Negotiating Social Class: A critical reflection of poverty & prison to academia!

Something I've reflected on a lot through my extreme transition from being in the care of the Local Authority, experiencing years of heroin addiction, prison & dysfunctionality in youth to gaining employment in Higher Education as an adult is 'social class' and 'identity.' It's become embedded in my thinking that social class seems to be almost impossible to define, yet also imperative to the human experience and self categorisation in England. Due to this interesting social dynamic, class discussion and identity plays out in many ways in different social contexts - or 'fields' as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would argue.

In academic fields for example, there has been a drive within the Higher Education sector and government policy to widen participation for underrepresented groups - Black, Asian, Traveller, Low Socioeconomic or Disabled amongst others - to improve educational outcomes, enhance social mobility & provide graduate level outcomes for everyone who has the desire or will to attend and learn at university. This means over recent years, university is no longer only available to elites and the wealthy, but also students who would have historically missed out. Many of these individuals would self-identify as 'working class.' 

Before working within Higher Education, I previously worked in the Local Authority at Leeds Youth Justice Service supporting disadvantaged children from similar backgrounds to myself with the aim of diverting them from crime for 15 years prior to joining higher ed. It was quite common for many - but not all - of my colleagues in Youth Justice to self-identify as working class, too. Yes, it would often require a degree to work in a sector like Youth Justice, particularly to be an Officer or to climb the career ladder to becoming a manager, etc, but it was rare to hear anyone claim to be middle-class. I recently heard the acclaimed black scholar Cornell West who is running for President in the US claim such roles to be held by the 'managerial class.' Yet, given my own childhood experience of growing up with a care experienced single mother with 4 siblings, I would describe my household as 'workless.' Today, I asked mum if she thought we were working class. She responded with "no, we didnt work when you was a child, Andi, we were always on benefits." This meant making ends meet with weekly social benefits money mum got from the state and spending many hours of my childhood in the benefits office by the end of the week for grants and hand outs when we ran out of money - as we often did! 

The reason this social class identity issue of identifying as 'working class' is a little perplexing for my own identity - and seemingly my mothers - is that I never grew up identifying as 'working class.' Indeed, the idea of working was alien in my family home. Therefore, this identity can't integrate into my childhood experience. I was born in the 80's and have some vague childhood memories of the coal miner disputes and other issues being on the TV, such as steel mill closures as I was in Leeds, a city in Yorkshire. It seemed from my vantage point that the working class were pissed off at the posh politicians & managerial classes and this led to social conflict. Not that I paid too much attention at the time, but they didn't seem to be fighting anything remotely like the fight my mum was fighting, which is why she took no interest either. 

All the other children and families that spent time with us as a family were also on benefits, dysfunctional and the adults were in and out of occasional insecure or illegal work. I distinctly remember being taunted by working class families for being offered free school meals and going on free holidays in the summer due social care involvement and them calling me a 'tramp.' We as a group have been described by many as an under class, often disregarded by the working class and I recall this leaving personal scars and at times led me to get into fights with the kids that were clearly 'better off.' Thing is, there are many families like mine, both then and now who have children that don't grow up around working adults. They, just like me I'm sure will be perplexed by this lack of social class status, as you seldom hear arguments of people claiming to be from the underclass. When I joined Leeds Youth Justice Service and found that being middle-class was almost frowned upon, this was interesting to me. I had always considered the working class to be in a higher social class to myself through my journey of poverty, hardship and dysfunction. It was my observation that there was a disregard for the more privileged even in that managerial class field, so to speak, which seemed to mean social class had to be relative and subjective.

Fast forward to 2021, and joining Higher Education in the midst of widening participation, the very same group of 'working class' people find themselves to be isolated in what is claimed to be a 'middle-class' social field. I don't really see the world through identity politics and don't want to suggest there are some homogenous groups within these class definitions, but the fact that there are 'working class academics,' 'blackademics' and 'Convict Criminology' does indicate that identities often correlate with class matter and hold purchase in different contexts and fields, more so in academia, than anywhere else I have experienced. The one thing about prison is that if you haven't spent time being poor, you're a minority - so prisoners often categorise based on geographical area rather than these class categorisation. 

However, other than underclass, there is no social identity on offer for those from my background. There are caricatures or negative labels such as 'tramps,' 'chavs,' 'scroungers,' 'needy,' or 'lazy' to describe families like mine growing up, which leaves me not knowing what social class I can now self-identify as in this identity crazy field of academia. In fact, if anything, as I have a degree, currently studying a PhD, work in a university and I am both relationally and financially stable, I now self-identify more as being 'middle-class.' It feels honest to not position my identity in the hardship circumstance I once experienced because others are still there and I don't want to undermine their lived reality. This doesn't mean I perceive my history as privileged of course, but there has to be a distinction between where I was and where I am, so it does construct a fractured identity when we travel through the neo-liberal promise of social mobility. This perplexing complex social context, different fields and self-categorizations does lead me to wonder how helpful or inclusive these social definitions really are? 

If the working class often socially exclude families like mine, but then refuse to accept they have moved up the social hierarchy when they arrive into a managerial class such as working in the criminal justice system or in Higher Education and then feel alienated if or when they enter fields occupied by the middle-class, which are a group they refuse to identify with before arrival, even though many poor people would view their roles as middle-class, what does all this tell us about social groups? 

I would suggest that maybe we are more tribal and less flexible than we believe ourselves to be as humans. Maybe, we just feel comfortable in the fields that are occupied by people we personally identify with. Maybe the issues lie with us perceiving others to be different, which then make us need to self-identify with alternative identities, at times making ourselves outsiders. Maybe the onus is on us to stop making judgements of others and by doing so we will feel more comfortable with others. These aren't generalisable thoughts on complex social perspectives and world views, so I am not speaking on behalf of others. The one thing I do believe though, is that if we do go off to university regardless of our 'class' identity, we should just accept that we have moved into a new social 'field' and realise that this class notion is fluid. Being from a disadvantaged background is relative and intersectional. In modern England, it seems to have purchase and value to claim to be 'working class' in professional and academic fields. Yet, few seem to be loud about being privileged or middle class. 

In summary, I find it fascinating how social class and identity play out in all these different fields. Being middle class has benefits, but few seem to want to shout about having them. Being working class seems to be something many are comfortable with, because it demonstrates grit and determination, but then simultaneously leads to claims of stigma. Meanwhile, being from the underclass seems to get no attention, probably because there are so few that climb out of that social circumstance, and when they do, they keep it to themselves. For me, none of these categorisations seem effective at unifying us as people through our humanity - as this is where we should start! 

It is worth remembering, what we see isn't always what everyone sees!