Working-class politics and cultural capital: Considerations from transformations of the French left

A classic activist model: Scholastically atypical workers

Like Italy, France differed from the rest of Western Europe in that its Communist Party, the PCF, dominated the left wing of political life from the end of the Second World War into the 1970s. Closely tied to the largest union, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT, General Confederation of Labour), the PCF was deeply rooted in industrial areas both urban and rural, and primarily run by activists from labouring backgrounds (Mischi, 2012). Studies agree on the importance of the scholastic aspirations of the workers who assumed responsibilities in the PCF (Pudal, 1989). Worker-activists in the PCF came from the more highly educated fractions of the working classes. They had a longer exposure to school and often mention the influence of teachers on their political involvement. In oral and written accounts many portray an interrupted education: they would have liked to pursue their studies but they were cut short by a family situation related to poverty or the war. Political ideology and class loyalty inspired others to leave school to become workers. In any case, these activists often had a higher regard for education than most other workers, who, as Willis (1977) demonstrated in the case of Britain, tended to reject anything related to school. Worker-activists had distinctive educational aspirations and resources among their class, and they invested them in activism. Involvement in the PCF or CGT allowed them to pursue cultural work in connection with the labouring world. Those that ended up working full-time for the union or the party became professional activists, acquiring cultural resources collectively forged within the organisation and becoming the ‘intellectuals of the institution’ (Pudal, 1988).

Revisiting this model for working-class activism is essential given the shocks that the working-class world has experienced in recent years (including broken and scattered work groups, a school system strained by mounting enrolments, rising job insecurity and unemployment, spatial segregation). Workers’ involvement in left-leaning activism is changing in a hostile environment marked by a weakening and splintering working class (Beaud & Pialoux, 2001; Strangleman, 2004). This revisit is also prompted by the decline of the communist movement since the late 1970s, which left the PCF a minority party among labouring populations. The activist environment has changed considerably in both socio-economic and ideological terms for newer generations of men and women active in the CGT, which is still the leading French trade union.

Methods

While most work on activist organisations focuses on their leaders, programmes and ideologies, this article explores activism of the rank-and-file through long-term fieldwork in a single field site. Ethnographic research is better than statistical approaches for revealing incorporated cultural capital, and it makes it possible to observe people’s behaviour. As Bourgois (1995) and Mckenzie (2015) have shown, settling into a neighbourhood permits to comprehend changes in the living conditions of the subaltern classes. My study takes the same approach, but addresses the more stable fractions of the working classes with steady employment. My study moreover concerns workers in rural peripheries, a group we still know little about because sociological research overwhelmingly addresses workers in urban areas. Fieldwork was conducted with union members in a small town in rural France, most of them shop-floor workers at a railway equipment maintenance facility.

The local scale of observation, based in a specific workshop and its environs, is necessary for getting a firm grasp on activism ‘from below’ and its everyday practice. An ethnographic approach equips the researcher to situate activist careers among the social relationships that develop across multiple social settings (Weber, 2001) without isolating the activist network in a vacuum. Certainly, union involvement rarely means strict adherence to ideological slogans and programmes, and it is also influenced by workplace connections and dispositions developed through school, family and friendships. For five years (2007–2012) I was regularly present in the town, where I followed the daily life of activists while attending a variety of activist events (such as meetings, strikes, demonstrations, training sessions) and sharing friendly occasions (town festivals, family meals, conversations at cafes) (Mischi, 2016). In addition to systematically recording union meetings, I also recorded long individual interviews with 26 active or retired workers from the maintenance shop, interviewing some multiple times.

This article emphasises the reconfigurations taking place in the studied union, with particular attention to how its activists differ from the worker-activist figure of the earlier period, especially in terms of their acquisition and possession of cultural capital. After analysing the processes leading workers to become unionists, I will explore the limited role of educational capital in their activist careers, and then examine how activism may foster social mobility.

From labour to union work: Becoming an intellectual of the organisation

In France, as in many other European countries, the percentage of workers rises as the distance from a big city grows (Mischi, Renahy, & Diallo, 2016). The relative weight of the working classes is more important in rural town populations, while higher social classes are mainly concentrated in metropolitan areas. In processes comparable to those found in Great Britain (Hoggart, 2007) and the United States (Duncan, 1999), manual and subaltern workers predominate in little-urbanised areas of France, where the number of farmers has declined considerably since the 1950s.

Research was conducted in a rural industrial area of eastern France centred on a town of 3000 inhabitants. Typical for a country town, its population is predominantly working class (65%). ¹ The town is the centre for services (schools, shops, transportation, etc.) and industry (metallurgy, slaughterhouse, railway facility, etc.) for the whole surrounding rural area. Farming still marks the surrounding landscape, but the few jobs it represents today are based in outlying villages. The members of the local working-class population that are most invested in local networks (unions, community groups, political parties, municipal government) are mainly employees of the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (SNCF; National French Railway Company). Railway workers hold a key position in local activist space because they are in a stable fraction of the working classes. As employees of a public company they have relatively good working conditions and job security, both elements favouring professional stability, an essential condition for potential union or political engagement. In contrast, private-sector workers’ less secure position makes activism more difficult for them. Workers at the local pipe factory, leatherworking company and agro-food plants are little invested in the local public space. Service workers in personal services and sales, predominantly women, are in loose working configurations that do not lend themselves to union action. In this setting, railway workers are distinctive for maintaining activist sociabilities, bolstered by the railway’s long-term presence in town (since the mid-nineteenth century). It is a fine example of the importance of residential seniority, which favours the best-established workers for access to local power (Elias & Scotson, 1965).

The CGT railway workers’ union in this area brings together workers from various branches of the SNCF, including rail bed maintenance workers, ticket-window agents, and workers in the maintenance facility, who are the most numerous (270). The main organisers for the 80-member union come from this facility. When I began research in autumn 2007, the union was led by Philippe, ² a 46-year-old skilled worker whose father had worked for the dairy in town and whose mother was a homemaker. He joined the CGT in the late 1980s and was first elected as employee representative in 1992. He became secretary (the top position) of the union branch in the early 2000s, and assumed regional-level responsibilities. When we met, Philippe spent 80% of his working time on the union. He was on the verge of becoming a full-time union officer and was increasingly out of town, especially to the regional capital Dijon, 60 km away. In the 2000s, two other activists from the facility were also released from company obligations to devote themselves to union work full time.

These workers-turned-union officers truly changed jobs, as their union work led them to do things they never did in the shop. Philippe’s last shop position consisted of disassembling electric switching motors, changing, washing and painting worn parts, and doing mechanical tune-ups. When he became a full-time union officer, his daily tasks were henceforth focused on words and figures: note-taking, reading documents, writing reports, seeking legal information, and so on. Philippe coordinated union activities: preparing joint meetings with SNCF management, planning actions, organising union meetings, collecting and selecting announcements to pass along from the union’s higher echelons. When he became a leader in the regional CGT, he took charge of union training. Although he held the subaltern position of worker in the occupational setting, Philippe came to run activist groups and train new union members, which are activities closer to managerial work. This is despite the fact that his schooling was relatively short and he was little invested in it. He earned a CAP (Certificat d’Aptitude Professionnelle, a secondary-level vocational degree) in electrical mechanics in four years rather than three (repeating a year after failing the exam) and does not remember his school years fondly.

Generally speaking, the average educational capital of the leaders of this CGT branch is no higher than that of all of the workers in the maintenance facility, and references to glorious school days or a thirst for culture are few. I have observed the same situation several times among union leaders in other companies elsewhere in France, which contrasts with the usual findings on worker activism in the previous period. Pudal (1989) has demonstrated how workers in the 1930s through the 1950s became the PCF’s organic intellectuals by making use of the ‘social dispositions to study’ that they acquired in the family, at school, or from influential teachers. In interviews with union members working in the maintenance shop, however, they very rarely expressed regret over being unable to pursue their schooling any further. Their union involvement does not carry on their early cultural aspirations.

In fact, educational hierarchies have little impact on how the activist group is organised. In a union where few have the baccalauréat (degree capping secondary studies), most local union leaders (like Philippe) have the lower-level CAP, so it is clear that people with the highest degrees do not monopolise leadership positions. Unlike society at large and especially in companies and non-profit organisations where those with the highest degrees rise to the top, positions of power in a union are not necessarily in the hands of those with the most educational capital. In late 2008, Nicolas, a 37-year-old skilled worker, took over from Philippe as union secretary. Nicolas did not have a baccalauréat, and was far from being the most highly educated member of the union. Indeed, a major change came to secondary schooling in France in the mid-1980s, with the creation of the vocationally oriented baccalauréat professionnel, and since then the value of older vocational diplomas such as the CAP has decreased.

After some problems in middle school (collège), where he had to repeat his second year (‘it wasn’t my path’, ‘it wasn’t working’), Nicolas went to a vocational high school (lycée) and got a CAP degree in metal construction. Like many others, he did not have good memories of the generalist middle school: ‘I preferred high school, the LEP [high school for vocational instruction]. It was more vocational, more manual.’ Few railway workers met during this study admitted youthful aspirations for lengthy studies, and most indicated that studying non-technical subjects had been an embarrassing ordeal, and that they were relieved when they went on to a vocational high school. In contrast to their boredom and difficulties in middle school and the general education it offered, their memories of vocational high school are generally positive, focused on the technical skills they learned and the ambience among students.

After getting his CAP, Nicolas had applied to pursue a vocational baccalauréat, but he chose to go to work at the SNCF instead. This decision to enter working life early echoes some of the rationales Willis (1977) analysed in his research on the educational self-exclusion of workers’ children in England in the early 1970s. At the same time, the working-class culture valuing work and camaraderie over lengthy studies (with no readily discernible practical use) is weaker in France today, and the signs of an ‘anti-school culture’ are less pronounced. Regardless, being part of a relatively cohesive labour milieu is still a genuine factor in social reproduction strategies involving early departure from the educational system. In this case, Nicolas knew that there would soon be a position available in the shop, and he already had working experience from a stint as a temporary metalworker, facts he emphasised in his retrospective explanation of the decision to leave school.

It was mostly because I wanted to start working, since I’d already had a taste of work at the factory … . It’s having begun to work that kind of made me decide to get into the SNCF. And I knew, since my father worked at the SNCF at the time, that there was a solderer who was going to retire, so they were going to look for someone to replace him.

Like most local union leaders, Nicolas is far from the classic figure of the worker with educational aspirations who, prevented from pursuing his schooling, compensated for his frustrated cultural ambitions by investing himself in activism, where his scholastic skills could continue to develop. One could even say that the new leader’s educational capital is actually lower than his predecessor’s. Philippe, who earned a CAP in 1978, was indeed in the higher fractions of degree-holders of his generation. Since then, however, the new generation of the labouring elite possesses the baccalauréat professionnel, which Nicolas does not have.

Educational capital’s limited role in shaping an activist elite

Neither Philippe nor Nicolas manifested early identifiable cultural aspirations valuing or facilitating the acquisition of reading and writing skills during their formal educations. Instead, their intellectual apprenticeship seems to result from their involvement in the union, which allowed them to gradually craft an activism-based cultural capital for themselves. Lacking significant educational capital, both emphasised union training and help from other members of the group when speaking of this learning experience. Union training plays a significant role in the career of CGT unionists: new members have a training day for which they are excused from work. It is held in town and run by confirmed union railway workers who devote significant time to the history of the labour movement, about which many in the younger generations know little. In order to rise into union leadership, it is necessary to pursue this training to a higher and more specialised level (to become shop steward, union secretary, and so on). Regardless, interviewed activists cited ‘on-the-job learning’, contact with ‘old-timers’ and confronting the boss as having greater impact than formal union training. Philippe and Nicolas’s literary and activist resources are not manifestations of scholastic skills, but were formed within the group over the course of union work. Philippe often told me, ‘I learned to read and write thanks to the union’. Far from being unique, most of the site’s workers with union responsibilities have experienced such a cultural progression.

Union leaders’ limited cultural capital from school or family should be put in relation to a change in the activist profile since the 1990s. Until then, union membership was commonly seen as part of a seemingly natural progression based in a family legacy. Workers from earlier generations generally knew of the union from family or neighbours before they joined the company, and in interviews they emphasise family values in explaining their union membership. This contrasts with the life courses and discourse of newer union leaders, many from families without union backgrounds, for whom union membership was not a self-evident choice. Many of the younger generation of railway workers joined the CGT around age 30, after several years with the SNCF: Philippe joined when he was 28, in 1989, and Nicolas, from a non-union family, became active at 32. This contrasts with previous generations of workers, which union records and interviews show joined earlier in their careers, when they were hired (ages 18–25). In interviews, workers of this generation emphasise their taste for learning and their pursuit of scholastic aspirations through union work.

The situation today is different: there is an average gap of 10 years between being hired and joining the union. New activists join the union for work-related reasons such as tensions over the arbitrariness of bosses (Nicolas, for example, joined the union when he came into conflict with management over the direction his career was taking). When describing their reasons for joining the union, newer union members stress the unequal treatment that came with the new management system, which gave more power to higher-ups and more individualised remuneration with the proliferation of bonus systems. Some workers who feel undervalued and shunned at work decide to join the union when they need its aid. The union seems to be a space for defending and rebuilding the occupational dignity that has been undermined by recently implemented managerial policies at the SNCF. As Strangleman (2004) found in the British rail system, privatisation and restructuring significantly weaken cultures of work.

One should nonetheless not conclude that family no longer plays a role in the process of joining the union. The feeling of social injustice is forged in everyday work as well as in the family environment, in contact with the social difficulties experienced by family members. The world of railway workers is predominantly composed of men, most of whose wives are insecure wage-labourers in service jobs such as mothers’ helper, nurses’ aid, cleaning worker, home care provider, or sales clerk, and many of them have gone through periods of unemployment and doing odd jobs. This is the case for Nicolas’s wife, who worked in food services and then a retirement home. Their wives and children’s insecure living experience is a motive for union engagement.

The lesser influence of scholastic resources in drawing workers into activism is related to developments in union activism at large, marked by a general decline in membership and a rise in the age of new members. This observation should also be understood in relation to the setting of the study: a rural industrial area, where residents have relatively limited educational careers and are far from universities, located in major cities. In such cities, subaltern workers and students often cross paths in service jobs, and university-educated workers who became activists by applying their scholastic skills are more commonplace. For instance, Martin Thibault’s study of a workshop in metropolitan Paris (2013) demonstrates that younger workers are more exposed to school culture and middle-class worlds. In urban areas, the experience of social down-classing may motivate university-educated workers to invest in a union to fend off the submission intrinsic to low-level employment (Rimbert & Crespo, 2004). Furthermore, the higher percentage of women in urban and service-sector unions reduces the atmosphere of hegemonic masculinity that is stronger in rural and industrial areas, where a working-class version of masculinity is more prominent (Campbell, Bell, & Finney, 2006). Activist socialisation in the union should be considered in relation to this rural context, where women are marginalised despite union defence of their employment rights.

My observation of limited school-based cultural capital should also be understood in the context of a site-based, thus lowest level, union. Some findings indicate that it mainly applies to base-level organisations. A case in point, one of the few encountered unionists with a positive image of school ended up in the national CGT leadership. He grew up in Dijon, moved to Paris when he began to work for the railway, and then returned to the Dijon area, where he rose through the union ranks. The model of the worker-activist fighting frustrated scholastic ambitions or manifesting his autodidactic disposition primarily applies to the leadership level. Activists with high educational capital may even have an advantage at higher levels, especially in European-level union organisations, where women with university degrees are increasingly numerous (Wagner, 2013).

In contrast, at the grassroots level, some education-inclined workers may feel cramped in a union environment that reveres a virile activist ethos. Such was the case of Bruno, who was one of the few union leaders admitting to blocked educational aspirations. Born in 1965, he did not initially have manual work in mind. In the local middle school, ‘it went really well’, and he took the generalist, academically oriented track his first year of high school in Dijon, where he boarded in a dormitory. He intended to specialise in computing, but gave it all up because he did not like dormitory life or being cut off from the rural setting of home. This child of a local family ultimately turned to a familiar world, doing an apprenticeship at the SNCF and ending up with a CAP in mechanics.

I wasn’t very technical at the beginning. … I wasn’t very skilled with my hands. … But oh well, I learned and that’s it. There wasn’t much choice, I’d already begun and then my parents placed all their hopes on that. Guidance oriented me badly, anyway, I didn’t know what I wanted to do at the end of middle school. What happened with the first year of high school and the experience of changing worlds, it kind of somehow turned me around in my studies.

Significantly, Bruno’s life partner studied art history at the university in Dijon before she also settled for subaltern service work in the area, where she had also grown up. The couple’s return to the area signals the end of their educational aspirations and their ambitions to get jobs requiring higher qualifications.

In interviews Bruno mulled over the fact that he is not very self-assured when speaking publicly, especially at general assemblies, and he mentioned the gap between his attitude and what is expected of activists. This struggle over what makes a good activist is dominated by a form of masculinity that puts a certain type of worker-activist to an advantage. This activist ethos acts internally to somewhat exclude women in addition to men who seem ‘too intellectual’. Bruno explains:

I’m not charismatic. Some are naturally like that, they go do rounds of the guys to talk. But not me, it’s not my thing. … It’s not everyone who can express himself in front of even a few people. I can really see it at union meetings. I haven’t got that talent.

Bruno’s educational resources do not make up for his maladjustment to the worker-activist ethos that dominates in some industrial sectors such as the railway. In addition, by activating his disposition to read (novels, news, internet), he has informational resources other than the union that diverge from its dominant discourse. His autodidactic inclinations sometimes put him at odds with the union organisation, of which he can be critical concerning internal democracy. This situation reduces both his desire to get invested on the ground and his chances of being promoted in the union. Some see him as ‘individualistic’ and ‘pretentious’. Philippe says of Bruno: ‘He reads a lot, no question that he’s intelligent, he thinks a lot. But he doesn’t know how to face the guys.’

This hegemonic masculine activist ethos fuels a general suspicion of ‘intellectuals’. Consequently, although schooling is noticeably longer and is more important in getting a job for younger generations of workers, it cannot be said that worker mistrust of ‘intellectuals’ and scholastic knowledge has vanished. Opposition to managers and new white-collar employees from prestigious schools can be seen in workers’ strike movements as well as everyday conversation. This demonstrates that Willis’s (1977) observation that English working-class youths rejected school because they associated intellectual pursuits with authority is also valid in other contexts and periods. Unlike intellectual work, which is seen as passive and lacking virility, Willis’s lads saw their manual trades as a way to assert themselves through physical effort (seen as masculine) and camaraderie. At school as at work, there are those who ‘slave away’ and are ‘good with their hands’, and there are ‘pencil-pushers’ who do ‘sissy’ work. A more recent study by Thomas Dunk (1991) in an industrial part of Ontario (Canada) also provides an account of the anti-intellectualism of young workers, who oppose ‘common sense’ to bureaucrats and intellectuals’ pretention and lack of practical skills. They make fun of the snobbery-tinged stupidity of managers and experts who come north to supervise their factories. This rejection seems to be a symbolic inversion of the class contempt they endure every day in the factory, where administrators and experts have their own parking lot, door into the factory, and cafeteria. These workers oppose people who do nothing but talk (teachers, lawyers, bureaucrats, students, politicians, managers, salespeople) to people who produce things.

While following the careers of unionised railway workers, I observed that union involvement is rooted in this worker distrust of higher social classes while at the same time developing and politicising it. Although rejection of management can fuel collective mobilisation, it is gradually channelled. Tension is depersonalised and converted to a more general register. Activist apprenticeship politicises discontent and places it in an institutional framework that includes exchange with their hierarchical superiors. It is even possible that union involvement by leaders who learn to stand up to management favours a degree of social ease in relations with social groups other than their own.

Leaving a subaltern position by acquiring activist resources

Union representative work demands that workers acquire new cultural skills and expand their social associations. It brings them to new places and introduces them to people from previously unfamiliar social worlds. Union leaders frequently go to Dijon or Paris for meetings and demonstrations. They rub elbows with other railway-worker unionists in other grades or divisions at CGT conventions, training sessions and gatherings of representatives from many occupations. In short, they come into contact with other social groups without necessarily being in a subordinate position.

When he considers what unionism has given him, Philippe (like many others) emphasises contact with people in more intellectual occupations that the union offers:

You’d never in your life have the possibility of meeting people like that … Well, maybe it depends on your studies or your educational level … but usually you can’t, in normal life, even in a non-profit, you can’t chat about underlying problems, politics, with a teacher or engineer. And these people in the conversation see eye to eye with you … . It’s the configuration that makes it so you can chat with guys like that, it’s thanks to the organisation … . Your union responsibility leads you to frequent folks that you’d never frequent otherwise.

Within the union, ‘you’re on the same level’. ‘There’re some who know more about certain issues, that’s normal. But you’re not in a subordinate relationship in that one of you knows and the other lectures about it.’ ‘You can, for example, have a discussion among equals with teachers in the CGT.’ Such a relationship with teachers was previously unimaginable for Philippe, due to his school experience as well as his perception that non-union teachers are condescending: ‘People who are in teaching with us in the CGT, they listen to what you might have to say about knowledge on a current issue. They aren’t there as teachers to explain things to you.’ A shared activist ethic and social dispositions acquired from union experience allow Philippe and teacher-activists of the CGT to put relations of cultural domination on hold. The three union officers who were originally workers in the shop shared the same political values, allowing them to develop a network of friends in town that was more diverse than their initial social world. One notable example is a female teacher they saw frequently, an elected municipal official close to the PCF. Activist involvement thus favours social encounters with members of the middle classes such as teachers, technicians, engineers or social workers. In interactions with such social categories with greater educational capital, manual workers still on the job are likely to be caught up in relations of domination, while those who became union officials can develop lasting friendly relations with them.

The social logics splitting the local social scene are also expressed in how I am perceived in the field. As a researcher, I was a minor victim of the previously mentioned working-class distrust of intellectuals, but it was mostly workers without union responsibilities or not unionised that displayed their hegemonic masculinity for my benefit, expressing little interest in spending time with me. They treated me rather sardonically and some refused my requests for interviews. On the other hand, contact was much easier with those in leadership positions, who were more accustomed to interacting with intellectuals. We moreover share the same political and moral codes due to my long experience in labourer milieus close to the PCF such as this one, ever since my dissertation research in the late 1990s.

As part of their union responsibilities, former shop workers-turned-union officials meet and talk with SNCF engineers and managers. Taking on union responsibilities gives them status: Philippe thinks that ‘In many people’s minds, as a union official you’ve automatically got a master’s degree.’ Union activism strengthens self-esteem and prompts a shift, albeit slight, in the social space. It can lead many to learn new skills and counter some rationales that marginalise workers. Reversing their subordinate position at work, workers-turned-unionists can hold prominent positions in the union and beyond. Bolstered by the resources and self-confidence acquired through activism, they may also assert themselves in spaces such as politics or community groups, where workers are usually rare. Union experience thus allows railway workers to hold prominent positions in their communities. Some get involved in parent–teacher associations, for example, where they are in contact with teachers. In such instances they may occupy positions of responsibility and not merely be consigned to the subaltern role of volunteers charged with manual tasks like preparing for the school fair, as is often the case for members of the working classes.

Seen from this perspective, the otherwise improbable accession of some workers to the position of mayor or deputy mayor in area municipalities is more understandable. Elected municipal officials from worker backgrounds often come out of unionism, which has provided them with the desire (the ‘taste’) and skills to engage in local politics. Bernard, who left the shop to become a full-time union officer, is interesting in this regard. He was born in 1955 to a father who was also a low-skilled metalworker, and only attended school long enough to earn a CEP (Certificate of Primary School Studies), the lowest diploma in France marking completion of primary schooling. His wife is a house cleaner and former textile worker. Thanks to his involvement in the CGT, however, he became an activist and ran for municipal office. His bid was successful in 2001, and since then he has been one of the town’s five deputy mayors, a position rarely held by workers. Indeed, Bernard is the only municipal official from a labouring background, the others coming from the middle and upper classes. This position brings him into frequent contact with the mayor, who has upper-class credentials: a Master’s degree in Political Science and a degree from the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium) for the training of high-level European bureaucrats. This is extraordinary company for a worker to keep, and it was made possible by the activism that changed Bernard’s lifestyle, which now straddles the cultural worlds of the working and middle classes.

Learning how to stand up to the boss and approach management gives worker-unionists the resources for building a balanced relationship with prominent local figures like school principals and doctors. At the same time, union socialisation introduces a distance into relations with workers still labouring in production. This appears in interviews when activists indicate that they would have remained ‘simple workers’, ‘simple railway men’, or even ‘good ole boys’ (‘beaufs’) if they hadn’t joined the union. They contrast the ‘open-mindedness’ and ‘knowledge’ they acquire from their union work to the numbed minds of those who stay home and mindlessly watch television. Such words indicate that union involvement comes with a symbolic working-class respectability. Incorporated cultural capital acquired outside of school can create distinctions within the working classes, by shaping values and tastes that make them feel morally superior. Beverley Skeggs (1997) found the same in her study of English women from working-class backgrounds who used their care work and conceptions of sexuality to distance themselves from the poorest and their stigmas. Like the union members studied here, they developed a specific cultural capital that earned respect for their dignity despite the symbolic depreciation of the working classes. As a source of practical skills and self-esteem, incorporated cultural capital functions as a means of distinction in the working classes, especially for differentiating oneself from those below (Serres, 2012).

Union involvement does favour a degree of social promotion for workers using their newly acquired social practices and connections in the local public space, as the presence of some unionised workers in municipal government and community groups attests, but they are less present in political parties. Until the 1990s, CGT leaders in this town (like many French towns) were usually also members of the PCF and active in local political life. But since then, many union members (including Philippe and Bernard) have left the PCF, while younger generations (such as Nicolas) do not extend their union involvement into political party membership. The past 30 years have seen a gradual split between union and political settings in France, with worker-activists relegated to the union sphere. This is explained by the weakening of unionism as well as developments in left-leaning political parties (communist and socialist) that have taken less care to promote activists from working-class backgrounds. As a result, the PCF has lost influence in the labouring milieu and is now primarily led by the cultural middle classes (Mischi, 2014). Unlike unions, the PCF no longer offers programmes training members in activism-based cultural capital (internal party schools are no more). Teachers and white-collar local government employees henceforth hold the main responsibilities, using their scholastic and professional resources more than skills acquired through activism. The split between the PCF and new generations of the working classes can be observed in the banlieue, especially such urban peripheral zones around Paris, where communist networks are increasingly distant from the local population, which is largely composed of working-class people with North African immigrant backgrounds (Masclet, 2003). Although the historical strength of the PCF was rooted in its connection with the union movement, they gradually drifted apart, and political opportunities arising from union and grassroots involvement have been obstructed.

This state of affairs illustrates the breakdown of a particular sequence of politicisation that saturated daily life in the 1960s and 1970s and sustained the interdependence of private life, occupation and public engagement. The theme of class struggle common to a range of left-leaning engagements (union, community group, electoral) faded, including in the workplace. This study nonetheless demonstrates that politicisation does exist in the workplace, now focused on defending dignity at work and moral values (such as respect for women and fighting racism), particularly in younger generations. This accords with the conclusions of Sian Moore (2011), who describes the simultaneous decline in explicit references to class struggle among English unionists and the enduring centrality of work experience in shaping their class-consciousness, which is also fuelled by trials of discrimination related to gender, sexual orientation and national origin.

Conclusion

Despite political sociology’s dearth of analyses using cultural capital, it is relevant for analysing engagement. In such analyses, however, it is important to not equate cultural capital with educational capital and to devote particular attention to cultural capital’s incorporated forms. Activism procures skills that represent non-certified cultural capital, acquired outside of school, meaning that activism-based cultural capital can operate as a substitute for educational capital for individuals with only modest educational qualifications. Despite the fact that working-class people are spending longer in school than before, activist experiences may still provide them with a ‘cultural capital of substitution’ (Gaxie, 1978) that has an impact on both their trajectories and worldview. From this perspective, the pursuits of union members-turned-officers can be understood as ‘activist work’, offering possibilities for social ascension that could set them apart from the bulk of the working classes. In this my research concurs with Frédérique Matonti and Frédéric Poupeau’s (2004) conception of ‘activist capital’. They offer this notion as an invitation to analyse not only the logics behind acquiring activist resources, but also the possibility of converting them in other social spaces. We have seen that skills acquired in the union may be mobilised in the non-profit sector or municipal government, and indeed activist capital is particularly useful for exploring the transferability of resources into other kinds of social space. But reasonable use of the notion calls for further theoretical consideration of the existence of a specific capital distinctive to the field of activism whose contours could be defined. The approach taken in this article is more modest, seeing activist apprenticeships as processes of incorporation contributing to the shaping of individuals’ cultural capital over their lifetimes. This approach invites us to direct analysis towards the composite character of cultural capital and to identify how much of it is derived from schooling. It also avoids multiplying forms of capital and lessening the importance of the foundational forms of capital defined by Bourdieu.

Studying the content and effects of activism-based cultural capital permits analysis of contemporary transformations in worker activism beyond simply noting declining membership numbers. The withering of activism and new pathways in public service have led to the emergence of new profiles of workers drawn to unions by an accumulation of workplace pressures resulting from new management strategies. Many only invest in activism after several years of work, the time it takes for the illusions of meritocratic individual promotions promoted by supervisors to fade. Their profiles and narratives contrast with those of earlier generations, who were already familiar with union issues prior to starting work and who described their involvement as a foregone conclusion rooted in a family legacy.

The weak contribution from educational or familial forms of cultural capital acquired prior to activism is striking in this rural labouring milieu. Unionists’ intellectual apprenticeship seems to come more from involvement in collective movements at work than from school-based socialisation. Of course, this kind of career existed earlier in the workers’ movement, but it was rare until recently, when low membership and difficulties training union leaders made them common. The model honouring members that join the union early and expressing a shared ideological kinship with the PCF carries increasingly less weight. PCF’s ties with the union movement and the working classes have become overstretched.

Not only has unionism been weakened by the destabilisation of work and employment, union ties with the political field have been reduced. In this context, Daniel Gaxie’s hypothesis on the indirect politicisation of the working classes by substitute forms of cultural capital derived from unionism deserves to be re-examined and expanded. The scale of politicisation has been reduced for union members: their field of action tends to keep to specialised themes specific to their professional world. One sign of this is what activists choose to read, which is decreasingly general and increasingly focused on issues relevant to their line of work. If they get involved in the public arena, it is mostly on the local scale, in local municipal life, and less often in political parties or at the national level. In this regard, politicisation in companies and their surrounding areas can coexist with rising logics of inequality in how individuals relate to the national political field.