Why do boys choose dead-end jobs?

Abstract

Most people reading this book, if they have to think about getting a job, have been schooled to think in terms of ‘careers’. In thinking in these terms we automatically start thinking about ‘choice’. Nowadays, many radical people reject the idea of career, of a lifetime’s service to a job, and many of the sociology students whom I teach specifically refuse to enter jobs that may lead to this role. However, even these individuals see their opportunities (and the rejection of them) in terms of their own choice. Given this almost total ideology amongst the most middle-class section of society, it is nearly inevitable that 15-year-old boys will be understood in these ways. Thus we automatically apply the sorts of thinking that we use about our own life to that of these 15-year-old working-class lads. Sociology too has attempted to slot their ‘choices’ into our categories: one boy ‘chooses’ to be a plumber rather than an electrician; another ‘chooses’ the mines rather than the merchant marine. It is believed to operate in the same way as university graduates ‘choose’ teaching or becoming a finance capitalist or publisher.