Are lower social class origins stigmatized at work? A qualitative study of social class concealment and disclosure among White men employees who experienced upward mobility

Author links an articvle article by Anna M. Kallschmidt and Asia A. Eaton (Florida International University, USA) published in Journal of Vocational Behavior Volume 113 (August 2019)

Highlights

• White men who moved up in social class strategically manage class identity at work.
• Most of our sample purposefully concealed and disclosed their previous lower class.
• Men concealed when suspecting judgment, no understanding, pity, and for privacy.
• Men disclosed to relate to or help others, or when forced to or outed by class cues.

Abstract

Despite recognizing that socioeconomic standing can influence workplace behavior, minimal research in psychology has explored social class as a stigmatized and potentially manageable identity in the workplace. Compared to women and people of color, White men who moved up from low-income backgrounds may be especially likely to experience their previous class status as a concealable stigma at work.

In this study, we used qualitative methods to investigate whether having a lower social class background might be experienced as a stigmatized identity for some employees, using a sample of 20 White men who self-identified as having moved up in social class. Individual interviews were used to assess the nature of participants' social class concealment and disclosure at work.

Thematic analysis revealed five reasons why these White men concealed their former, lower-income status at work: Judgment, Nobody understands, It's personal, Pity, and Don't want to feel embarrassed or vulnerable.

Our analysis also revealed five reasons why participants disclosed their previous class identity at work: being Forced to, To relate, To motivate/help somebody, Noticing class cues, and Becoming close.

Results indicate that having a lower social class background can be experienced as stigmatizing at work. Moreover, while disclosure of one's lower-income background is more common than concealment for men in this group, that disclosure is often unintentional or unwanted.

Our results also indicate that, like other potentially concealable identities, social class disclosure is an ongoing process that happens unevenly across time and across people. Future research should expand on this work by examining the experiences of upwardly mobile employees from other identity intersections.

Hazel’s comment:
The sample is much too small for the results to be significant but they can be taken as indicative of a problem for White men working in the USA.
Is this a problem in the UK? My experience as an employment adviser seems to be saying “yes and it is a serious issue as the UK, England in particular, is very class conscious”.

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‘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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Who Goes to College via Access Routes? A Comparative Study of Widening Participation Admission in Selective Universities in Ireland and England

an article by Katriona O’Sullivan and Delma Byrne (Maynooth University, Ireland) and James Robson and Niall Winters (University of Oxford, UK) published in Social Inclusion Volume 7 Issue 1 (2019)

Abstract

This article explores changing national widening participation (WP) policy and responses from Higher Education institutions (HEIs) from a cross-national perspective. Specifically, the use of contextualised admissions and the provision of foundation year programmes in selective universities in Ireland and England are the key foci of interest.

Using data gathered from WP students in two selective universities in Ireland and England, we explore how student characteristics differ according to the WP route undertaken.

In an attempt to generate more knowledge of how HEIs enact WP policy, we draw on interviews conducted with staff involved in admission decision-making to explore how those with responsibility for admission within each institutional context perceive the WP pathways and their aims. The findings highlight how important it is for selective universities to adopt multiple WP pathways given that the use of contextualised admission and the provision of foundation years attract quite diverse student intakes.

In both contexts, those entering through foundation years have experienced greater levels of disadvantage in terms of family history of education and family occupation compared to their contextualised admission counterparts. The qualitative findings reveal that those with responsibility for admission perceive the WP admission routes in different ways, highlighting a clash between institutional culture and the goals of WP.

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The class pictures in citizens’ minds

an article by Joshua Robison and Rune Stubager (Aarhus University, Denmark) published in The British Journal of Sociology Volume 69 Issue 4 (December 2018)

Abstract

Social class has traditionally played a key role in explaining social behaviour and cognition. However, recent analyses have been dominated by the view that the relevance of class for behaviour has dwindled in advanced industrial societies.

We contest this view by focusing on the subjective components of class consciousness. Using a national survey of Danish citizens, we show that individuals continue to hold meaningful conceptions of classes, to identify with them and, moreover, to perceive substantial levels of differences between them with these latter beliefs being strongly structured by respondent class identification.

These results are all the more intriguing because they stem from a high affluence/low inequality national context that should be a particularly good case for failing to find such rich class perceptions.

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Socio‐spatial mobilities and narratives of class identity in Britain

an article by Andrew Miles (University of Manchester, UK) and Adrian Leguina (Loughborough University, UK) published in The British Journal of Sociology Volume 69 Issue 4 (December 2018)

Abstract

In this article we carry out the most comprehensive analysis of social and spatial mobility in the UK to date and the first to directly link different dimensions of mobility to processes of social class formation.

Using new analytical techniques in this field, we integrate quantitative and qualitative data from the 1958 Birth Cohort Study, combining text‐mining and correspondence analysis in order to examine the intersection of geographical and social mobility with class identities. This work reflects a revival of interest in the spatialization of class inequalities, which is connected to policy concerns about the regional dimension of Britain’s mobility ‘crisis’ that have intensified in the wake of the ‘Brexit’ vote.

We find that the South’s role as an ‘escalator’ region for upward mobility has continued and that the relationship between social and spatial mobility both confirms and qualifies the role of London and the South East in generating inequalities.

We show that different migration‐mobility transitions are associated with distinctive and contrasting class identity narratives. Those who move from North to South stand out in particular for the way their ‘class talk’ reveals the social disorientation that attends their success. The contrasting ways in which other groups express their social identities suggests that the interplay of geographical and social mobilities performs a significant role in regional cultural divisions.

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Does economic inequality breed political inequality?

an article by Christian Houle (Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA) published in Democratization Volume 25 Issue 8 (2018)

Abstract

Does economic inequality generate political inequality?

While there is a large literature on the effect of inequality on regime change and support for democracy, there is little research on its effect on political equality across socioeconomic positions. Yet democracy and political equality, although related, are distinct concepts.

While political power tends to be more evenly distributed in democracies than in autocracies, there is substantial variation in both regime types.

This study argues that economic inequality should decrease political equality through multiple mechanisms:

1. it increases the resources of the rich relative to the poor;
2. it widens the gap in policy preferences across income groups;
3. it reduces participation; and
4. it depresses support for democracy.

Using three measures of inequality and data on more than 140 countries between 1961 and 2008, it was found that economic inequality tends to increase political inequality, even when one controls for the level of democracy. Results hold when the sample is restricted by regime type.

Finally, evidence in favour of the mechanisms is provided.

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Voice, silence and social class on television

an article by Peter Jakobsson and Fredrik Stiernstedt (Södertörn University, Sweden) published in European Journal of Communication Volume 33 Issue 5 (October 2018)

Abstract

The question of voice is a central and timeless political issue. Who gets to speak? Who is silenced? Who is listening? One of the main arenas for voice in modern, advanced democracies is the media.

Media infrastructures, technologies, institutions and organizations are a precondition for political voice in large-scale societies, but are also an important factor in distributing the possibilities for voice among different groups and sectors of the population.

In this article, we take on the question of voice in relation to social class and aim to analyse how the medium of television gives voice to people from different social classes.

This study operationalizes the theoretical notion of voice by asking the following questions:

• who has the opportunity to appear and speak on television,
• to whom do they speak and
• under what circumstances does this communication occur?

Based on a content analysis of television in Sweden, the results from this study show that voice is distributed in a highly unequal manner. It also shows that the relations enacted by television appearances conform to the social hierarchy. Whereas people from the ruling class frequently speak to people from the working and middle classes, they are rarely spoken to by members of a class that is positioned below their own.

Television thus constructs a social hierarchy of voice and authority that reproduces and legitimizes already existing social hierarchies.

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Ageing, health inequalities and the welfare state: A multilevel analysis

an article by Björn Högberg,  Anna Baranowska-Rataj and Ingemar Johansson Sevä (Umeå University, Sweden) and Mattias Strandh (Umeå University, Sweden; Karlstad University, Sweden) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 28 Issue 4 (Pctober 2018)

Abstract

Comparative studies of health inequalities have largely neglected age and ageing aspects, while ageing research has often paid little attention to questions of social inequalities.

This article investigates cross-country differences in gradients in self-rated health and limiting long-standing illness (LLSI) in middle-aged and in older people (aged 50–64 and 65–80 years) linked to social class, and degrees to which the social health gradients are associated with minimum pension levels and expenditure on elderly care. For these purposes, data from the European Social Survey (2002–2010) are analysed using multilevel regression techniques.

We find significant cross-level interaction effects between class and welfare policies: higher expenditure on elderly care and particularly more generous minimum pensions are associated with smaller health inequalities in the older age group (65–80 years).

It is concluded that welfare policies moderate the association between social class and health, highlighting the importance of welfare state efforts for older persons, who are strongly reliant on the welfare state and welfare state arrangements such as pensions and care policies.

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Hysteresis: Understanding the Housing Aspirations Gap

an article by Joe Crawford and Kim McKee (University of St Andrews, UK) Sociology Volume 52 Issue 1 (February 2018)

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative research on housing aspirations in Scotland, the objectives of this article are threefold.

Firstly, this article will contextualise the subject of housing aspirations within relevant research literature and situate it within wider debates which revolve around the relationship between housing and social class.

Secondly, in order to understand the implications of the research, this article uses Bourdieu’s notion of ‘sociodicy’ to help explain the ‘social’ reasons which incline people to have housing aspirations.

Thirdly, the data will be analysed to understand the differences in ‘aspirations’ between groups, concluding that the generational differences, which correspond to the epochal changes in the economy, are more important than class differences when understanding the uneven distribution of housing outcomes and housing wealth in developed societies.

The article concludes that the Bourdieusian concept of hysteresis explains the gap between the subjective expectations of young ‘professionals’ and the objective chances of their realisation.

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‘If I was King of India I would Get All the Horns Out of Cars’: A Qualitative Study of Sound in Delhi

Maria Patsarika (American College of Thessaloniki, Greece), Tatjana Schneider (University of Sheffield, UK) and Michael Edwards (University of Edinburgh, UK) published in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 42 Issue 1 (January 2018)

Abstract

In this article we present an experimental sonic space – the mobile noise abatement pod (mNAP) – constructed and used over a two-week period in Delhi, India, during December 2014. The interdisciplinary project, involving a composer, designer, carpenter, development scholar, filmmaker, graphic designer and sociologist, sought to investigate how noise, including honking (one of the most prevalent sounds in Indian cities), is perceived.

The fieldwork reveals noise to be a complex contextual, spatial and personal experience that is as much about habit as it is about identity and class, intimately related to economic inequality and inherently connected to social justice.

The article suggests that attempts to reduce levels of noise need to take into account its meaning and position – by whom and how narratives of noise reduction are constructed and reproduced.

Full text (PDF 16pp)

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False equivalence? Differences in the post-16 qualifications market and outcomes in higher education

an article by Robin Shields (University of Bath) and Alexander Masardo (University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK) published in Educational Review Volume 70 Issue 2 (2018)

Abstract

This paper investigates differences in higher education outcomes according to the qualifications with which students enter university. The study is situated in the context of increasing marketization, competition and privatization in post-16 qualifications, combined with an increase in students entering higher education with either vocational qualifications (e.g. the Business and Technology Education Council [BTEC] qualification) or a mix of academic and vocational qualifications.

It draws upon literature on markets in education as well as studies on educational choice and pathways to examine whether different entry qualifications offer equal chances of success in higher education.

Using multilevel logistic regression, the analysis examines the relationship between types of entry qualifications (academic, vocational and mixed) and the probability of achieving a first or upper-second class degree at university, which are associated with increased opportunities in the labour market and postgraduate study.

Controlling for a range of demographic and institutional characteristics, the analysis identifies a strong decrease in the probability of a first or upper-second class degree for students who enter higher education with vocational qualifications.

These results are discussed in relation to theories of markets in education and social class and education.

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By the sweat of their brow? The effects of starting work again after pension age on life satisfaction in Germany and the United Kingdom

an article by Thomas Lux (SOCIUM, University of Bremen, Germany and Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany) and Simone Scherger (University of Bremen, Germany) published in Ageing & Society Volume 3, Issue 2 (February 2017)

Abstract

In recent years, the employment rates of people of pension age have increased considerably. However, longitudinal evidence on the effects of this employment on well-being which might contribute to an evaluation of this late-life work is scarce. Based on empirical findings so far and on theoretical approaches to well-being, work and retirement, both negative and positive effects of post-retirement work on life satisfaction are plausible.

In this paper, we investigate the effects of taking up work again between the ages of 65 and 75 on life satisfaction in different occupational classes in Germany and the United Kingdom.

We expect that not only the heterogeneous conditions and experiences of working are crucial for the consequences that post-retirement work has for life satisfaction, but also the institutional arrangements surrounding this form of work. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Survey, covering the 1990s and 2000s.

Based on fixed-effects regression modelling, we find positive effects of working in both countries, although not all effects are significant.

Differentiating by the class of the job in which the older person works, we find mainly positive effects and no significant differences between those who work in a lower-class job and all others. In addition, we find that the positive effect of working on life satisfaction is partly explained by increased satisfaction with household income for those working in a lower-class job in the United Kingdom.

We conclude that many of the pessimistic assumptions about people working after pension age cannot be confirmed for our time of observation.

However, there are several reasons for believing that the results will be different in the future or for differently defined populations of people working past pension age.

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The pattern of social fluidity within the British class structure: a topological model

an article by Erzsébet Bukodi1 and John H. Goldthorpe (University of Oxford, UK) and Jouni Kuha (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) published in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) Volume 180 Issue 3 (June 2017)

Summary

It has previously been shown that, across three British birth cohorts, relative rates of inter-generational social class mobility have remained at an essentially constant level among men and also among women who have worked only full time.

We establish the pattern of this prevailing level of social fluidity and its sources and determine whether it also persists over time, and we bring out its implications for inequalities in relative mobility chances. We develop a parsimonious model for the log-odds-ratios which express the associations between individuals’ class origins and destinations.

This model is derived from a topological model that comprises three kinds of readily interpretable binary characteristics and eight effects in all, each of which does, or does not, apply to particular cells of the mobility table, i.e. effects of class hierarchy, class inheritance and status affinity.

Results show that the pattern as well as the level of social fluidity are essentially unchanged across the cohorts, that gender differences in this prevailing pattern are limited and that marked differences in the degree of inequality in relative mobility chances arise with long-range transitions where inheritance effects are reinforced by hierarchy effects that are not offset by status affinity effects.

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The influence of grandparents’ social class on children’s aspiration

an article by Vanessa Moulton, Eirini Flouri, Heather Joshi and Alice Sullivan (UCL Institute of Education, London, UK) published in British Journal of Sociology of Education Volume 38 Issue 4 (2017)

Abstract

Social class mobility from grandparent to grandchild is a relatively neglected topic. Grandparents today are often healthier and more active, and have longer relationships with their grandchildren than in previous generations.

We used data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study (n = 8570) to investigate the influence of maternal and paternal grandparents’ social class on the aspirations of children at age seven. Using path analysis and controlling for family income, mother’s and father’s education, lone motherhood, and child’s ethnicity and gender, we found very small direct effects from the paternal grandmother’s social class to the grandchild’s classed aspirations, and small, indirect effects, via parents’ class, of grandparents’ class on child’s classed aspirations.

Multi-group analyses found few differences by ethnicity and gender. There was no evidence that, at this age, mixed-class parentage raises the aspirations of working-class children (the ‘sunken middle-class’ hypothesis).

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Capital limits: social class, motivations for term-time job searching and the consequences of joblessness among UK university students

an article by Steven Roberts (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) and Zhen Li (Independent Scholar) published in Journal of Youth Studies Volume 20, 2017 - Issue 6

Abstract

Youth unemployment figures include large numbers of full-time students, yet student joblessness receives very little academic attention, especially at a qualitative level. Despite being relatively less deleterious than youth unemployment more broadly, we show that student unemployment remains an important site for the practice and reinforcement of social inequality.

Using a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interviews with 27 undergraduate students who have been unsuccessful in term-time job searching, we expose some of the limits to the extent that social and cultural capital can be converted into positive employment outcomes.

Importantly, the data reveal that it is (lack of) access to material and economic resources that is most significant in ensuring that both the experience of unemployment and, concomitantly, the experience of university, in yet another way, remain highly structured by social class.

These divisions shape the imperative and timing of the need to work, and also underpin nuances in respect of desires and needs in how students talk about their motivations for part-time work. These should be important considerations if policy-makers want to create a genuinely meritocratic system or deliver equitable psychological and material well-being.

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Time and money explain social class differences in students’ social integration at university

an article by Mark Rubin (University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia) and Chrysalis L. Wright (University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA) published in Studies in Higher Education Volume 42 Issue 2 (February 2017)

Abstract

Working-class students tend to be less socially integrated at university than middle-class students. The present research investigated two potential reasons for this working-class social exclusion effect.

First, working-class students may have fewer finances available to participate in social activities.

Second, working-class students tend to be older than middle-class students and, consequently, they are likely to have more work and/or childcare commitments.

These additional commitments may prevent them from attending campus which, in turn, reduces their opportunity for social integration.

These predictions were confirmed among undergraduate students at an Australian university (N = 433) and a US university (N = 416).

Strategies for increasing working-class students' social integration at university are discussed.

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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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“I Just Live Here”: Everyday Practices of Disaffiliation of Middle-class Households in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods

an article by Fenne M. Pinkster (Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam) published in Urban Studies Volume 51 Number 4 (March 2014)

Abstract

This paper explores different explanations for the continuing presence of a large share of middle-class households in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the Netherlands, a seeming anomaly to middle-class residential practices of disaffiliation and elective belonging identified in the research literature.

In-depth interviews with middle-class residents in urban restructuring neighbourhoods in Amsterdam and The Hague provide insight into the way in which these residents make sense of and engage with their residential surroundings.

The study found that respondents downplay neighbourhood problems and validate living in an urban restructuring area through a value-for-money discourse. At the same time, they display subtle ways of disaffiliating from the neighbourhood through both discursive and socio-spatial practices in everyday life.

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A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment

an article by Mike Savage (London School of Economics, UK), Fiona Devine, Niall Cunningham, Yaojun Li and Andrew Miles (University of Manchester, UK), Mark Taylor (University of York, UK), Johs Hjellbrekke (Universitetet i Bergen, Norway), Brigitte Le Roux (Université Paris Descartes, France) and Sam Friedman (City University London, UK) published in Sociology Volume 47 Number 2 (April 2013)

Abstract

The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world.

The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK’s National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status.

This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a ‘labour contract’ on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a ‘service contract’ on the other.

However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions.

We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC’s 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes.

We demonstrate the existence of an ‘elite’, whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of ‘new affluent’ workers.

We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a ‘precariat’ characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.

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Widening participation aims and outcomes

an article by Kate Hoskins (University of Roehampton, UK) published in Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning Volume 14 Number 3 (Winter 2012/13)

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of New Labour’s policy initiative to widen participation, and considers the consequences this policy has had for four non-traditional students, that is, ‘students from under-represented groups’ (Medway et al., 2003:3).

As a result of widening participation policy, a broader range of higher education institutions (HEIs) have actively sought to enrol larger numbers of those they have historically tended to exclude: the working classes, women, mature students, those from minority ethnic groups and those with disabilities (Burns, Sinfield and Holley, 2006). The shift in emphasis away from Access programmes as a route into higher education for those traditionally excluded to the New Labour government push for widening participation across the sector has reshaped higher education, raising questions about what and who higher education is for.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with four white, male working-class students attending a new ‘post-1992’ university, this paper considers their attempt to access educational capital and some of the struggles and challenges they have encountered in the process.

The paper asks if changes to education (such as widening participation ostensibly as part of a move to increase social justice) changed the status quo, giving voice, stake and power to those traditionally excluded from those realms.

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