How Do We Explain Inequality Within Artistic and Cultural Occupations? The Problem of Downward Social Mobility.

Who works in artistic and cultural occupations is a core part of recent academic, policy, and public discussions. This question of who is central to understanding inequalities in the arts. As a result, there is a rich academic literature, with research ranging from theorizations about the nature and boundaries of cultural work (Banks et al., Theorizing cultural work labour, continuity and change in the cultural and creative industries, 2014), via sector-specific case studies (e.g., O’Brien, Women, inequality, and media work, 2019), to assessments of demographic patterns (Saha, Race and the cultural industries, 2018). For cultural consumption, scholars focus on culture facilitating social mobility and its impact on the experiences of the socially mobile (Friedman, The Sociological Review 64(1):129–147, 2016). It is part of a broader project by the authors to understand the relationship between inequalities and cultural institutions (Brook et al., Culture is bad for you, 2020). Drawing on fieldwork interviews with creative workers in the UK, this chapter compares two individual case studies and asks how the careers of the upwardly and downwardly mobile have developed and how their experiences contrast. The analysis examines the way institutions are shaped by upward and downward social mobility and how institutions, in turn, shape social mobility trajectories. In doing so, the chapter adds to our understanding of how upward and downward social mobility is implicated in the perpetuation of class inequalities in cultural institutions (e.g., Brook et al., Culture is bad for you, 2020; Carey et al., Social mobility in the creative economy: Rebuilding and Levelling up?, 2021; Carey & O’Brien, 2021)