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"I just don’t want to connect my life with this occupation": working-class young men, manual labour, and social mobility in contemporary Russia

"I just don’t want to connect my life with this occupation": working-class young men, manual labour, and social mobility in contemporary Russia
"I just don’t want to connect my life with this occupation": working-class young men, manual labour, and social mobility in contemporary Russia
A key strand in the Western literature on working‐class masculinities focuses on whether young men are capable of the feminized performances apparently required of them in new service economies. However, the wider literature on processes of neoliberalization – emphasizing the ‘hollowing out’ of labour markets, the cultural devaluation of lower‐skilled forms of employment, and the pathologization of working‐class lives – would suggest that it is as much a classed as a gendered transformation that is demanded of young men leaving school with few qualifications. This dimension of neoliberalization is highlighted by ethnographic data exploring the experiences and subjectivities of young workers in St Petersburg, Russia, where traditional forms of manual labour have not given way to ‘feminized’ work, but have become materially and symbolically impoverished, and are perceived as incapable of supporting the wider transition into adult independence. In this context, young workers attempt to emulate new forms of ‘successful masculinity’ connected with novel service sector professions and the emergent higher education system, despite the unlikelihood of overcoming a range of structural and cultural barriers. These acquiescent, individualized responses indicate that, while ways of being a man are apparently being liberated from old constraints amongst the more privileged, neoliberalization narrows the range of subject positions available to working‐class young men.
0007-1315
207-225
Walker, Charlie
73a65297-4ef1-4ad0-88ea-1626f11f0665
Walker, Charlie
73a65297-4ef1-4ad0-88ea-1626f11f0665

Walker, Charlie (2017) "I just don’t want to connect my life with this occupation": working-class young men, manual labour, and social mobility in contemporary Russia. British Journal of Sociology, 69 (1), 207-225. (doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12299).

Record type: Article

Abstract

A key strand in the Western literature on working‐class masculinities focuses on whether young men are capable of the feminized performances apparently required of them in new service economies. However, the wider literature on processes of neoliberalization – emphasizing the ‘hollowing out’ of labour markets, the cultural devaluation of lower‐skilled forms of employment, and the pathologization of working‐class lives – would suggest that it is as much a classed as a gendered transformation that is demanded of young men leaving school with few qualifications. This dimension of neoliberalization is highlighted by ethnographic data exploring the experiences and subjectivities of young workers in St Petersburg, Russia, where traditional forms of manual labour have not given way to ‘feminized’ work, but have become materially and symbolically impoverished, and are perceived as incapable of supporting the wider transition into adult independence. In this context, young workers attempt to emulate new forms of ‘successful masculinity’ connected with novel service sector professions and the emergent higher education system, despite the unlikelihood of overcoming a range of structural and cultural barriers. These acquiescent, individualized responses indicate that, while ways of being a man are apparently being liberated from old constraints amongst the more privileged, neoliberalization narrows the range of subject positions available to working‐class young men.

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Accepted/In Press date: 3 November 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 July 2017
Published date: July 2017
Organisations: Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 403735
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/403735
ISSN: 0007-1315
PURE UUID: 5205a9a3-6d99-4610-b356-6434f87c2ab3
ORCID for Charlie Walker: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4875-3311

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 12 Dec 2016 11:23
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:01

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