Abstract
Since the 1970s, successive governments have overseen a retrenchment of the welfare state alongside a concomitant lowering and alteration of individuals’ expectations of entitlement and the relationship with the state more broadly. Davidson explains that this is in line with the ways in which ‘neo-liberal governance aims to ensure that the state’s goals become synonymous with individual goals’.1 Building on Bourdieu’s notion of pseudo-concepts,2 Raco theorises that this approach has given rise to ‘existential politics’, whereby:
governments actively define, categorise, and institutionalise the essential characteristics of human nature, well-being, responsibility, and virtue…by defining some of the fundamentals of human condition such as: what it means to be happy, fulfilled, and contented; what constitutes essential and non-essential human needs; what processes shape the ways in which the social and cultural status of individuals and groups is defined… More broadly an existential politics is also about the processes through which dominant social values are defined and institutionalised.3
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Notes
E. Davidson (2011) The Burdens of Aspiration: Schools, Youth, and Success in the Divided Social Worlds of Silicon Valley. London: New York University Press, p. 194.
This is a concept which is simultaneously prescriptive and descriptive. For details see P. Bourdieu (2003) Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2. London: Verso.
M. Raco (2009) ‘From Expectations to Aspirations: State Modernisation, Urban Policy, and the Existential Politics of Welfare in the UK’, Political Geography, 28: 436–54.
See P. Bourdieu (1984) Distinction. London: Routledge.
P. Bourdieu (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
G. Brown (2011) ‘Emotional Geographies of Young People’s Aspirations for Adult Life’, Children’s Geographies, 9(1): 7–22.
See S. Hollingworth and K. Williams (2009) ‘Constructions of the Working-Class “Other” Among Urban, White, Middle-Class Youth’, Journal of Youth Studies, 12(5): 467–82.
N. Elias (1969) The Civilizing Process, Vol. I: The History of Manners. Oxford: Blackwell.
See J. Quinn, L. Thomas, K. Slack, L. Casey, W. Thexton and J. Noble (2006) ‘Lifting the Hood: Lifelong Learning and Young, White, Provincial Working-Class Masculinities’, British Educational Research Journal, 32(5): 735–50.
See S. Ball, J. Davies, M. David and D. Reay (2002) ‘“Classification” and “Judgement”: Social Class and the “Cognitive Structure” of Choice of Higher Education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1): 51–72, and Quinn et al, op. cit.
For similar findings in Glasgow see K. Kintrea, R. St Clair and M. Houston (2011) The Influence of Parents, Places, and Poverty on Educational Attitudes and Aspirations. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
DfES (2007) Raising Expectations: Staying in Education and Training Post-16. London: The Stationary Office, p. 3.
A. Wolf (2011) Review of Vocational Education — The Wolf Report. London: Department for Education.
Bourdieu (1977) op. cit., p. 111; cf. W. Atkinson (2010) Class, Individualization and Late Modernity. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 193–4.
S. Evans (2009) ‘In a Different Place: Working-Class Girls and Higher Education’, Sociology, 43(2): 340–55.
See e.g. D. Reay, G. Crozier and D. Clayton (2010) ‘“Fitting In” or “Standing Out”: Working-Class Students in UK Higher Education’, British Educational Research Journal, 32(1): 1–19;
W. Moore (2008) Reproducing Racisms. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
See e.g. B. Skeggs (1997) Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage;
H. S. Mirza (1992) Young, Female and Black. London: Routledge.
L. Archer and M. Hutchings (2000) ‘“Bettering Yourself”: Discourses of Risk, Cost and Benefit in Ethnically Diverse, Young Working-Class Non-Participants’ Constructions of Higher Education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21(4): 555–74.
D. Reay (2009) ‘Making Sense of White Working-Class Educational Underachievement’, in K. Sveinsson (ed.) Who Cares about the White Working Class? London: Runnymede Trust, pp. 22–8.
A. Nilsen (1999) ‘Where is the Future? Time and Space as Categories in Analyses of Young People’s Image of the Future’, Innovation, 12(2): 175–94.
S. Henderson, J. Holland, S. McGrellis, S. Sharpe and R. Thomson (2007) Inventing Adulthoods: A Biographical Approach to Youth Transitions. London: Sage.
C. Crouch (2004) Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cf. also Bourdieu’s comments in Distinction (p. 144) about the cheating of a generation, who get ‘less out of their qualifications than the previous generations would have obtained’.
See e.g. F. Furstenberg (2008) ‘The Intersections of Social Class and the Transition to Adulthood’, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 119: 1–10; and S.Jenkins (2011) ‘Social Immobility is Built into the Way Britain Lives and Learns’, The Guardian, April 5th.
S. Roberts (2011) ‘Beyond NEET and (“Tidy”) Pathways: Considering the Missing Middle of Youth Transitions Studies’, Journal of Youth Studies, 14(1): 21–39.
M. Goos and A. Manning (2007) ‘Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 89(1): 118–33.
Lord John Browne (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Tunding and Student Finance. Available at http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf.
S. Power and G. Whitty (2008) Paper 118: Graduating and Gradations within the Middle Class: The Legacy of an Elite Higher Education. Cardiff School of Social Sciences.
A. Zimdars, A. Sullivan and A. Heath (2009) ‘Elite Higher Education Admissions in the Arts and Sciences: Is Cultural Capital the Key?’, Sociology, 43(4): 648–66.
V. Alakeson (2011) Making a Rented House a Home: Housing Solutions for ‘Generation Rent’. London: Resolution Foundation.
J. Rugg (2010) Young People and Housing: The Need for a New Policy Agenda. York: JRF.
Communities and Local Government (2010) Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix Data 2010, available at http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housing-research/housingstatistics/housingstatisticsby/localauthorityhousing/dataforms/hssa0910/hssadata200910/.
Communities and Local Government (2009) English House Condition Survey 2007 Headline Report. London: CLG.
B. Rogaly and B. Taylor (2009) Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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© 2013 Steven Roberts and Sarah Evans
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Roberts, S., Evans, S. (2013). ‘Aspirations’ and Imagined Futures: The Im/possibilities for Britain’s Young Working Class. In: Atkinson, W., Roberts, S., Savage, M. (eds) Class Inequality in Austerity Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016386_5
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