Aidan Chambers' "Breaktime" (1978) is famous for its unique narrative style and sexual content. This focus has obscured another significant aspect of the novel: the role of social class in "Breaktime" and Chambers' working-class background have rarely been explored. Chambers was an example of what Richard Hoggart calls…

In this article we argue that despite methodological and analytical advancements in the field of social class research, these developments have not led to a wholehearted discussion about class positionality and situatedness in relation to interviewer-participant dynamics. Despite--or perhaps due to--this methodological gap, there remains an…

This qualitative study of 26 African American parents and caregivers of preschool children sought to address gaps in the current literature by exploring how the intersection of parents' racism experiences and social class may play a role in race-related socialization during the early years. Analysis of narrative interviews revealed that…

In this paper the author summarizes several life history case studies of adolescent boys who were identified at school as "wimps" and who eventually engaged in various forms of sexual violence. Such boys rarely are--if at all--discussed in the childhood, education and feminist literatures on sexual violence. The life stories reveal the…

Women from working class and some ethnic minority backgrounds continue to be underrepresented in science, particularly in areas such as physical sciences and engineering. Many find it difficult to see science as something that is "for them", which then has implications for their learning and participation in science. In this paper, I…

There is a significant, longstanding tradition in British sociological research that renders cultural capital synonymous with whiteness. This article suggests that one substantive factor that contributes to the enduring relationship between whiteness and cultural capital is the paucity of research on the Black and ethnic minority middle classes.…

Primarily drawing from the Mestiz@ Theory of Intelligences (Carrillo, 2013), this article examines how working class Latino male college students in North Carolina navigate multiple cultural worlds and excel academically. This work addresses current gaps in the literature that largely fail to unpack the experiences of academically successful…

The decline in manufacturing and growth of service-based jobs has prompted many social theorists to argue that the ability of working-class men to construct meaningful and rewarding careers is becoming ever more limited. Despite using the universal label "working class", the experience of skilled working-class men has been largely…

Drawing on in-depth interviews, this article discusses folk notions of globalization and examines perceptual and attitudinal responses offered by educationally underprivileged working-class female senior citizens, arguably the most neglected and marginalized social group in contemporary Korea. The present study stresses the importance of…

This article draws from a longitudinal study of 38 in-depth "testimonio" interviews with 10 undocumented Chicanas/Latinas from 2008 to 2014, first as college students and then as professionals. A Chicana feminist theoretical perspective in education was utilized to explore how undocumented Chicana/Latina ways of knowing emerged in the…

Bourdieu's theories enable us to conceptualise and understand why some people participate in higher education and some do not. Focussing on the working class as the marginalised social group in HE, Bourdieu demonstrated how education perpetuates inequality and lack of opportunity. The theories, or "thinking tools" as he called them,…

"Setting" is a widespread practice in the UK, despite little evidence of its efficacy and substantial evidence of its detrimental impact on those allocated to the lowest sets. Taking a Bourdieusian approach, we propose that setting can be understood as a practice through which the social and cultural reproduction of dominant power…

Habitus dislocation is a much debatable term. By presenting life-histories of working-class adolescents, this article argues (i) that not all upwardly mobile working-class adolescents experience habitus dislocation and, (ii) that habitus dislocation has its roots in the self-initiated ruptures that face some of those who want to be upwardly mobile…

This retrospective narrative investigation challenges aspects of structural determinism. The biographical data generated in the study revealed that the baby-boomer, male participants were not academically constrained by their working class identities. Interpersonal relationships experienced within an individual's unique communities of practice…

This article engages with the notion that schools embody social class in their structures and practices. We draw on Bourdieu's critical concept of "field" to describe the larger landscape of Croatian secondary schooling: a stratified system whose routes serve, and have served, to reinforce the maintenance of class (under)privilege. We…