Middle-class struggle? Identity-work and leisure among sixth formers in the United Kingdom

• Published in: British journal of sociology of education Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 37 - 52
• Main Authors: Jane Kehily, Mary, Pattman, Rob
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01.02.2006; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group; Taylor & Francis Group Journals; Taylor and Francis; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Cannabis; Class; Class identity; Class struggle; Cultural identity; Drinking; Drug Abuse; Education; Educational sociology; Foreign Countries; Identification; Identification (Psychology); Identity; Identity formation; Inequality; Leisure; Leisure Time; Marijuana; Masculinity; Middle Class; Middle school students; Parents; Peer Relationship; Private schools; Recreation; Recreational Activities; Schools; Secondary School Students; Smoking; Social Bias; Social Class; Social classes; Social construction; Social Identity; Social Influences; Sociology; Sociology of education. Educational systems. Lifelong education; Students; Tobacco smoking; United Kingdom; Work; Working class; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; Collective Identity; Middle Class; Social reproduction; Student; Leisure; Bourgeoisie
• ISSN: 0142-5692; 1465-3346
• DOI: 10.1080/01425690500376721

This paper explores the ways in which sixth-form students in Milton Keynes negotiate their identities and the symbolic significance they attach to leisure activities in the process of doing this. The paper draws upon qualitative, young-person-centred interviews with sixth formers in state and private schools. We address the investments of sixth formers in constructing themselves as autonomous individuals and argue that they do so from a position of middle-class subjects-in-the-making. Through an inversion of Willis' ( 1977 ) (focus, our concern is to make explicit the implicitly middle-class identities sixth formers were forging. We argue that the identity-work of sixth formers plays a part in the reproduction of school-based class inequalities by pathologising working-class students while constructing themselves as bourgeois liberal individuals.