Cultural Consumption/Participation and Prospective Social Mobility

Abstract

The research is based on qualitative research with educationally successful working-class students at FE (plus a small comparison group of middle-class students), exploring their sense of educational belonging, and their views on attending university, future occupations and social mobility. The thesis examines how cultural consumption, including legitimate and vernacular culture (music tastes, fashion choices etc), and peer social networks shape students' transition to FE and their sense of fit and belonging there, and how this in turn affects their sense of their imagined futures and their views on social mobility. The research contributes to debates on educational transitions and social mobility focused on habitus/field alignment, by exploring how the fit with the field of education is mediated not just by the formal culture of educational institutions but also by the informal culture of peers within the field. The thesis argues that a stronger focus on the differentiated nature of the peer environment helps explain the formation of different kinds of fit or belonging within educational settings. For some working-class students, it facilitates the development of 'proto-mobility': a sense of already having negotiated movement into new social arenas and peer networks which makes occupational mobility seem more possible and desirable. For other working-class students, the formation of segregated peer networks allows students to manage the transition to FE but also confirms that university and occupational mobility is 'not for them'. Whilst middle-class participants suggest they feel no issue being upwardly mobile into the middle-class professional fields, the working-class participants are more varied. Those who follow their educational interests in Arts/Humanities subjects see the professional fields these are connected to as difficult to be socially mobile in and have tempered expectations. By contrast, another group of working-class participants who opt for technical fields are much more confident of finding fit and being long-range upwardly mobile in them.

Date of Award	4 Oct 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Andrew Miles (Co Supervisor) & Wendy Bottero (Main Supervisor)