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Why do so many people mistakenly think they are working class? | Extra iQ
00:09:38
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Extra iq, a shorter style of lseiq, where you'll hear parts of compelling interviews which didn't make the original podcast just because we didn't have the space to include them. I'm Sue Windibank from the IQ team, and in this episode you'll hear me talking to Professor Sam Friedman, a sociologist of class and inequality at lse. He spoke to me for an episode which asked, how does Class Define Us? Originally released in November 2022. Here's Sam explaining to me the conundrum of why a significant minority of middle class people in the UK mistakenly think of themselves as working class. I wondered if this was a phenomenon unique to the uk.
- [00:49]
B
One of the things we found in our research is that when you ask people about their subjective class identities, most people around the world tend to see themselves as middle class, even when they're actually, you know, fairly disadvantaged. And we really go against the grain and there's this enduring popularity of working class identities. As you say, even one in four of those from solidly middle class backgrounds in solidly middle class jobs here see themselves as working class. And what we found in the research, sort of looking, using interviews to sort of dig into this, is that largely what people explained in these scenarios, and you should say this is only a quarter of people, most people tend to match their background to the same way sociologists would, right? But this significant minority who didn't often interesting. When we asked them about, you tell us about your background, they wouldn't tell us about their upbringing. They would reach back further into these extended family histories. And, you know, if you go back two or three generations in most families in this country, you tend to get to a history of kind of working class struggle, Right. We were a country that was predominantly working class for most of the 19th and early 20th century. And I think what's interesting is that people find in those stories, I suppose, a kind of upward story that that helps them make sense of their own identity and helps them tell a kind of a humble origin kind of story, a story of meritocratic striving that I think is a very interesting one in terms of perhaps providing a sense of meritocratic legitimacy. But I suppose what we were highlighting in the research is that whilst this is to some extent real, right, this is people's real histories, they're not making this up. There's also a danger that sometimes, you know, that kind of searching for a kind of meritocratic story obscures and blinds people from reflecting on the fairly plain advantages that they've actually experienced in their own lifetime, in their own upbringings. And in some ways then perhaps sort of diverts attention or deflects. The paper we talked about, it's called deflecting privilege, deflects sort of an understanding of actually what the kind of socioeconomic picture that they're part of looks like in this country.
- [03:34]
A
And presumably that has a real impact on people who are genuinely working class.
- [03:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think what it, you know, a lot of my work has been looking at the very real barriers that people from working class backgrounds face in particularly in elite occupations in the uk. And I think part of the problem with that sort of deflecting privilege is that it means that lots of people who may otherwise reflect on their place in a correcting those barriers instead slightly misunderstand their own privilege and don't therefore reflect. And so I think, you know, what's interesting there is that you might get people who claim a sort of working class identity, but actually aren't really conscious of the fact that they're actually fairly advantaged upbringing is meaning that fairly seamlessly they're able to, you know, walk into an elite law firm and just understand those cod in ways that those from working class backgrounds really struggle with. And that perhaps perpetuates some of the actual barriers that those from working class backgrounds face as well as I suppose, I think probably often perhaps a certain irritation or frustration with that sort of, that sort of claiming of working class ness.
- [04:56]
A
Because it's not just between say, working class and the elite, is it? I mean, I know the way that we understand class in this country has changed, you know, on the back of some of work that you've been involved in yourself. But my impression is that you could be perfectly middle class or lower middle class and you'd still be code switching in some of those situations that we were talking about.
- [05:24]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think class is. There's a. It's difficult because class is relational and, you know, you'd often get a sense, I think, and this comes back again to the kind of humble origins thing where people will. People, as you say, from fairly middle class backgrounds will still feel fairly out of place in a very elite workplace because they're surrounded by, you know, by people who went to very elite private schools and they don't necessarily feel they belong. So there's sort of these gradations and it's often something that's very hard to put your finger on in terms of a kind of a cultural feel atmosphere that comes down to these kind of micro interactions. And modes of being and topics of conversation that sort of populate the margins.
- [06:19]
A
Do you think everyone in British society feels that they're slightly out of their depth except the very most elite people?
- [06:28]
B
Well, that comes back to this relational point that I think actually most people don't feel they're elite, even those who, in objective terms are, because there's always somebody you can point to who's more privileged and advantaged. And I do think this goes back to the ordinariness point that actually we don't live in as class, sort of rigid a society as we did, where your. Your sort of class position and your class identity was incredibly fixed from, you know, the. The first couple of years of your life. And the. The remnant of sort of wanting to move away from that, that sort of deference is that I think there is a particular keenness for people who have come from very advantaged backgrounds and who are in very advantaged positions to present themselves as ordinary, to ward off suspicions of snobbishness or moral superiority, and that. That makes these distinctions and hierarchies even more complex to make sense of and even more fascinating to research. The point, in a way, is that we're very much aware of that feeling of being a fish out of water, but we perhaps don't notice the routine ways that we are fish in water. And so, you know, you may feel that when you go into a very elite party in the city, but you perhaps don't feel that when you enter the LSE campus or if you go into an art gallery. And, you know, whereas I think this type of research has revealed to me how many of the routine spaces and practices that for me, because of a very privileged upbringing, I take for granted and seamlessly there's a match between my dispositions and what is valued or what's recognized in that setting. And many other people, but I think even those who largely feel that they always be setting because this isn't a kind of, you know, the class system isn't just three boxes, even though you have to reduce often the measurement of class to those sorts of categories. It's more gradations. It's people in a. In a sort of social space and where. Where are they situated with infinite kind of possibilities of. Yeah, belonging and not belonging.
- [09:13]
A
This episode was produced by me, Sue Windybank, and edited by Oliver John. If you'd like to find out more about the research in this episode, head to the show Notes. And if you enjoy lseiq, please leave us a review. Coming next on lseiq Joanna Bale asks, are we on the verge of a weight loss revolution?