1.1 The Research Problem

The rewards available to [AIs] were .... not dependent on higher education or intellectual inquiry and interest. Rather, the tradition was that of 'hewers of wood' and drivers of locomotives. But it was a prideful tradition, not in intellectual and cultural achievement but in achievement of a more mundane character (Gist and Wright, 1973: 124).

The above statement typifies the view held by most researchers and many Indians about the AIs in India. Over the last hundred years the AIs in India have held mainly middle and lower level positions in Government. With Indian independence in 1947, and the withdrawal of the British, many of the jobs that had been reserved for AIs began to be taken over by often better educated Indians. The AIs believing that they had no future in India emmigrated, first to England, then to Australia and Canada.

The AI diaspora resulted in AIs travelling to new countries where little or nothing was known about them. No longer were they an identifiable group with a particular niche in society. The AIs now had the opportunity to build a new identity in Australia. No longer were they part of a group that had particular stereotypes attached to them. The AIs in Australia were just another immigrant group that had to establish themselves. Where the AIs in India had lived in small cohesive communities now few if any Australians had heard of them. In the words of an Australian AI, "I hardly ever hear the word Anglo-Indian".

The question to be explored in the present study is firstly, to what extent are the AIs attaining in Australia, educationally and socio-economically. Secondly, is it possible to explain their attainment or lack of it in terms of Ogbu's (1978; 1991) caste theory.

1.2 The Investigation
In order to gauge the influence of different factors on AI attainment in educational and socio-economic attainment in Australia, it was necessary at the outset to benchmark their attainment. To do so, the establishment of a conceptual paradigm that defined factors that influenced attainment was needed.

The main conceptual framework used was Ogbu's cultural ecological approach, or caste theory. An econometric approach was also emphasised to assess comparative achievement between groups (Jones, 1992a; 1992b). In terms of methodology both a qualitative and a quantitative approach was used to triangulate on the research problem. Thus a highly statistical, econometric approach was used in combination with structured interviews to explore the research problem.

1.3 Setting of the Investigation

The examination of AI educational and socio-economic attainment in Australia was selected as the main issue to be explored. Without exception, research examining AI educational and socio-economic attainment in India and England has shown that AIs tend to do poorly. Both India (Haq, 1989; Shah and Vaishnav, 1989) and England (Rickards, 1989; Figueroa, 1984; 1989; Lobo, 1988) are, compared to Australia, relatively stratified societies. The issues of class and caste are of more importance in dictating how well an individual attains in India and England. Given that AIs have attained poorly, according to past research, at issue is whether their attainment levels are better in Australia.

1.4 Significance of the Investigation

The present study is significant at a number of different levels. First, it contributes to the literature on different ethnic groups in Australia. As such it helps build up a profile of the diverse poly-ethnic society that is modern day Australia. Secondly, this study deals with an unusual Asian group; one that has many European characteristics, both physical and cultural. The AIs have English as their mother tongue, Christianity as their religion and are highly westernised. Thirdly, other studies have dealt with AIs in Australia only in passing (Bilimoria and Ganguly-Scrase, 1988; Moore, 1986a). Fourth, none of the studies dealing with the AIs has adopted the highly quantitative and empirical approach taken in the present study. Fifth, few if any Australian researchers have used caste theory to explore why people who may not have attained in their country of origin apparently do so in Australia

1.5 Definition of Terms

In the present study an econometric analysis is used to compare the AIs with UKDs and ADs. For the purpose of the present study AIs are Anglo-Indians, that is people who had both parents born on the Indian sub-continent and are of European descent. UKDs are people of UK descent, that is both their parents were born in the United Kingdom and Ireland and they speak only English at home. ADs are people of Australian descent, that is both their parents were born in Australia and they speak only English at home.

The econometric phase of the study consists of two parts, in the first part the definition of AIs that appears in the paragraph above was used. In the second part, because of variable constraints, a new definition of AI was needed. The second definition of AI, used in the study, was that of a person who had both parents born on the Indian sub-continent and Sri Lanka, were Christian, and spoke only English at home. Variables such as participation and unemployment rates, hourly income and a substantial number of explanatory variables will be defined later in the study.

1.6 Organisation of the Study

This study is organised into nine chapters. The present chapter, sets out the research problem, the investigation, its setting and significance, the definition of the terms and the organisation of the study.

Chapter two provides a background and historical review of the AIs. This chapter begins with a discussion detailing the beginning of the AIs in European settlements in India over five hundred years ago. The lack of European women meant that European males married Indian women and AI history in India began. Well into the 18th century AIs were able to hold senior positions in the East India company and other European organisations. With the arrival of a more advanced form of colonialism, the AIs were excluded from all but the menial positions.

In the 19th century the AI position improved somewhat. The Indian mutiny, during which the AIs had stood with the British, and the coming of the railways and telegraph had resulted in the AIs being provided technical positions. The British believed that the AIs were more likely to support them in times of instability than the Indians. The British established technical institutes to train AIs for jobs in the railways and telegraph services. While this ensured that many AIs had jobs, this type of education helped cap aspiration levels for the AIs educationally and with regard to jobs. The second chapter, concludes with a discussion dealing with some preliminary work showing how the AIs are performing in Australia and how many of them live in there.

Chapter three deals with the main theoretical framework used in the study: the cultural ecological caste theory of Ogbu (1978; 1991). The chapter begins with a brief discussion of Australian research that has been conducted with regard to immigrant educational and socio-economic attainment. The change in theoretical perspective is discussed along with the context of Ogbu's theory in Australia.

Caste theory has two main components, a structuralist component and an environmental component. Ogbu's primary thesis is that, if a particular group is discriminated against consistently, this group begins to think of itself as a caste group. Members of a caste group believe that there are insurmountable barriers to their achieving socio-economic success and as a result they lose their drive to succeed. This acceptance of failure is then passed on to their children who in turn fail to aspire toward academic achievement. The result is a vicious circle where the member of a caste group can seldom attain academic and socio-economic success.

One of the few ways for a caste group to change its situation is to emmigrate. If members of the caste group emmigrate to an environment where they believe that they can attain socio-economic success, their attitudes to education may change remarkably. Their children may begin to strive to attain academically and continue to strive in the face of sometimes substantial barriers. Academic success often follows and then leads to professional careers and socio-economic success.

The psychological consequences of being a member of a caste group are discussed. Among the problems that caste members experience are the long term consequences of inferior education, a resistance to the dominant culture, the development of an oppositional identity, creative inversion and a particular frame of mind that leads them not to learn. One of the psychological strategies to break out of the caste group is to become raceless or achromistic. This involves the caste member taking on characteristic of the usually white upper caste. Achromism or racelessness then becomes an upwardly mobile strategy. Chapter three concludes with a critique of Ogbu's theory by a number of authors.

Chapter four deals with the issue of AI academic attainment, mainly in India. The findings of a number of researchers are presented along with their explanations for why AIs fail to attain academically. The chapter emphasises a recent study dealing with AI academic attainment in India conducted by Lobo (1994). While most of the studies dealing with AI educational and socio-economic attainment in India is relatively old, Lobo's study is recent. Unfortunately for the AIs, Lobo's (1994) findings mirror that of studies completed by other researchers.

Chapter five deals with the methodology of the study. Often social research takes a qualitative or quantitative approach. Both these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses and as a result the strategy of triangulation is used in the present study. The objective is to build on the strengths of the two approaches and nullify their weaknesses.

While qualitative research is "holistic and contextual" quantitative research focuses on the testing of specific hypotheses. This approach uses the natural sciences as its model and while it does not always emphasises experimental design, it usually uses statistical methods to analyse its data. Quantitative research is characterised both by its focus on producing quantified data and by its emphasis on a research process which results in numbers which can be analysed using statistical packages and multivariate statistics. In contrast qualitative methodologies uses observation or unstructured interviews to gather their data.

After covering the strengths and weaknesses inherent in qualitative and quantitative analysis a justification is made for triangulation. The mono-methodological rubric that holds many social scientists is criticised and a case is put for methodological interactionism. Chapter five concludes with a discussion dealing with ethical issues involved in conducting research, among them entering, working in and exiting the field. This section is followed by the hypotheses.

Chapter six deals with a review of the Australian research literature in the areas of labour force participation, unemployment and hourly income. Particular emphasis was paid to the issues of unemployment and hourly income and how to analyse this data using regression models.

Most research on participation rates indicates that while immigrants do initially have lower participation rates than the Australian born they quickly achieve levels that are comparable. However, recent work indicates that when participation rates are standardised for age, participation rates for immigrants drop sharply relative to the Australian born.

Unemployment rates for immigrants have become higher than the Australian born in recent years. This difference can be partly attributed to changed market conditions where employers require skills and qualifications specific to Australia. Research studies have consistently shown overseas qualifications and work experience are, relatively speaking, devalued by Australian employers, and as a result do not reduce unemployment rates as much as expected. One of the few exceptions to the above is work experience and qualifications from the U.K.

In general, immigrants have hourly earnings that are about the same as that of the Australian born. This is despite the fact that immigrants should earn slightly more than the Australian born given their greater work experience and qualifications. Australian employers appear to devalue overseas work experience and qualifications and penalise weak English language competence. This latter issue is not relevant in the case of the present study since AIs are native English language speakers.

Chapter seven discusses the quantitative findings of the study. It deals with census data from both the 1986 census and 1991 census. It presents the findings of the study under a number of major headings; participation rates, unemployment rates and hourly earnings. In general, the findings indicate that the AIs are attaining relatively well both educationally and socio-economically in Australia. This finding was in direct contrast to all the previous research findings dealing with AIs.

Chapter eight discusses the qualitative findings of the study. It does this under a number of different headings guided by the theoretical framework of Ogbu. Unstructured interviews were conducted with fifteen AIs presently living in Australia, Canada and England. An attempt was made to develop a cross cultural perspective with regard to the issue of caste.

Issues assessed include the job ceiling, having a third world yardstick for success, the messages from parents regarding academic and job attainment, language as a caste marker, the effect of Indian schooling and the effect of prejudice. In general, AIs from Australia indicated that they perceived that there were substantially more opportunities to attain academic and socio-economic success in Australia. Most respondents indicated that compared to India, AIs in Australia could go as far as they wished educationally and career wise.

Chapter nine, provides a summary of the findings in Chapters seven and eight. It attempts to provide an explanation for AI attainment in Australia and India. It also discusses the theoretical and research implications emerging from the findings of the present study.