Sectarianism at work: Accounts of employment discrimination against Irish Catholics in Scotland

Abstract

This article examines accounts of discrimination in employment against Irish Catholics in Glasgow from both majority and minority ethnic and ­religious perspectives. It reveals evidence of continuing experience of sectarian discrimination in work. Of particular note is the existence of discriminatory practice affecting Catholic (Irish-descended) attempts to move up the social scale. This evidence disputes the thoroughness of analyses which ignore discrimination experience as relevant to the current social-class position of Glasgow's Irish Catholic community. The analysis presented here also questions the practice of excluding 'white' ethnic groups from most studies of ethnicity in Britain and considers whether sectarianism or racism might most aptly describe experiences marked out by religious belonging but clearly denoting ethnic origin. As part of a wider study of prolonged and continuing health disadvantage among the Irish in Britain, it is suggested that discrimination is one component in any explanation of the health of the Irish or Irish Catholic minority, whose minority experience is usually overlooked by researchers of ethnicity.