‘I Don’t Want to Completely Lose Myself’: Social Mobility as Movement Across Classed, Ethnicised, and Gendered Spaces

Abstract

This article explores how subjective experiences of social mobility are informed by dimensions of identity other than class (e.g. ethnicity, gender). Drawing on in-depth interviews with British-born young women of Bangladeshi Muslim, working class origins in higher education, I critically interrogate their articulations of class positioning and trajectory and the interplay between participation in education and employment and gendered identities. Findings evidence the multifarious and value-ridden character of class signifiers, the relational nature of class positioning and the entrenchment of middle-classness and Whiteness, and testify to the compounding tensions experienced by upwardly mobile individuals of minority ethnic origins. The pursuit of upward mobility through participation in higher education and employment is also shown to entail shifts in gendered expectations and strains in performing valued gendered identities. Ultimately, I argue that social mobility processes are better understood as involving a movement across material and symbolic spaces where markers, dispositions, and practices linked to individuals’ class, ethnicity, religion, and gender acquire differential value. This intersectional lens enables a complex and nuanced picture to emerge, which foregrounds multiple tensions, displacements, and resulting inequalities in experiences and outcomes.