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New! Why do so many people from privileged backgrounds identify as working-class?We find this rooted in elaborate ‘origin stories’ that downplay advantage in people’s own upbringing & instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories1/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038038520982225#articleShareContainer
BSA data shows that not only do 47% of Brits in professional jobs identify as working-class but even among those from solidly middle-class professional BACKGROUNDS (in terms of their parents’ occupation), still 24% see themselves as working-class 2/4 https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39094/bsa33_social-class_v5.pdf
Drawing on interviews, we ( @DrDaveOBrien & Ian McDonald) find that this while this (mis)identification partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege 3/4
By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, these interviewees tell an upward story of success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped their trajectory
