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This chapter challenges middle-class bias in work-life literature by examining work-life balance dynamics through a social class perspective. It reveals class-based disparities in physical, temporal, and psychological outcomes, including the role of economic capital in work-life balance and the challenges encountered by the socially mobile in achieving psychological balance. It emphasizes the need to acknowledge social class implications for work-life balance and urges organizations to address class-based inconsistencies and inequalities in their practices.

Scholars have made important inroads to theorising and understanding working-class people's experiences of higher education (HE), as well as the broader complexities of navigating overlapping and sometimes competing middle- and working-class spaces.

In this chapter, we hope to add to this body of literature through examining the experiences and histories of two working-class women currently in the early stages of academic careers. Through the use of ‘experimental autoethnographies’ (Read & Bradley, 2018) and based on an assemblage of autoethnographic artefacts, we trace our journeys from undergraduate to post-PhD employment, picking up on key moments of pain, disconnect and isolation on the one hand, and celebration, support and pride on the other.

Through the tracing of these key moments in our recent academic trajectories, we make visible the difficulties of navigating elite spaces of academia as women with no family history of HE participation, exploring the ways in which we take on the role as ‘academic translator’ for those around us when discussing the labyrinthine meanings of academe. At the same time, and reflecting on these experiences from the perspective of navigating the margins of academia, we reject the pathologising narratives of working-class people and communities as uninterested in or hostile to HE through the unpacking of joyful moments shared with those around us related to our academic successes.

Finally, we point to ways in which we, as academics – however early career or precariously employed – are now in the position to support marginalised students or colleagues, ending our chapter with a series of practical suggestions for making academia ‘thinkable’ for future generations.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how working-class boys constitute themselves as subjects of “value” through a close examination of their occupational aspirations. The authors consider two significant influences on the aspirations of these young men: “space” and “place”; and neoliberal discourses which privilege a particular concept of individualized personhood. Contending with neoliberal conceptions of personhood and aspiration (that are primarily competitive, economic, and status based), working-class and working-poor young men either align themselves with the “entrepreneurial” or “aspirational” self or face the label of “low aspirations”.

Employing space and place as conceptual lenses allows for a nuanced understanding of how aspirations are formed (and reformed) according to immediate locale. To explore the identity negotiations surrounding the occupational aspirations of working-class males, the authors draw on two qualitative research studies in deprived neighbourhoods located in South Manchester and South London.

Based on the evidence as well as the wider research concerning working-class males and occupational aspirations, the authors argue that aspirations are formed in a contested space between traditional, localized, classed identities and a broader neoliberal conception of the “aspirational” rootless self.

This study focuses on aspiration formation in two specific neighbourhoods, and caution should be taken when generalizing the findings beyond these area contexts.

This study problematizes the literature generated by government bodies and educational institutions regarding working-class youth as having a “poverty of aspirations”. Additionally, value lies in the cross-reference of two specific geographic areas using the conceptual lens of space and place.

Higher education (HE) in England and other parts of the United Kingdom (UK), traditionally and historically, has been dominated by privileged and powerful social groups. In recent decades, universities have opened their doors and encouraged participation by a diversity of learners including women, working class, minority ethnic groups and many others that might be deemed historically under-represented in HE. This movement came to be known as ‘widening participation’. I consider myself to be a product of the widening participation movement having returned to learn in 1994 after a 10-year break in education. However, providing access to participate is only the first step. For many HE students from under-represented groups, like the working class, the journey through the academy, while earning their degree, can be fraught with profound and difficult experiences. This chapter charts my own journey into HE as a student, and back into HE as an academic, with some equally fraught and profound experiences.

In this chapter, I use an autoethnographic approach to explore my everyday experiences as a senior lecturer at a UK-based university. My academic trajectory covers over 20 years when I, a working-class person with no qualifications, entered university. I outline my journey from student to academic. My day-to-day experiences of being a working-class academic (WCA) have been generally positive, but I've still encountered microaggressions, and feelings of isolation. This chapter also illuminates the cultural wealth that I bring to academia by virtue of my working-class heritage before ending with some points for reflection.

The overarching question of this paper is, “What are the advantages of being an upwardly mobile academic?” The extant academic research on working-class academics has usually emphasized various kinds of “deficits” of working-class academics. In this paper, the author demonstrates that although class positions can constitute a formidable burden, they can translate into specific advantages in academia.

This study is based on the narrative, phenomenological approach, which has been applied in working-class studies and higher-education research. The empirical material comprises the collection of 25 narrative interviews conducted and analyzed according to the biographical narrative interpretive method (BNIM).

This paper looks at the experience of working-class academics from a holistic perspective, including both the downsides and upsides of being an “outsider within,” or “insider without.” It uncovers four assets of a working-class background – referred to as “navigational capital,” “revolutionary potential,” “wisdom” and a distinct “working-class pedagogy.”

The working-class pedagogy can be turned into support programs for working-class individuals. Their navigational capital can foster evolutionary changes and small improvements for the benefit of the entire academic community. Their revolutionary dispositions can trigger major reforms, and their unique experiences can be utilized as case studies in teaching.

This paper engages with the literature on the cultural mismatch and cleft habitus in the academic context. It analyzes the positive but rarely discussed aspects of being an upwardly mobile academic with a working-class background. By recognizing these unique assets, it engages with the literature on inclusive universities and can help make higher education more inclusive and sustainable.

Our attitudes, values and tastes are shaped by our position in social space. At least, that was the argument Pierre Bourdieu set out in his seminal work, La Distinction. The purpose of this paper is to consider Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction and his argument that working-class families exhibit cultural attitudes and tastes for social necessity.

Attitudinal data relating to social necessity are taken from a national social survey of the British population. The results provide a rich source of data for exploring classed attitudes towards necessity in contemporary Britain.

Bourdieu's original claims for working-class “choice of the necessary” and working-class “taste for necessity” are based on his observations grounded in social survey evidence drawn from 1960s French society. Analysis of contemporary British social survey and attitudinal data also reveals sharp contours and differences in attitudes and tastes according to class fractions. These are evident in classed tastes and preferences for food, clothes, the home and social life.

Within the Bourdieusian theoretical framework, we understand that the tastes of necessity are preferences that arise as adaptations to deprivation of necessary goods and services. La Distinction and Bourdieu's approach to unmasking inequalities and structures in social space continue to be relevant in contemporary Britain. More generally, study findings add to the growing evidence that casts some doubt on current arguments concerning “individualisation”, claiming that social class has ceased to be significant in modern societies.

This paper sheds fresh light on the empirical validity and continuing theoretical relevance of Bourdieu's work examining the role of social necessity in shaping working-class culture. Bourdieu argues that the real principle of our preferences is taste and for working-class families, this is a virtue made of necessity.

This article aims to explore the dominant normative patterns that establish the timing and order of life events, determining the desirable life strategies for working-class youth in modern Russia.

Exploring the interrelationship between new working-class studies and life-course studies, this research combines the consideration of life course as a structurally organised integrity with a phenomenological perspective on the study of life strategies. The empirical basis of research consists of a survey of 1532 young working-class representatives living in the Ural Federal District of Russia and biographical in-depth interviews with 31 of them.

The study resulted in persisting significance and values of traditional life-course structures while showing that the current social conditions do not allow for this life strategy to be fulfilled. Young workers choose adaptation and survival life strategies that restrict the realisation of their professional and cultural potential. The obtained data have confirmed the presence of some worldwide tendencies, such as the dispersion of events during transition to adulthood, a combination of schooling and full-time work and an earlier career start of working-class representatives.

The sequencing and timing of life-course events of Russian working-class youth is an original research topic. The present study proposes and substantiates the notion of the new working class and criteria for its definition.