‘Talent-spotting’ or ‘social magic’? Inequality, cultural sorting and constructions of the ideal graduate in elite professions

an article by Nicola Ingram (Lancaster University, UK) and Kim Allen (University of Leeds, UK) published in The Sociological Review Volume 67 Issue 3 (May 2019)

Abstract

Graduate outcomes – including rates of employment and earnings – are marked by persistent inequalities related to social class, as well as gender, ethnicity and institution. Despite national policy agendas related to social mobility and ‘fair access to the professions’, high-status occupations are disproportionately composed of those from socially privileged backgrounds, and evidence suggests that in recent decades many professions have become less socially representative.

This article makes an original contribution to sociological studies of inequalities in graduate transitions and elite reproduction through a distinct focus on the ‘pre-hiring’ practices of graduate employers.

It does this through a critical analysis of the graduate recruitment material of two popular graduate employers. It shows how, despite espousing commitments to diversity and inclusion, constructions of the ‘ideal’ graduate privilege individuals who can mobilise and embody certain valued capitals.

Using Bourdieusian concepts of ‘social magic’ and ‘institutional habitus’, the article argues that more attention must be paid to how graduate employers’ practices constitute tacit processes of social exclusion and thus militate against the achievement of more equitable graduate outcomes and fair access to the ‘top jobs’.

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The secret garden? Élite metropolitan geographies in the contemporary UK

an article by Niall Cunningham (Durham University) and Mike Savage (LSE) published in The Sociological Review Volume 63 Issue 2 (May 2015)

Abstract

There is an enduring, indeed increasing, awareness of the role of spatial location in defining and reinforcing inequality in this country and beyond.

In the UK, much of the debate around these issues has focussed on the established trope of a long-standing ‘north-south divide’, a divide which appears to have deepened in recent decades with the inexorable de-industrialisation of northern Britain presented in stark counterpoint to the burgeoning concentration of wealth in London and the south-east, driven by the financial and ancillary services sectors.

Due to a lack of available data, such debates have tended to focus solely on economic inequalities between places, and until now there was little understanding of how these disparities played out in the social and cultural domains. This paper significantly advances our understanding of the true meaning of spatial inequality in the UK by broadening that definition to encompass not only the economic, but also the social and cultural arenas, using data available from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey experiment.

We argue that these data shine a light not only on the economic inequalities between different parts of the country which existing debates have already uncovered but to understand how these are both reinforced and mediated across the social and cultural dimensions.

Fundamentally, we concur with a great many others in seeing London and the south-east as a vortex for economic accumulation but it is also much more than that; it is a space where the coming together of intense economic, social and cultural resources enables the crystallisation of particular and nuanced forms of élite social class formations, formations in which place is not incidental but integral to their very existence.

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Issue ownership, unemployment and support for government intervention

an article by Tor G Jakobsen and Ola Listhaug (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway) published in Work, Employment & Society Volume 26 Number 3 (June 2012)

Abstract

In this article an examination is made of the association between unemployment and public demand for government intervention in the economy.

The main hypothesis is drawn from the theory of issue ownership: public opinion is likely to shift to the left in times of high unemployment combined with a leftist government. Research on issue ownership has typically focused on case studies of particular countries.

We extend the discussion to a much larger setting. Relying on data from the International Social Survey Programme from 23 OECD countries in the time period 1985–2007 we find a combined effect of issue ownership and agenda setting.

An increase in unemployment leads the public to hold more leftist economic opinions when the government belongs to the left. However, ownership of an issue cannot be guaranteed to last if a party fails to deliver outcomes that are promised and expected from its historical legacy.

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