Subjects of Achievement: Social Mobility, Competence and Aspiration

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
David Farrugia
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Meaning Of Work ◽  
Critical Aspect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Fulfillment ◽  
Over Time

This chapter focuses on the experiences of young people from family backgrounds with a history of trades and clerical labour. The young people in this chapter also describe work as a realm of self-actualisation, but this time manifested through the achievement of concrete goals related to material success and milestones at work. For these young people, the meaning of work is self-realisation through social mobility. While these young people view work as the single most critical aspect of life determining happiness and personal fulfillment, they do not regard their entire lives as sources for the creation of value, instead focusing on specific aspects of themselves that they feel may be valued on the labour market. To this end, they identify and cultivate particular competencies or “things I am good at” that they hope can translate into skills that are of value to the labour market. Their engagement with education takes place on this basis, and their aspirations for social mobility are articulated with reference to competencies they have identified and nurtured over time. This constitutes a specifically working-class manifestation of the post-Fordist work ethic, displaying both continuities and ruptures with earlier manifestations of the work ethic.

‘A man’s work was a man’s life’

Bread Winner ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 62-85
Author(s):  
Emma Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Child Labour ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Male Identity ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Legislative Framework ◽  
Over Time

This chapter reveals the significance for work to male identity. Here, it shows how the centrality of work dominates men's autobiographies. Work was the key feature of a man's life and it was very often the motif by which male writers structured the story of their life. For most working-class men, work was equated with manhood — ‘I was a man and I knew it’. The chapter goes on to discuss how many Victorian children commenced their working lives at a considerably young age, particularly early in the reign when the place of children in the labour market was much more loosely regulated. Furthermore, to a far greater extent than girls, boys' experiences of work were shaped by the legislative framework as child labour laws became increasingly restrictive over time. This changing legal framework for child labour is clearly visible in the male autobiographies.

Passionate Subjects and the Middle-Class Self at Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
David Farrugia
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Meaning Of Work ◽  
High Unemployment

This chapter focuses on the experiences of relatively privileged or middle-class young people and explores the role of work in their identities and the practices and ethics through which they cultivate identities as workers. In this chapter, the key term that young people use to describe the meaning of work in their lives is ‘passion’. Young people describe work as (ideally) a realm of passionate self-actualisation, in which the intrinsically passionate self is realised through work, and in which preparation for work entails cultivating passion. In this sense, these young people do not differentiate between themselves at work and themselves outside of work, viewing work as one realm amongst many in which the passionate self may be realised. In another sense, young people also subsume their whole of their identities in work, and view every aspect of themselves as economically productive. Out of all of the young people in this book, they encapsulate the post-Fordist work ethic most completely. These young people are also mobile, disparaging the areas they come from as areas of high unemployment and cultivating ‘cosmopolitan’ dispositions through their work.

WHY LITTLE THINKERS ARE A BIG DEAL: THE RELEVANCE OF CHILDHOOD STUDIES TO INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-280
Author(s):  
CORINNE T. FIELD
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Education ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Over Time

Why should intellectual historians care about children? Until recently, the answer was that adults’ ideas about children matter, particularly for the history of education and the history of conceptions of the family, but children's ideas are of little significance. Beginning with Philippe Ariès in the 1960s, historians took to exploring how and why adults’ ideas about children changed over time. In these early histories of childhood, young people figured as consumers of culture and objects of socialization, but not as producers or even conduits of ideas.

scholarly journals The Resettlement of Homeless Young People: Their Experiences and Housing Outcomes

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Crane ◽  
Anthony M. Warnes ◽  
Jennifer Barnes ◽  
Sarah Coward
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Support Services ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Illegal Drug ◽  
Illegal Drug Use ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stable Employment ◽  
Housing Outcomes ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Temporary Accommodation

This article reports the experiences of 109 homeless people aged seventeen to twenty-five years in England who were resettled into independent accommodation during 2007/08. It focuses on housing, finances, employment and access to support services. After fifteen/eighteen months, 69 per cent of the young people were still in their original accommodation, 13 per cent had moved to another tenancy and 18 per cent no longer had a tenancy. Most were glad to have been resettled but found the transition very challenging, particularly with regard to managing finances and finding stable employment. The prevalence of debts increased substantially over time, and those who moved to private-rented accommodation had the poorest outcomes. People who had been in temporary accommodation more than twelve months prior to resettlement were more likely to retain a tenancy, while a history of illegal drug use and recent rough sleeping were associated negatively with tenancy sustainment.

Making ends meet: Young people, work and the criminal economy

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 136-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob White
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Young People ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts to locate changes in young people's involvement in crime, and the policing of young people, within the context of a changing political economy and the broken transitions experienced by a significant proportion of young men and young women. It begins by significant proportion of young men and young women. It begins by discussing how many young working class people have been excluded from the formal waged economy due to structural changes in the labour market. The paper then explores the relationship between the “cash crisis” affecting many unemployed school leavers, and their income and lifestyle options in the spheres of the informal waged economy, the informal unwaged economy, and the criminal economy

scholarly journals Navigating Ethnic Stigmatisation in the Educational Setting: Coping Strategies of Young Immigrants and Descendants of Immigrants in Norway

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrine Fangen ◽  
Brit Lynnebakke
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Young People ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Setting ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
Young Immigrants ◽  
Over Time

Tolerance and equality are widespread norms in the official policy of many European countries. The educational system is an arena which even more than others is meant to foster equal opportunities by giving individuals the opportunity to strive for social mobility through their educational performance. Despite this, young people from ethnic minority backgrounds experience different forms of stigmatization in school and higher education, ranging from feeling marked as different to experiencing more explicit racism. This article analyses young people’s coping strategies in order to combat or avoid such stigmatization. We will analyse the possible reasons why young people choose a particular strategy in a given situation, how successful that choice is, and changes in their choice of strategies over time. We will discuss how earlier experiences of support, encouragement and respect (or the lack thereof) inform the extent to which young people choose more approaching than avoiding strategies as a response to perceived ethnic stigmatisation in the educational setting. The empirical basis of the article is a sample of 50 biographical interviews with young people of ethnic minority backgrounds living in Norway.

Children Framing Childhoods

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Luttrell
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Diverse Community ◽  
Over Time

Urban educational research, practice, and policy is preoccupied with problems, brokenness, stigma, and blame. As a result, too many people are unable to recognize the capacities and desires of children and youth growing up in working-class communities. This book offers an alternative angle of vision—animated by young people's own photographs, videos, and perspectives over time. It shows how a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse community of young people in Worcester, Massachusetts, used cameras at different ages to capture and value the centrality of care in their lives, homes, and classrooms. The book's layered analysis of the young people's images and narratives boldly refutes biased assumptions about working-class childhoods and re-envisions schools as inclusive, imaginative, and “careful” spaces. The book challenges us to see differently and, thus, set our sights on a better future.

Dos yidishe bukh alarmirt! Towards the History of Yiddish Reading in Inter-War Poland

2003 ◽  
pp. 212-242
Author(s):  
Ellen Kellman
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Book Industry ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Cultural Activities ◽  
History Of

This chapter traces the history of Yiddish reading in inter-war Poland. Jewish public libraries played a pivotal role in working-class Jewish culture in the period between the wars. Since many young people typically left school in their early teens to enter the workforce, libraries and the cultural activities that took place in and around them enabled young people to continue to develop intellectually. The symbiosis between the Yiddish book industry and Yiddish libraries in inter-war Poland meant that the relative health or infirmity of libraries strongly affected the book industry. Thus, when the Yiddish book sounded the alarm in 1939, it was an indication of the troubled state of the libraries as well. Although the twenty-year interlude between the two world wars was an extremely difficult period for Polish Jewry, one that, with hindsight, one may see as characterized by significant losses, it was also distinguished by the tremendous creative energy of its cultural activists.

The trend over time of labour market opportunities for young people in Italy

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Mussida ◽  
Dario Sciulli
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Market Opportunities ◽  
Over Time

scholarly journals Education Inequalities and Political Behaviour of the Young in Greece in the 2010s 1

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Maloutas ◽  
Maro Pantelidou Malouta
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Political System ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Educational Trajectories ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Political Response

In this paper we briefly address two issues related to the living conditions of youth in Greece and the way these conditions have changed during the 2010s. The first is about the educational trajectories of young Greeks which are leading to less promising prospects in the labour market and become increasingly unequal and socially selective during the crisis. The second issue is the political response of young Greeks to the crisis. There is evidence that they have been actively mobilized against austerity measures and, at the same time, they have increased their participation in the political system, both in confrontational and institutional politics. Inequalities are increasing and social mobility prospects for the young people are deteriorating. Their political response, however, is an outcome depending on many other factors with the politics of parties attractive to youngsters’ aspirations during the crisis being among the most important.

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