Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores how boys from low-socioeconomic status backgrounds disengage from their education, and are resultantly severely underrepresented in post-compulsory education. For those who attend university, many will be first-in-their-family. As first-in-family students, they may encounter significant barriers which may limit their participation in university life and their acquisition of social and cultural capital. Drawing on a longitudinal study of young Australian men pursuing higher education, the book provides the first detailed account of socially mobile working-class masculinities. Investigating the experiences of these young men, this book analyses their acclimatisation to new learning environments as well as their changing subjectivities. The monograph draws on various sociological theories to analyse empirical data and make practical recommendations which will drive innovation in widening participation initiatives internationally. This book will be of interest to scholars interested in widening participation, transitions, social mobility and Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities.
Table of Contents1. Introduction
Class and higher educationAustralian higher educationThe First-in-Family Males ProjectStructure of Self-made men
Part I: Masculinities, class, education
2. Upwardly mobile working-class masculinities
Setting the stageWorking-class masculinities, education and social mobility: A brief genealogyMasculinities, neoliberalism and schoolingMasculinities in higher educationDelineating the boundaries of working-class and middle-class masculinityConclusion
3. The Australian higher education context
Recent equity policies in Australian higher educationEquity groups, the Bradley Review and marketizationMeritocracy, masculinity and the Australian ‘fair go’Conclusion
4. Theorizing social mobility and the first-in-family experience
‘Injuries of class’ and class as affectiveBourdieu, habitus and disjunctureBecoming socially mobileTheorizing class: Pathologization, shame and the lived experienceInvesting in the self: The practice of self-crafting Conclusion
Part II: Findings
5. The transition to university: Dissonance, validation and meritocratic subjectivities
Education as a value-constituting practiceSchool performativity, spoon feeding and the ‘rough ride’Hard work and meritocratic subjectivitiesConclusion
6. Performing the entrepreneurial self
Calibrating and regulating new forms of selfhoodInvesting in new forms of selfhoodConclusion
7. Narratives of value and fulfilment
Independence and feeling valuableProducing subjectivities of fulfilmentThe fragility of fulfilmentConclusion
8. Relational subjectivities and self-crafting in times of transition
The changing peer groupShifting family dynamics and the university experienceConclusion
Part III: Conclusions
9. Reflections and recommendations
Studenthood in neoliberal education contextsThe production of classed and gendered subjectivitiesMasculinities in higher education: Effective forms of supportConcluding thoughts
