectrum, and students now have many more universities to choose from. Accent also has become a less reliable class signifier.

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Indonesian Interference In Learning English Cultural Studies

Indonesian interference can be found in form of sentences in any aspects such as pronunciation, especially in grammar and vocabulary. Grammar and vocabulary cannot be separated because they are included as the important elements that depend on each other. Students who have the best concepts in grammar, it must be the students have also the knowledge of words. Interference is caused by humans' first language or mother tongue that influences a second language. So, interference refers to humans when they use or adapt from their first language to say a word in second or foreign language (www.britishcouncil.org).

What is it like for Indonesians to live in London?

Like any other place, there are positives and negatives to living in London / UK. For starters: living cost is super high here. I agree with that estimate of £30K, BUT having said that, I know a lot of young people who earn very little and still manage to have a good time in London. Depends on what you're prepared to tolerate. Some share rooms, some live further out from the city centre, etc.

If you're a student, or young professionals, sharing a flat is your best bet to live comfortably and also cheaply. Have a look at housemate-wanted ads on gumtree.co.uk : you get a better idea of how much accommodation will cost. It is still possible to rent a room (with bills thrown in) for around £100-150 a week, depending on the area. Anything under £100 a week: watch out for scams or really horrible places. Rooms south of the river are generally cheaper than north of the river. Food / groceries is somewhere around £50-80 a week, public transport is around £30 a week (based on zone 1-2 oyster card--which is the transport card system in London). 

Java Language in Indonesia

Java language is the language used ethnicity resident in the Java Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java. In addition, the Java language is also used by people who live in some other areas such as Banten (especially Serang, Cilegon and Tangerang) and West Java (especially the northern coastal region that includes Karawang, Subang, Indramayu and Cirebon).

Among the approximately 746 regional languages in Indonesia, Java occupies the highest position as the most widely used language. It is quite reasonable because the population of Java spelled out very much and dominate. In fact, Java language used in some countries out there as a medium of communication. One of them is Suriname that in fact the population is Javanese people exiled by the Dutch.