Class Struggle, Education and Social Mobility: A Silent Family Rupture

By Mélanie

‘Do your homework and listen in school. Otherwise, you’ll clean up after others for a living,’ my mother would say. This was the leitmotif of my childhood, repeated so many times that I would recite it in a whisper when she started uttering the first words.

Since she was twelve, my mother worked as a cleaner. When she later got pregnant, she brought her child up by herself – just like her own mother before her.

My grandmother came from a family of French farmers. The idea that children are a financial burden has been passed down through generations of my bloodline, just as it has in other working-class groups. Little importance was given to the formal education of said children, and ‘higher education’ – starting with secondary school – was reserved for middle-class families. Even if time had passed from my grandmother’s upbringing in the fifties to my mother’s in the seventies, money remained the centre of attention in the family.

As my mother was not given the choice to study, she desperately wanted me to catch the train of education. From sunrise to sunset, she would clean properties that people owned and classrooms where children studied. She ironed the shirts that the white-collars wore. The only person she could rely on to put food on our table was herself; stress was constant in our lives.

Despite her goodwill, she could not help with my homework as she neither had the time or the energy to dedicate to it. All of the conditions of social determinism were present for history to repeat itself – for me to reproduce my family patterns. Nothing predicted my graduation from the most prestigious universities in France with multiple degrees.

I recently learned that I belong to the ‘transclasses’. This term, coined by the sociologist Chantal Jaquet, aims to define a category of individuals who grew up in one social class and moved to a different one after reaching adulthood.

As for every transclass individual, education has played a crucial role in my transition between social classes; my family members and teachers presented academic success as the only ‘exit’ from the world of hard manual work.

My mother’s fear of not making ends meet became mine, and I found myself competitively passing exams that ranked me at the top of the class every year. For a long time, I believed that my academic success was based on my unflagging effort.

It was only after obtaining my first master’s degree that I discovered the double standards of meritocracy. With the glorified idea of studying being one’s way out of poverty there comes a flawed perception of equality, which leads to discrimination and contempt for people who are, and remain, working-class.

Meritocracy suggests that everyone can succeed if they put their heart to it – if they want it badly enough – and implies the harmful narrative that those who are working-class have chosen that life. As the title of the eye-opening podcast from Vox explains, ‘when meritocracy wins, everybody loses’.

In addition to these discriminatory principles I adopted, I came to the realisation that I had praised the ‘dominant’ culture taught at school and university. I favoured the centralised curriculum over a culture considered inferior: my family’s.

Like many who have transitioned up the social classes, I forcefully neutralised my accent to sound relevant, aware that my regional accent could make me less pertinent. I was once told by a university lecturer that I had to learn how to speak in ‘received’ French – the Parisian accent – if I intended to succeed in the final exam. This systemic pressure is transposable to Britain, where people from the North of England who have moved to London for work may make a conscious effort to adopt a Received Pronunciation in English.

The reason for these accent changes? Some parts of the south of France, in my case, and some parts of the North of England are areas associated with poverty. Speaking in these accents confronts people from ‘dominant classes’ with the harsh reality of class struggle, which often comes across as unpleasant and is something we are pressured to avoid.

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘habitus’ the socially ingrained habits, dispositions and skills shared amongst people from the same social background. My teenage and early adult years have been dedicated to changing my ‘habitus’ and integrating social cues that were not mine. As a result of this adaptation, I developed a heightened sense of observation and imitation. Some might say I became somewhat of a social chameleon.

Today, my socio-professional category is middle-class; I have an office job, I have time for hobbies and social activities, and I am privileged enough not to worry about money like my mother – and grandmother – did all their lives.

There is a price for this, however. Though I am hyper-connected to the news of the external world, I have never been more disconnected from where I come from.