Minority ethnic employment in the Scottish social housing sector: evidence scoping review

7. Conclusion

This review has provided a summary of the literature on minority ethnic employment in the social housing sector and relevant insights from the construction industry. Several common patterns are evident and although much has improved in the last four decades, the literature has identified pervasive and pernicious barriers for minority ethnic employees.

Two research questions informed the development of this review:

1. How many people from minority ethnic backgrounds are employed in the housing sector in Scotland, and to what extent are they employed in jobs that are appropriate to their qualifications and experience?

2. What barriers do minority ethnic groups face to employment in the social housing sector in Scotland?

Three main findings were identified.

Finding 1: There is a lack of recent research and a lack of research which is specific to minority ethnic employment in the social housing sector in Scotland.

The academic literature surveyed appeared to significantly slow in the mid-2000s. Assessment of the evidence presented in this review must be carried out with caution due to its age and uncertainty about continued relevance, given the findings have not been tested or updated by newer academic research. There is however some indication of renewed interest in the topic in recent years, pointed to by the inclusion of a small number of sources from the 2020s onwards.

The review also uncovered extremely limited research in the Scottish context. Case studies from England and the wider UK help understand how social dynamics of discrimination and business management interplay at a general level, but applying conclusions from these studies to the Scottish social housing sector is problematic due to the different contexts, including devolved administration and legislation, different regional concentrations of minority ethnic people in the population and historical differences in the development of housing associations. Only a small number of sources included here detail reviews and small scale research specific to Scotland.

Finding 2: Evidence at UK level seems to suggest that up until 10+ years ago there were specific issues concerning the adoption and enactment of equality as a core value in the social housing sector and although there has been progress in more recent years there is more to do.

An important finding from many of the dated academic studies reviewed was the absence of equality of opportunity as a core value enacted in social housing organisations and construction firms at the time the data was produced.

Without formally established practices of equality, many of the actions that governed the everyday life of social housing organisations and their staff were left up to individual (predominantly white) managers’ discretion. The literature highlighted prejudices and ignorance toward minority ethnic communities held by some (white) managers, resulting in discriminatory practices taking place knowingly or due to a lack of awareness. The absence of equality as a core value reinforced preconceived views of minority ethnic employees by allowing the influence of stereotypes and perpetuated organisational contexts in which discriminatory practices were normalised and institutionalised. What was highlighted at the time of these studies was the dearth of formal structures to safeguard the fair treatment of minority ethnic employees.

Since the time these studies were produced, much has changed. Equality is a core value stated by the Scottish Housing Regulator, LAs report and publish on equalities as set out in the Public Sector Equality Duty and the majority of individual RSLs also have organisational statements which set out their approach to equalities. However, as the Anti-Racism in Scotland: Progress Review 2023 states, structural barriers persist and not everyone has access to the same opportunities, noting that people from minority ethnic groups are often stereotyped as people with low levels of literacy or educational attainment which can impact on the opportunities available to them. Case studies reviewed in this report highlighted that lack of qualifications is not likely to be a contributing factor. Low retention rates and the scarce number of minority ethnic managers may be partly explained by limitations of organisational cultures which do not embed equality as a practice, the lack of support networks and role modelling, the predominance of discretionary management styles and the lack of minority ethnic peer support within organisations. Despite being equally qualified, minority ethnic interviewees reported that “fitting in” was a serious issue as the organisations they worked for would operate with preconceived ideas of what “good employees” should look like, do and be. Issues around “fitting in” were stronger at management level, with minority ethnic managers reporting that they often faced instances of everyday racism. Against a backdrop of structural inequality and the fact that businesses are not separate from social realms, discriminatory attitudes stemming from wider society shape behaviours towards minority ethnic employees in the social housing sector.

The main finding of the dated academic research presented in this review was that, where they existed, equality statements did not unproblematically translate into equality practices and the reform of conscious and unconscious biases. The historic lack of attention to changing organisational culture and ongoing issues with operationalising and monitoring equalities policies led to the persistence of racialised inequalities. The problem is also circular in that too few minority ethnic employees are promoted to positions of responsibility from which institutional changes can be pursued more effectively, and once minority ethnic employees make it to managerial roles organisational structures make meaningful change slow and hard to achieve. Despite this, more recent grey literature and academic reviews presented here highlight developments in improving the ways organisations in the social housing sector shape their organisational cultures, design their services and employment practices and collect data to monitor and report on addressing racialised inequalities.

Evidence from the recent UK surveys conducted by Inside Housing and BITC show that there is still discomfort about talking about race in the workplace in comparison to other protected characteristics, and employers need to be better equipped for, and have more confidence to, monitor and address the issue of race at work and understand its impact.

Finding 3: There is some equalities data available but no evidence of lived experience

There are significant gaps and limitations in the evidence on minority ethnic employment and minority ethnic employees’ experiences in the social housing sector. One of the objectives of this review was to quantify the number of people from minority ethnic backgrounds in the social housing sector work force, and examine whether the jobs and grades they carry out match their skills and experience. Whilst it has been possible to provide some figures for minority ethnic staff in Scottish RSLs and LAs to 2019, the type of data available was not suitable to address the question of whether minority ethnic staff were working in roles appropriate to their level of education and skill. Further, changes to how data is collected and reported via annual returns on the Scottish Social Housing Charter mean there is no source of continuous time series data against which to assess progress. Authors of more recent sources cited in this review have pointed to the need for more contemporary academic research, and further work to embed systematic collection and publication of staff ethnicity data.

There are case studies where lived experience data might show positive movement towards equality of opportunity for minority ethnic people in the social housing sector at the time the data was produced, but there is a lack of up to date research about minority ethnic people’s experiences and the actions of industry actors. The limited evidence suggests there may still not be equality in the sector. The discontinuity of qualitative research on this topic and the inability to source robust employment data specific to minority ethnic employment in the sector across time, and in sufficient detail, also makes it difficult to draw out the experiences of ethnic sub-groups and explore effects of age and gender. Some of the evidence from the older academic studies focusing on England is rich in social experiences from which a somewhat comprehensive picture can be inferred about the situation at the time they were produced. However there is a dearth of recent academic studies and research based on large sample sizes and quantitative evidence to assess the way equality of opportunity has developed (or stayed the same) in the social housing sector in recent years.

The impacts of equality and diversity policies are unequally distributed, partial and developing and aspects of both the more positive and the more negative pictures described in this review provide insights. Although it is likely that there is still some way to go, there is demonstrable progress being made and genuine plans exist amongst those organisations enacting best practice which can be learned from and widened. However, until and unless robust quantitative data can be collected and analysed, and contemporary academic studies are produced which research minority ethnic people’s experiences of employment in the Scottish social housing sector, gaps in understanding will remain.