Reclassifying Upward Mobility: Femininity and the neo-liberal subject

Abstract

While the concept of class does not sit easily with a very changed labour market in which traditional markers of working-class masculinity have been eroded and many people would not define themselves in class terms, the differences and inequalities associated with class have certainly far from disappeared. This article aims to explore how we might think about the ways that 'class' enters the production of subjectivities in the present. In particular, the article explores the way in which narratives of upward mobility are lived as success and failure, hope and despair, for some young women entering the labour market in Britain at the turn of the millennium. The multiplicity and fracturing of past and present, belonging, not belonging, the dreams, aspirations and defences are explored in some detail.