working class identity

The majority of Britons identify as working class even if they have stereotypically middle-class jobs, holding values that suggest they are more likely to be socially conservative on issues such as immigration, according to the latest official survey of British social attitudes.

Although just 25% of people now work in routine and manual occupations, 60% of Britons regard themselves as working class, a phenomenon described as a “working class of the mind” that has withstood dramatic changes in the labour market.

“People who see themselves as at the bottom of a structure in which there are a few super-rich and then everyone else might well think of themselves as ‘working class’ relatively speaking, even if they do hold a middle-class job,” the survey report says.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents felt that the class divide was “fairly or very wide”, while 73% said it was fairly or very difficult to move between classes, compared with 65% who held this view in 2005.

Kirby Swales, of NatCen Social Research, which carried out the study, writes “The class divide is alive and well in Britain and the economic instability and austerity of recent years seem to have sharpened our belief that it is difficult to move from one class to another. Class divisions have been highlighted recently with the vote to leave the EU, with some commentators talking about disaffection among the working class. Our findings certainly show that people who believe themselves to be working class are more likely to believe in a class divide than those who say they are middle class, and more think it is difficult to move between classes than did in the past.”

Although politicians have on occasion declared that “we are all middle class now” the survey shows that Britons have clung to working-class values even when they have moved up in the income scale. Nearly half of people in managerial and professional occupations identify as working class.

While 63% of middle-class identifiers in managerial and professional jobs reported that they are pro-immigration, for example, that percentage falls to just 38% in the same occupational category for those who identify as working class.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/29/most-brits-regard-themselves-as-working-class-survey-finds