What role do children play in education and stratification? Are they merely passive recipients of unequal opportunities that schools and parents create for them? Or do they actively shape their own opportunities? Through a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse, public elementary school, I show that children's…

Despite an increase in higher education uptake in the UK, participation rates for working class students remain low. When working-class students attend university, they are often attracted to lower status universities to enrol in new subject areas, such as media studies. This study uses Bourdieu's theory of stratification, and its reproduction via…

Despite popular beliefs about social mobility in American society, research consistently shows that inequalities are reproduced across generations. And yet, while social reproduction hinges on the transmission of advantages from parents to children, scholars take for granted children's role in this process. We do not know whether children…

Scandinavian welfare states are developing a growing new middle class and a growing marginalized, poverty-threatened underclass, reproducing the societal duality caused by labor market structuring. Tightening labor markets, increased dependency on welfare benefits, and substantial decreases in public transfers have combined to create a growing…

At a small private liberal arts school such as Clark University, students are familiar with people from upper middle class backgrounds. Either they themselves are from upper middle class families or, if they are from working class or lower middle class backgrounds, they are acquainted with more affluent peers. Clark students have a clear image of…

The English educational system is still being organized along social-class lines. Working classes have historically been "found out" in education--discovered to be inferior and less cultured and clever than middle classes. Findings from studies on higher education choice, secondary school transitions, and primary assessments underline…