Strivers vs skivers: Class prejudice and the demonisation of dependency in everyday life

“Aspirations of people who come from state education are different”: how language reflects social exclusion in medical education

“…The perceived lack of aspiration presented by the interviewees corresponds to a wider social perception that in order to be successful, one must take responsibility for their own situation and therefore have the aspiration to progress socially (Valentine and Harris 2004). This notion can be observed in the following example:…”

“…The choice of the utterance aspirations of people who come from state education are different also positions the group in a less desirable role as aspiration and motivation to succeed can be considered as linked to personal responsibility rather than a construct of structural disadvantage. This notion is discussed in further detail by Valentine and Harris (2004), findings in their study of class perception highlight the perceived importance of 'agency, self-management and personal responsibility in a meritocratic society in which poverty and disadvantage were implicitly regarded as individual failings-the result of poor investments in terms of effort and in choice-making or risk-taking' (p. 87). By choosing to draw on the lack of aspiration as a quality that characterises this group, the speaker therefore relies on the stereotypical image of the deviant working class with no aspirations or hope for the future (Valentine and Harris 2004).…”

Multiply vulnerable populations: mobilising a politics of compassion from the ‘capacity to hurt’

“…The modern family has become more unstable with rising levels of divorce and separation in which the economic necessity for dual career families and the repercussions of work intensification are likely to be contributory factors. In turn, the pressures of such economic and social transformations knock onto communities as well with population change and mobility and economic uncertainty all creating insecurities over competition for resources (Valentine and Harris 2013). Faced with these forces of change the once contented majority is also beset by a sense of precariousness.…”

Ways of Seeing: Sexism the Forgotten Prejudice?

“…This legislation requires people to be treated equally in most aspects of public life, regardless of the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. Such equality legislationpopularly described as political correctness -is perceived to be redefining spatial normativities about how people should talk and behave in public environments, such as the workplace, de-legitimising certain language, practices and uses of space (Valentine and Harris 2014). The male firefighters acknowledged how they 'ought' to behave even if they do not believe in or accept such normativities, recognising that to do otherwise would be to risk disciplinary action.…”

“…In particular, moral value judgements about embodiment and ways of living are being used to categorise and define the relative cultural and economic worth of different groups of people with working-class people judged as having the wrong kind of life and culture (Skeggs 2005). Here, classism as a form of prejudice (Valentine and Harris 2014) was commonly expressed by interviewees through popular gendered discourses about women's fecundity and excessive femininities in what Skeggs (2005, 967) has characterised as the 'historical-representational moralizing pathologizing, disgustproducing register attached to working-class women'.…”