How Do Friends Manage Income Differences? The Role of Lay Concepts of Justice in the Erosion of Income-Bridging Friendships and Social Segregation

Introduction

Friendship ‘homophily’, referring to the phenomenon that people tend to form friendships with those of a similar social background and values, is widely documented by the sociological literature on friendship (Jerrome, 1984; Lazarsfeld and Merton, 1954; McPherson et al., 2001; Pahl, 2000; Spencer and Pahl, 2006; Wright, 1997). Homophily is caused most directly by the fact that similarity of social background means, in practice, that people are more likely to meet: they go to the same school, work in a similar position, live in the same neighbourhood, and are able to afford similar hobbies. Moreover, class position shapes people’s subjective views and their habitus (Bourdieu, 1984); therefore, people of similar objective positions are more likely to feel subjective affinity towards each other. Also, different classes hold different conceptions of the kind of interactions ‘friendship’ involves, which further hinders status-bridging friendships (Allan, 1979, 1989). When friends’ class positions diverge (one of them gets richer or poorer, high school friends follow different higher education trajectories, etc.), friendships tend to dissolve (Burt, 2000). This is because the divergence results in scarcer opportunities to meet, the disappearance of the common ‘foci of activity’ (Feld and Carter, 1998) in which the friendship was embedded; status differences make the non-hierarchical and reciprocal ethos of friendships difficult to maintain (Christensen and Levinson, 2003); and the new social settings that people enter through their divergent class trajectories shift their habitus into divergent directions, which friends experience as growing incompatibility of tastes and personality. These processes are important because they provide insights into how the division between social classes (social segregation) develops partly through dynamics of personal relationships.

There are exceptions, however, when people maintain friendships across class divides. These exceptions are noteworthy because they negate the tendency of social segregation. How are these cross-class friendships maintained? This article looks at one aspect of this question, the maintenance of income-bridging friendships, in which friends are of an unequal income and/or wealth status, in the context of post-socialist Hungary.

The question is interesting in its own right from a sociology of friendship angle because most studies look at homophily and the dissolution – rather than the maintenance – of ‘status-bridging’ friendships (Wuthnow, 2002: 670). Yet here I would like to push the analysis further, beyond documenting processes through which people maintain their income-bridging friendships. Contributing to recent scholarship looking at how lay sentiments of justice and understandings of inequality shape the experience of class (Hughes, 2007; Lam, 2004; Sayer, 2005a, 2005b, 2011), I wish to explore how different conceptions of justice are mobilized in practice in the context of these friendships and what their effects are for these relationships. Sayer’s (2005a, 2005b, 2011) seminal work highlights that class matters to people not simply because of the instrumental (such as financial) benefits of particular class positions, but because class distinctions are enmeshed with moral distinctions about the relative worth of people and competing definitions of a good life. The experience of class difference therefore involves moral relations of respect and disrespect. People’s relationships to others of a different class, according to Sayer, are necessarily marked by an ambivalence caused by the fact that ‘class lacks justification, but people of different classes are likely to feel obliged to justify their differences’ (Sayer, 2005b: 4), often in moral terms. In characterizing different ways of dealing with other classes, he distinguishes a set of moral and immoral sentiments, proposing these as analytical-philosophical categories, rather than as empirical ones. Drawing on Adam Smith (cited in Sayer, 2005b), he uses the term ‘moral sentiments’ to those evaluative judgements, manifested in particular emotional responses, that have their basis ‘in our vulnerability and our physical, psychological and emotional dependence on others’ (2005b: 162), that is, which relate to questions of respect and disrespect. He discusses sympathy, benevolence, compassion, envy, a sense of justice (or fairness), mutual indifference, shame and humiliation as ‘moral’ sentiments informing relations with people of other classes as well as the ‘immoral’ sentiments of class contempt and ‘othering’. Hughes (2007), in turn, is concerned with the relationship between these lay sentiments and abstract principles of distributive justice, and with the question of why particular principles are silenced while others can be spoken in everyday contexts. Focusing on envy, she suggests that whether the discontent over inequality is framed as (legitimate) rage or as (immoral) envy depends largely on the discourses made available by particular classed and gendered social locations.

It is these concerns that this article takes up by asking: how social inequalities are managed in the context of income-bridging friendships, which lay theories of justice different management techniques mobilize, and what their consequences are for the deepening (or bridging) of the divide between classes. Status-bridging friendships are a particularly fruitful terrain for such an analysis because through managing the interactions with significantly poorer (or richer) friends, people encounter and need to handle inequalities in the context of their most intimate relationships. Importantly, these practical management techniques provide a unique site not only for understanding what the everyday discourses of inequality are, but also what these discourses do: how the practices implied by them lead to (or prevent) the erosion of these friendships at a micro level, and to social segregation at a macro scale. The key point of the article is precisely to show how particular, historically situated repertoires of lay understandings of inequality generate practices that (inadvertently) lead to the deepening of segregation between social groups.

The article uses data from a project that looked at changing consumption norms in Hungary, carried out between July 2005 and May 2006 in Budapest, using interviews and observations. The project focused on how changing ideas of a good life and justice are reflected in everyday consumption norms and how they play out in ordinary practices and relationships. As part of the project I asked participants to tell me about their relationships with friends who are, or became, richer or poorer than they are as well as their views on inequality. The project did not include objective measures on the income of these friends, but having ‘poorer’ and ‘richer’ friends was based on participants’ own assessment. The project also looked at the role of family socialization in the formation of norms; therefore it used three generations of families as a sample. The sample consisted of 30 people from different generations (five of them were born before 1940 and grew up before socialism, 15 were born and grew up during socialism, and 10 were born after 1974 – hence became adult after socialism) and diverse class backgrounds (six of working class, 15 of middle class and nine of upper class status). Participants were chosen based on a quota sample of class and lifestyle, and were contacted using the snowball method, except for the poorest family, which was contacted via a homeless charity. ¹

In the first part of the article I discuss trends of homophily and status-bridging friendships in Hungary and review shifts in the discourses and ideologies of justice since the fall of socialism using existing studies. In the second part, based on the interviews, I identify two main ways of managing status-bridging friendships, which draw on egalitarian and meritocratic views of justice. I show the practical implications of these two lay conceptions of justice and suggest that albeit in different ways, they both lead to the erosion of cross-class friendships. In the concluding part, I summarize the findings and outline further research directions.

Income-Bridging Friendships, Inequality and Discourses of Justice in Hungary

How widespread are income-bridging friendships in Hungary and what are their main temporal trends since the fall of socialism? The main trend is that heterophilous friendships have always been scarce, and got even scarcer with the introduction of the market economy. During socialism, status-bridging friendships were not more frequent in Hungary than in capitalist societies, contrary to the image of an egalitarian and open society promoted by political public discourse. The biggest social distance in terms of friendship was observed between the intellectuals and the rest of society, and between the skilled and non-skilled workers (Simkus, 1995/1996). It is important to note that these studies measured class by education and working position, omitting income (Angelusz and Tardos, 1998; Simkus, 1995/1996). Yet they can be taken as proxies for friendships across financial divides because during socialism occupation categories broadly corresponded to financial inequalities. Access to material goods was largely mediated directly by one’s working position (through access to the company car, flat and holidays) rather than through the market and by income (Eyal et al., 1998; Ferge, 1979; Szabó, 1991; Valuch, 2005).

After the fall of socialism, friendships became even more homophilous in terms education and occupation (Angelusz and Tardos, 1998; Utasi, 2002). These studies, too, focused only on education and working position. Kolosi and Keller (2010) report the increasing ‘crystallization’ of social structure since the fall of socialism, referring to the phenomenon that people of the same education and occupational status increasingly fall into the same income category, which allows, again, for using occupation and education as proxies for income.

What are the causes of the declining number of income-bridging friendships? The ‘crystallization’ of social structure may be one of them. Many of the income-bridging friendships are between former classmates whose class position diverged, yet who kept their old friendship alive. ‘Crystallization’ means that people of the same education are less likely to take paths leading to divergent incomes. Heterophilous friendships have also been made difficult by soaring financial inequalities (Kolosi, 2000; Szelényi, 1992), the polarization of society into a small upper class, a shrinking middle class and a widening lower class (Kolosi, 2000). Whereas in 1987 the richest 10 per cent of society was five times richer than the poorest 10 per cent (Ferge, 2002), in 2009 the difference was sevenfold and in 2012 ninefold (Tóth, 2013). The polarization of society means that income-bridging friendships need to bridge an ever-widening divide.

A further factor acting against the maintenance of income-bridging friendships is that the market economy brought increasing differentiation of consumption practices by income, resulting in the spatial segregation and visual differentiation of income groups. Socialism provided plentiful opportunities for people of diverse financial situations to meet: the prices of entry tickets to theatre, cinemas and sport facilities were kept low by subsidies and free parks and community centres were widely used. With the fall of socialism many of these opportunities disappeared when these spaces were privatized, closed down and when subsidies were cut. ² In addition, the market economy introduced stronger competition between producers of goods, leading to product differentiation. Marketing segmented the market largely based on income, and marketed goods and whole lifestyles to these income groups. This further contributed to the visible differentiation of classes as well as to the emergence of consumption-based identities, which largely (albeit not exclusively) reflect income differences – as access to consumer goods depends on income. ³

The decline of previous norms of modesty further contributed to the process. During socialism, even though inequalities existed, they remained largely hidden (Majtényi, 2009). As Szabó argues: ‘privileges, unlike in the case of historical status groups, did not manifest in external forms linked to persons, such as in clothing, manners or speech. The [political] cadres advocated equality not hierarchy’ (Szabó, 1991: 29–30). This was due to the strong emphasis of the official ideology on equality and modesty as distinguishing characteristics of the genuine socialist person (Dombos and Pellandini-Simányi, 2012). Ostensible consumption was seen as unworthy of the socialist cadre, making those engaging in it politically suspect and putting into question their very entitlement to goods (Ferge, 1979). With the arrival of the market economy this stance gradually eroded (although it did not fully disappear).

These trends together make income-bridging friendships increasingly difficult to maintain. Yet these friendships, as the analysis of the next section will show, do not only depend on these practical opportunities and obstacles, but also on discourses; in particular, on lay normative principles of justice and beliefs about the causes of inequality. It is to these repertoires and their temporal changes that I now turn.

Existing studies in the Hungarian context on the lay interpretations of the causes of inequality distinguish explanations that attribute poverty (and wealth) to external factors (such as structural injustice) and between those that attribute them to individual factors (hard work versus laziness, or luck that may befall everyone equally) (Keller, 2011; Örkény and Székelyi, 2011). A longitudinal survey carried out in 1991, 1996, 2005 and 2008 noted that in 1991 individual explanations were particularly strong and external explanations particularly weak in Hungary (the weakest in the region) (Örkény and Székelyi, 1999, 2000). Albeit individual attributions remained strong, over time this approach shifted towards uncertainty. Already in the 1991 survey, the biggest group of respondents indicated both individual and external causes of inequality (Csepeli et al., 1992), and by 2008 this ambivalence grew even further. External and individual attributions co-exist in society, and are often held by the very same respondent (Örkény and Székelyi, 2010, 2011).

The same longitudinal study also looked at the principle of justice that Hungarians find legitimate. The authors distinguish between egalitarian and meritocratic norms. The former favours equality of outcome and supports strong state intervention to even out inequalities, whereas the latter promotes free competition among individuals and finds inequalities justified as long as they reflect solely differences in hard work, intelligence or talent. Similarly to beliefs about the causes of inequality, ambivalence is the most important characteristic of Hungarian society with regard to these norms. In 1991, shortly after the fall of socialism, meritocratic norms were more popular than egalitarian ones. However, they were coupled with a moral suspicion towards the rich. Also, when asked about the desirable proportion of inequalities, people on average would have preferred a 2.5-fold reduction of inequalities as opposed to the 1.5-fold reduction urged by Western European respondents participating in the survey (Sági, 1996). The seeming contradiction between favouring meritocratic norms whilst opposing inequality is explained by the fact that after the fall of socialism Hungarians saw meritocratic norms as a ‘developed’, Western concept, which they expected to solve all problems simultaneously: to bring welfare for all and to diminish inequalities. As these expectations were increasingly disappointed by growing inequality and poverty, the popularity of meritocratic norms decreased, yet they still remained the most widely shared norms. Importantly, over time, the support for all norms of justice weakened, suggesting a growing uncertainty (Örkény and Székelyi, 1999, 2010).

Looking at the distribution of these norms suggests that they pertain less and less to particular classes. In 1991, people of primary education tended to consider the distribution of incomes anti-meritocratic, whereas highly educated respondents tended to consider them meritocratic. Over time respondents of primary education also adopted the view that income distribution is meritocratic in Hungary, and, similarly to highly educated people, developed a stronger support for meritocratic rather than egalitarian norms. Against the backdrop of growing inequalities that hit people of low education particularly hard, the Marxist reading of this trend is that the lower class adopted the dominant ideology that makes its own deprived position appear as legitimate and well-deserved. By 2008, class technically disappeared as a factor explaining norms of justice and views on inequality (Örkény and Székelyi, 2011).

How Friends Manage Financial Differences

How do friends manage differences in financial positions? Vela-McConnell (2011), in his book on heterophilous friendships, distinguishes five main management techniques: emphasizing commonalities; taking care by not mentioning differences that might be hurtful; ‘meeting half way’; explaining one’s situation to the other; and the use of humour. In my research, examples can be found to all of these techniques. Yet I chose to use a different classification criterion: the underlying lay normative sentiment of justice and theory of inequality. This is because, unlike Vela-McConnell, who discusses these strategies at an individual level, my intention here is to understand how the often contradictory norms and beliefs on inequality that characterize Hungary (discussed in the previous section), translate into everyday practices of dealing with inequalities and what the consequences of these practices are. I focus on two main practical techniques: (1) tabooing, within which I distinguish shameful hiding and conformity hiding, which draw on egalitarian versus meritocratic lay understandings of inequality, respectively; and (2) legitimizing, which reflects meritocratic ideas. In both cases I show how they are used by wealthier and by poorer friends in turn. Similarly to Vela-McConnell, I will use the terms ‘techniques’ and ‘strategies’ to denote particular discursive and practical actions, which are most often not applied consciously. The limited nature of the sample does not allow for drawing conclusions for differences along the lines of class, gender or age, hence I will limit the discussion to tracing connections between lay theories of justice and friendship management techniques.

Conclusions

Cross-class friendships, and among them, income-bridging friendships, have become more and more scarce since the introduction of the market economy in Hungary. This trend is noteworthy because the dynamics of status-bridging friendships have broader implications for processes of social segregation and the reproduction (and deepening) of social inequality. Status-bridging friendships counteract the segregation of social groups by their very nature. Moreover, having better-off friends provides valuable social capital that enhances social mobility. The dissolution of these friendships therefore contributes not only to the isolation between social groups, but also to decreasing social mobility and to the reproduction of social divisions.

Some of the reasons behind the diminishing number of income-bridging friendships in Hungary are growing income inequalities, the disappearance of the foci of activities where people of different incomes could interact, and the increasing differentiation of lifestyles and consumption practices, which are dependent largely (albeit not exclusively) on income. This article looked at a further aspect of the process, which complements these explanations: lay theories of justice and of social inequality. These inform the actual practices through which friends manage income differences and the way they discursively frame them. Lay theories of justice and inequality constitute discursive formations in the Foucauldian sense of delimiting what can be said (and thought) and done, and which, importantly, are productive: they have real consequences. This article traced these discourses, practices, and, crucially, these real consequences, by showing the different processes through which particular lay theories of justice lead to the dissolution of income-bridging friendship through the very strategies that they imply for managing income differences. This way the article furthered our understanding of the way lay theories of justice contribute to macro processes of social segregation through informing the micro-dynamics of everyday management of cross-class relationships.

The article identified three strategies of managing income-bridging friendships, and showed that it is different lay theories of justice, beliefs about the causes of inequalities, and moral sentiments of interpersonal relations that explain their differences. First, the strategy of shameful hiding implied that wealthier friends not only hid their wealth from poorer friends, but generally refrained from ostensible consumption. This strategy drew on an egalitarian sense of justice, which considers inequalities as largely illegitimate, caused by structural factors, and carried a critique of the structural conditions generating inequalities. Second, the strategy of conformity hiding meant that wealthier friends hid their wealth only when meeting poorer friends. This was motivated by compassion for these friends and by the fear of rejection, rather than by the belief that inequalities are unjust. This strategy, similarly to the third one of legitimization, was based on the belief that inequalities are legitimate because they reflect a meritocratic distribution of wealth. The strategy of legitimization translates this belief in meritocracy into the open display of inequalities within friendships. In this strategy, unlike in that of conformity hiding, which carries ambivalence towards the legitimacy of inequalities, resentment over inequalities is framed as envy, as a moral weakness to be overcome by the poorer party.

The core concern driving the analysis was to understand the productive effect of these discourses; namely, the extent to which they are successful in maintaining income-bridging friendships. My main point in this regard has been that all three strategies lead to the weakening and possibly to the dissolution of friendships not despite, but, paradoxically, through the practices that they deploy to maintain them. Strategies of hiding, which I called tabooing strategies, lead to the weakening of friendships by limiting the scope of subjects that friends can talk about and the range of activities that friends can engage in together – which, in principle, are the very basis of a friendship. The legitimization strategy, in contrast, allows for the discussion of all topics, including inequality, but in a frame that silences the injuries of inequalities and which, through its individualistic explanation of inequalities, posits the poorer friend as less deserving. This leads to the weakening of friendships applying the legitimization strategy.

The article left open the question of how an ‘ideal’ strategy, which would not lead to the weakening and dissolution of these friendships, would look like. My own view is sceptical about the existence of such an ‘ideal’ strategy. This is because when managing income-bridging friendships, people try to resolve structural contradictions at a micro, everyday level, and therefore they are only able to reach limited solutions. Even if they are aware and acknowledge structural and unjust causes of inequalities, it is impossible to resolve these injustices within the context of a friendship, which by definition is based on principles of reciprocity and equality. For example, strategies that would use ‘redistributive’ (Fraser and Honneth, 2003) solutions within the friendship (for example, richer friends systematically inviting poorer friends) to address structural injustices would contradict these principles, and therefore cannot be applied.

The article was based on research using qualitative methods on a limited sample, which was well suited to tracing connections between lay theories of justice and friendship management strategies, but did not allow for conclusions regarding the distribution of these strategies across social classes and their changes. It, however, permits the formulation of some hypotheses, which could be tested by further, quantitative research. First, I have observed the shameful hiding strategy mainly among highly educated, middle-aged participants who worked in the state (rather than the private) economy during socialism. A possible explanation is that these people, by working in state-owned companies and by studying in the socialist higher education, which included political subjects, internalized the socialist discourse according to which material consumption is a sign of being superficial, arrogant and unworthy of one’s wealth. In contrast, conformity hiding and legitimization strategies were mainly used by middle-aged participants who worked in the semi-legal private economy during socialism and by young people. This suggests that these strategies might be related to age and to social class. Yet these differences might only become apparent if we use a more nuanced concept of class, which is not based solely on education and occupation, but also incorporates differences between workplaces and educational institutions. My second observation, which could be fruitfully tested by using longitudinal quantitative methods, is a shift towards legitimization strategies from shameful hiding (conformity hiding being a middle way between them). Many participants recalled that during socialism they hid their wealth, but capitalism brought a sense of liberation from guilt, and today they can be proud to be rich. The fact that among my participants the legitimization discourse was more prevalent among the younger generation might point towards the same trend. ⁶ Finally, the research suggested that strategies relying on egalitarian ideas might be more successful at retaining friendships than meritocratic ones; a connection which could be tested by (longitudinal) quantitative methods. If this hypothesis turns out to be correct, it would mean that lay conceptions of justice, by facilitating or hindering connection across social groups, are productive of particular social realities; in particular, of social segregation and the reproduction and deepening of inequality.