scholarly journals Re-Imagining Social Mobility: The Role of Relationality, Social Class and Place in Qualitative Constructions of Mobility

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042098512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Folkes
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Key Techniques ◽  
Class Community

Discussions around social mobility have increasingly gained traction in both political and academic circles in the last two decades. The current, established conceptualisation of social mobility reduces ‘success’ down to individual level of educational achievement, occupational position and income, focusing on the successful few who rise up and move out. For many in working-class communities, this discourse is undesirable or antithetical to everyday life. Drawing upon 13 interviews with 9 families collected as part of an ethnographic study, this article asks, ‘how were social (im)mobility narratives and notions of value constructed by residents of one working-class community?’ Its findings highlight how alternative narratives of social (im)mobility were constructed; emphasising the value of fixity, anchorage, and relationality. Three key techniques were used by participants when constructing social (im)mobility narratives: the born and bred narrative; distancing from education as a route to mobility; and the construction of a distinct working-class discourse of fulfilment. Participants highlighted the value of anchorage to place and kinship, where fulfilment results from finding ontological security. The findings demonstrate that residents of a working-class community constructed alternative social mobility narratives using a relational selfhood model that held local value. This article makes important contributions to the theorisation of social mobility in which it might be understood as a collective rather than individual endeavour, improving entire communities that seek ontological security instead of social class movement and dislocation.

“I Need Help!” Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School

2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (6) ◽  
pp. 862-882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica McCrory Calarco
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Unequal Opportunities ◽  
Do So

What role do children play in education and stratification? Are they merely passive recipients of unequal opportunities that schools and parents create for them? Or do they actively shape their own opportunities? Through a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse, public elementary school, I show that children’s social-class backgrounds affect when and how they seek help in the classroom. Compared to their working-class peers, middle-class children request more help from teachers and do so using different strategies. Rather than wait for assistance, they call out or approach teachers directly, even interrupting to make requests. In doing so, middle-class children receive more help from teachers, spend less time waiting, and are better able to complete assignments. By demonstrating these skills and strategies, middle-class children create their own advantages and contribute to inequalities in the classroom. These findings have implications for theories of cultural capital, stratification, and social reproduction.

scholarly journals Solidarity, stance, and class identities

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 665-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Snell
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Market Research ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Using Data

AbstractScholars have explained working-class speakers’ continued use of stigmatised vernaculars as a response to their relative powerlessness in relation to the standard language market. Research has shown how, in the face of this powerlessness, working-class communities turn to group solidarity, and use of the vernacular is seen as part of this more general orientation. As a result, two competing social values—status and solidarity—have featured prominently in discussions around language and class. I expand these discussions using data from a linguistic ethnographic study of children's language in Teesside, England. I argue that meanings related to status and solidarity operate at multiple levels and cannot be taken for granted, and demonstrate that vernacular forms thatlackstatus within the dominant sociolinguistic economy may be used toassertstatus within local interactional use. I further advance discussion of the ways local vernaculars might be intimately linked to classed subjectivities. (Social class, variation, solidarity, status, stance, indexicality, identity, interaction, ethnography)*

scholarly journals Pronouns and identity: A case study from a 1930s working-class community

ICAME Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-134
Author(s):  
Ivor Timmis
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Community

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between certain pronoun uses and identity in a 1930s working class community. It is based on a corpus of informal conversations drawn from the Mass-Observation archive, a sociological and anthropological study of the Bolton (UK) working class at this time. The article argues that certain pronoun uses in the corpus can only be explained as homophoric reference, a kind of reference which depends on implicit agreement about the intended referent of the pronoun. The article then discusses the basis on which this implicit agreement could operate: shared culture and knowledge and a tight network of social relations. In the conclusion, two particular questions are raised: 1) How far can the homophoric reference described be related to social class? 2) When does (dialect) grammar become pragmatics?

scholarly journals The ‘dual tension’ created by negotiating upward social mobility and habitus: A generational study of skilled working-class men, their sons and grandsons following deindustrialization

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (7) ◽  
pp. 891-911
Author(s):  
George Karl Ackers
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Intergenerational Study ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Generational Study ◽  
Upward Social Mobility

This article presents an intergenerational study of 28 skilled working-class men’s life stories of negotiating social mobility in the wake of deindustrialization. This contributes to emerging qualitative research that aims to build a framework that understands the personal tensions social mobility creates for individuals. In this study, the tensions that men experienced were not exclusively the consequence of ‘habitus clivé’, i.e. men feeling a dislocation from their working-class backgrounds as they climbed the occupational ladder. Men’s tensions also arose from internalizing the generational pressure to improve their occupational position. Pressed by these competing tensions, men developed a ‘ getting-on outlook’ over their careers, which meant that each generation pursued upward social mobility while also seeking to have the integrity of their working lives authenticated by their parents. To build on habitus, Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame’s description of the ‘dual tension’ is advanced as a means to frame the conflict between belonging and individuality that social mobility provoked. This article suggests this ‘dual tension’ could be reduced by families in a process named ‘authentication’. ‘Authentication’ reflects intergenerational dialogues and practices developed by the younger generations to have their achieved status recognized as in keeping with their family background.

scholarly journals Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian A Betthäuser
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Level ◽  
Social Fluidity

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

scholarly journals Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Betthäuser
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Level ◽  
Social Fluidity

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between indi- viduals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

scholarly journals Understanding the Social Mobility Chances of Children from Working- Class Backgrounds in Britain: How Important are Cognitive Ability and Locus of Control?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Andreas Betthäuser ◽  
Mollie Bourne ◽  
Erzsebet Bukodi
Keyword(s):  
Locus Of Control ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Class Effect ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Parental Class

Research in social stratification has shown that children from working-class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labour market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro-level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual-level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35 per cent of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20 per cent of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labour market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.

Achieving Social Mobility Through Education: An Ethnographic Study of African American Parents

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashland Thompson ◽  
Sherry C. Eaton ◽  
Linda M. Burton ◽  
Whitney Welsh ◽  
Jonathan Livingston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
African American Parents

What’s Good for George Sánchez Is Good for Boyle Heights: Regenerative Scholarship, Urban Racism, Gentrification, and East LA Interchange

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Estrada
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Pollution ◽  
Metropolitan Regions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Boyle Heights ◽  
Good For ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Deed Restrictions ◽  
Class Community

The inclusive ideals of George Sánchez have helped shape a new generation of academics who have promoted connections with nonacademic organizations. This article discusses how Sánchez has continued these efforts through his pivotal contributions to an award-winning documentary focusing on the multiethnic, working-class community of Boyle Heights: Betsy Kalin’s film East LA Interchange (2015). East LA Interchange’s greatest contribution to the generative scholarship Sánchez emphasizes is its critical analysis of modern urban problems, utilizing history as a tool for social change. The story of Boyle Heights is not just a history of a single working-class community with a diverse culture. It is also a tale of a neighborhood trying to solve real world problems such as gentrification, unaffordable housing, community displacement, and urban pollution. The film portrays these difficulties in the present while showing that they originated decades ago. Sánchez and East LA Interchange are at their best when they provide the historical contexts of contemporary problems, emphasizing that history is not only the study of the past. Rather, history is the unending dialogue between the past, present, and future, and any significant discourse on today’s urban ills must be rooted in the past. For students and others interested in the diverse communities common in many US metropolitan regions, East LA Interchange has much to offer regarding the issues of immigration, redlining, deed restrictions, political activism, freeway construction, living with racially and ethnically diverse community members, and the nationwide problem of gentrification. These themes, especially gentrification, are the primary focus of this article.

Mary Barton

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Deep Sympathy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Community

‘It's the masters as has wrought this woe; it's the masters as should pay for it.’ Set in Manchester in the 1840s - a period of industrial unrest and extreme deprivation - Mary Barton depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men, the suffering of the poor, and the workmen's angry response, is the story of Mary herself: a factory-worker's daughter who attracts the attentions of the mill-owner's son, she becomes caught up in the violence of class conflict when a brutal murder forces her to confront her true feelings and allegiances. Mary Barton was praised by contemporary critics for its vivid realism, its convincing characters and its deep sympathy with the poor, and it still has the power to engage and move readers today. This edition reproduces the last edition of the novel supervised by Elizabeth Gaskell and includes her husband's two lectures on the Lancashire dialect.

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