‘He is My Refuge’: Upward Mobility,Class Dislocation and Romantic Relationships

Abstract

A voluminous sociological literature sheds light on the multiple consequences of upward mobility on individuals’ psychological, emotional and relational lives. Much less studied, however, are the relationships, particularly romantic ones, potentially easing the class dislocation often tied to upward mobility. In this article, I draw upon 60 life-history interviews to examine how long-range upwardly mobile individuals relate and develop romantic ties in contemporary Chile. My findings reveal how romantic partners act as key bonds helping to mitigate the dislocating effects accompanying upward mobility, offering a ‘refuge’ and providing multifaceted support to the upwardly mobile, both in their adjustment to their class destination and when negotiating demands and ties with their class origins. These findings call for a new research agenda in the study of class, social mobility and intimacy.

Keywords

Chile class dislocation inequality romantic relationships upward mobility

Introduction

The experience of shifting from one social class to another raises the question of how upwardly mobile individuals maintain ties with their class origin and adjust to their class destination. Although upward mobility typically brings important benefits (e.g. greater income and occupational prestige), upwardly mobile people have to negotiate relationships with, and loyalties towards, their class background, while simultaneously adjusting to their class destination, in practices and ideas far removed from their spheres of primary socialisation. A considerable sociological scholarship has shed light on the multiple consequences of upward mobility on individuals’ psychological, emotional and relational lives – a phenomenon often creating a class, or habitus, dislocation (e.g. Friedman, 2014, 2016; Lehmann, 2013, 2014; Wilson et al., 2021). Importantly, this class dislocation can be associated with a disorientating and painful mobility experience, particularly in its long-ranging forms (Friedman, 2016).

Amid this extensive sociological research, however, we still know surprisingly little about the relationships contributing to reinforcing or reducing the class dislocation usually tied to upward mobility. Tackling this is significant as research also demonstrates that the experience of upward mobility varies considerably depending on gender (Ingram, 2011; Lawler, 1999; Wilson et al., 2021), ethnicity (Rollock et al., 2014; Sepúlveda, 2023; Shahrokni, 2015) and specific geographical displacements (Miles and Leguina, 2018). To a larger or lesser extent, these factors can deepen or mitigate the class dislocation that often goes hand in hand with upward mobility.

Romantic relationships are consistently absent within this broad range of factors shaping the experience of upward mobility. This is a striking omission. Although socially and culturally structured, romantic ties are vital for individuals as they can offer a ‘refuge’ (Costa, 2007), an anchor for their sense of self-worth (Illouz, 2012) and a ‘secure base’ from which to engage with others (Castellano et al., 2014[2010]). Thus, romantic relationships are likely to have a substantial role in mitigating (or intensifying) the dislocating effects often tied to upward mobility. In this regard, the scarce research on upward mobility and romantic ties points out that upwardly mobile couples sharing an analogous class trajectory function as a ‘partnership of class migrants’, and tend to develop more significant and lasting romantic partners than cross-class unions (Pasquali, 2014).

In this article, I draw upon 60 interviews to examine how people experiencing long-range upward mobility face their class dislocation in their romantic relationships. Going beyond research focusing on the Global North, I disentangle how this unfolds in an emblematic nation in the Global South: Chilean society. Internationally known for implementing pioneering neo-liberal reforms since the mid-1970s (Fourcade and Babb, 2003), Chile features an experience of upward mobility marked by a durable tension between embodying meritocratic success and facing a lingering class dislocation (Fercovic, 2021). Chile is also characterised by acute inequality (United Nation Development Programme [UNDP], 2017), low institutional protections from the market (Marcel and Rivera, 2008) and a hard-wearing reliance on couple life (Sharim et al., 2011) amid very modest levels of associativity and interpersonal trust (Valenzuela et al., 2020).

Against this specific backdrop, my findings reveal how romantic relationships, notably those forged among couples sharing a similar class origin and upward trajectory, serve as key ties helping to mitigate the dislocating effects often tied to upward mobility. My analysis shows that romantic partners act not only as a ‘refuge’ but they also provide multifaceted support to the upwardly mobile, both in the adjustment of the upwardly mobile to their class destination and when negotiating demands and ties with their class origins. These findings, I argue, call for a new and wider research agenda in the study of class, social mobility and intimacy – one including, but not limited to, romantic ties.

Upward Mobility, Class Dislocation and Romantic Relationships

There is strong evidence that, in societies with durable class cultures, moving through social space significantly disrupts attachments to class identity. Largely focused on the Global North, a voluminous body of research shows how the upwardly mobile experience a class dislocation, which involves the disruption of social, familial and intimate relationships in the process of adjusting to their class destination and distancing from their class origins (e.g. Bourdieu, 2004[2002]; Curl et al., 2018; Friedman, 2016). Although this issue remains intensely debated (e.g. Chan, 2018), this scholarship portrays the experience of upward mobility as implying a durable ‘emotional toll’ (Horvat and Antonio, 1999: 319; Reay, 2005), ‘hidden injuries’ (Sennett and Cobb, 1972), a ‘cleft self’ (Lahire, 1998: 49), a disturbance of ‘the ontological coherency of the self’ (Friedman, 2014: 355) or a ‘habitus dislocation’ (Lehmann, 2013: 95).¹

Importantly, though, upward mobility does not create a consistently homogenous experience. Beyond or intersecting with class, a vast research documents how the mobility experience is also contingent on gender (Ingram, 2011; Lawler, 1999; Wilson et al., 2021), ethnicity (Rollock et al., 2014; Sepúlveda, 2023; Shahrokni, 2015) and specific geographical displacements (Miles and Leguina, 2018). In a similar vein, Friedman (2016) argues that higher inequality increases the distances the upwardly mobile have to travel in the social space, and more extended range mobility – unlike mid- or short-range trajectories – increases the likelihood of class dislocation and a painful mobility experience.

Conceptually, strongly influenced by Pierre Bourdieu, the dislocating effects of upward mobility have been mainly theorised as a mismatch between the dispositions (habitus) the upwardly mobile bring with them and the institutional arenas (fields) they are crossing and embedded in, such as higher education or professional workplaces. Bourdieu (2004[2002]: 127, 140) famously argued that when upward mobility engenders a stable but contradictory set of dispositions (i.e. ways of seeing, being and acting), it can crystallise into a ‘cleft habitus’ involving a lingering and aching dispositional cleavage. For Bourdieu, a cleft habitus tends to be largely negative because it results in a less congruent or effective adjustment to fields (see also Bourdieu, 1989, 1993, 1997). Yet, as more recent research has emphasised, field crossing and habitus change do not always produce an unvaryingly negative mobility experience. Underscoring multiple types of trajectories among the upwardly mobile, Ingram and Abrahams (2018) distinguish four possibilities of habitus reconfiguration beyond a cleft habitus: an abandoned, destabilised, reconfirmed and reconciliated habitus. Similarly, Friedman (2016; Friedman and Laurison, 2019) argues that the mobility experience differs with speed (of movement), range (distance covered), direction (upward or downward) and the specific cultural cues of each occupational field.

These conceptual refinements have contributed to a richer understanding of the mobility experience and the multiple factors – class, gender, ethnicity – underpinning it. However, they still remain largely unapplied to exploring the role of romantic relationships in shaping the class dislocation often tied to upward mobility. For a number of reasons, this is a conspicuous oversight. Indeed, as closely linked to marriage, romantic relationships have a direct impact on social stratification and the structural reproduction of society (Goode, 1959; Kalmijn, 1994, 2007). Still, as ‘individualisation’ tempered the weight of class as a marker of social identities (Savage, 2000), norms around love and marriage have gradually leaned towards greater personal choice (Coontz, 2006; Illouz, 2012), the pluralisation of coupledom (Roseneil, 2006) and wider cultures of intimacy beyond traditional family arrangements (Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004). In such conditions, although still deeply influenced by ‘the tenacity of the couple-norm’ (Roseneil et al., 2020), romantic relationships can provide to individuals a ‘secure base’ from which to engage with others (Castellano et al., 2014[2010]), an anchor for their sense of self-worth (Illouz, 2012) or a ‘refuge’ (Costa, 2007).²

However, many sociologists, particularly feminist scholars, have criticised a view of romantic relationships as a ‘refuge’, highlighting instead how the experience of love remains sturdily patterned by gender (Hochschild, 2003, 2012[1983]; Safilios-Rothschild, 1977). Langford (1999), for instance, contends that while romantic love has become the predominant basis of domestic and social life, this may not be as ‘liberating and beneficial’ as commonly assumed, especially for women. Moreover, Duncombe and Marsden (1993) show a telling emotional asymmetry within romantic relationships – one leaving women often feeling like they are not loved, valued or understood in their intimacy. Finally, Safilios-Rothschild (1977) argues that gendered power imbalances within romantic relationships entail that women cannot find emotional reciprocity in love. For all these reasons, the idea of love as a ‘refuge’ is far from self-evident or attainable within romantic relationships.

Still, whether love is considered a ‘refuge’ or not, romantic ties are likely to have a highly significant role in influencing how the upwardly mobile face the dislocating effects commonly associated with upward mobility, particularly in its long-ranging forms. In which specific ways can this be the case? Sociological literature points to three possible directions. First, as the upwardly mobile bridge class boundaries, they are more exposed than non-mobile individuals to develop cross-class unions, including heterophilous marriages. Although there still is a persistent connection between class and marriage (e.g. Andrade and Thomsen, 2019; Henz and Mills, 2018), marriages between university-educated spouses with different class origins have become relatively more common across national contexts (Blossfeld, 2009; Blossfeld and Timm, 2003). In principle, against a backdrop in which heterophilous marriages by class origin are no longer rare, the upwardly mobile can have a greater range of options to develop romantic relationships that can potentially help them to mitigate their class dislocation.

Second, however, cross-class unions remain relatively uncommon because people relate to love and marriage by largely drawing upon a shared culture closely tied to a shared class position (Bourdieu, 1976; Johnson and Lawler, 2005). Individuals who marry a partner who shares their class destination but not their class origin are more likely to confront greater cultural dissimilarities. The upwardly mobile do not fully embrace the cultural repertoires of those born and raised into the middle or upper classes, but retain instead divergent dispositions regarding work attitudes and responsibilities, the use of financial resources and the education of children (Dews and Law, 1995; Streib, 2015). These cultural dissimilarities among cross-class couples can be divisive, even insurmountable (Naudet, 2018[2012]: 230–231). But they can also act as a strength for cross-class marriages, particularly when they are regarded as ‘cultural complements’ (Streib, 2015: 42).

Third, and most significantly, romantic relationships depend not just on people’s current class position but also on their class trajectory (Toft and Jarness, 2020). Individuals thus relate to love and marriage as part of a continuous process through which class conditions shape individuals over time: the more similar their class trajectories, the more similar their preferences, lifestyles, or ways of being (Bourdieu, 1984[1979]: 114–124). These similar class trajectories and cultural dispositions can be critical in choosing and developing romantic partners among the upwardly mobile. In his ethnography of upward mobility in France, Pasquali (2014) suggests that upwardly mobile couples sharing an analogous class trajectory can be seen as a ‘partnership of class migrants’, who tend to develop stronger romantic ties than cross-class unions. For these specific types of couples, Pasquali (2014: 274) argues, ‘Intimate relationships offer the chance to imagine, think, and experience social displacement together’, especially in relation to the manifold challenges associated with the class dislocation tied to upward mobility.

In this article, I consider how this explanation – suggested for the French case but, to the best of my knowledge, never probed elsewhere – tallies with people experiencing long-range upward trajectories: those coming from working-class backgrounds and reaching high-status professions. In doing so, I reveal how romantic relationships, particularly those developed in couples sharing a similar class origin and trajectory, act as key bonds helping to mitigate the dislocating effects often tied to upward mobility, both with their ties of origin and destination.

The Chilean Case

This article widens the geographical scope of existing research on social mobility by studying the experience of upward mobility in Chilean society through the lens of romantic relationships. Since the mid-1970s, Chile became internationally known for the pioneering implementation of neo-liberal reforms under Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990), which involved a series of radical pro-market and privatisation policies in education, health and welfare provision (Fourcade and Babb, 2003). In subsequent decades, these and other policies upheld sustained economic growth (Ffrench-Davis, 2017), a rapid transition to a non-manual occupational structure (Atria, 2004) and a swift massification of higher education (Salazar and Leihy, 2017). These large-scale transformations gave rise to a new entrepreneurial class at the top, an extended and more variegated upper-middle class, a large but highly precarious lower-middle class and a contracted and enfeebled working class (Ruiz and Boccardo, 2015). Within this reconfigured class system, in Chile, as in most societies in the Global North, obtaining a university degree has become an indispensable resource for upward mobility (Wormald and Torche, 2004).

Yet, like most Latin American nations, Chile’s pattern of class mobility is typified by high fluidity between the middle and lower classes with strong barriers to mobility into the upper occupational echelons (Torche, 2005, 2014). In such conditions, long-range upward mobility into the upper-middle and upper class remains rare, and is fundamentally restricted to the few attending elite universities (Villalobos et al., 2020). Even with prestigious academic credentials at their disposal, the upwardly mobile face significant economic disadvantages in top-earning professions (Zimmerman, 2019) and a sturdy ‘matrimonial reproduction’ (Huneeus, 2013: 80) making highly unlikely cross-class marriages at the top. The experience of the long-range upwardly mobile is thus marked by durable tensions between embodying meritocratic success and confronting a lingering class dislocation (Fercovic, 2021).

Perhaps most importantly, unlike most nations in the Global North, this challenging experience of long-range upward mobility occurs in a society characterised by a pivotal reliance on family ties (Valenzuela et al., 2006) and couple intimacy (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2012; Sharim et al., 2011). As in much of Latin America, this central place of kin and couple ties for individuals, both in economic and emotional terms, is reinforced by highly precarious welfare arrangements (Marcel and Rivera, 2008) and scanty levels of associativity and interpersonal trust (Valenzuela et al., 2020).

Methods

This study is part of a larger research project on the experience of long-range upward mobility in contemporary Chile. This portion of the study is based on 60 interviews I conducted between 2017 and 2018 with long-range upwardly mobile individuals. Initially, I did not set out to analyse the choice and nature of their romantic relationships. This issue first emerged when conducting pilot interviews. After noticing the relevance with which respondents referred to their romantic partners, I developed a consistent focus on this topic as part of my research design.

The long-range upward trajectory of participants – from working-class origins into upper-middle-class destinations – was defined by both education and occupation. The class of origin was defined by parents holding a (1) primary or secondary (but not a university) degree, and who (2) work(ed) in a blue-collar, or low-status white-collar jobs, or in the informal economy. The class of destination was defined by men and women having a (1) university degree from Universidad de Chile (UCH hereafter) and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC hereafter) – Chile’s most selective universities (Brunner, 2012) – in law, medicine, engineering, and (2) at least five years of work experience. The resulting sample was equally distributed in terms of their university background, high-status professions and gender. The bulk of participants was in their 30s and 40s. Three-quarters were married, only two were single and all, except one, presented themselves as heterosexual – a trend roughly consistent with wider demographics on sexual orientation in Chile (CEEL, 2016).

I used a specific type of semi-structured interview: life-history interviews (Bertaux and Thompson, 1997). This interviewing technique allowed me to address interviewees’ own perceptions and meaning-making processes about their long-range upward mobility over their life-course: from their family past and early childhood to their current professional careers and intimate lives. For the purposes of this article, the main focus was on how interviewees make sense of their romantic relationships as part of their mobility journeys. This encompassed specific questions about their romantic ties: the number of romantic relationships they have had over time, the context in which they met their romantic partners, their romantic partners’ class backgrounds and trajectories, type of partnership (e.g. marriage, co-habitation, non-residential) and their sense of personal affinity and/or social activities performed with them.

Interviews took place at a time and location of participants’ choosing, lasted on average two-and-a-half hours, were conducted in Spanish, tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Significantly, when conducting interviews, I openly shared my identity – a male researcher currently occupying an upper-middle-class location in Chile but with a long-range upward trajectory story in my family past – with interviewees. In practice, this primed common ground to build a rapport with participants, a key aspect for generating rich qualitative data (Fontana and Frey, 2005). Still, it is noteworthy that female interviewees were much more inclined to offer richer accounts of their romantic lives than their male counterparts, who tended to adopt distancing attitudes (e.g. silence, use of the third person, exaggerated rationality). This gender imbalance is reflected in the findings and followed up in the conclusion. To protect the anonymity of respondents, all names used are pseudonyms.

Analytically, I used both open and selective coding to identify emerging themes (see Charmaz, 2001). Codes include, for instance, ‘class dislocation and choice of romantic partner’, ‘romantic partner’s background and class trajectory’, ‘sense of compatibility’, and were repeatedly checked for their fit with the data. This analytical procedure led me to classify respondents’ romantic partners in three groups: (1) those sharing with respondents a similar class origin and trajectory, including long-range but also mid- or short-range upward trajectories;³ (2) those originally coming or having at present an upper-middle- or upper-class background; and (3) those having a foreign national background with various class origins and trajectories (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Intimate relationship by origin of romantic/marital partner.

	Prevalence (%)
Partner sharing similar upward trajectory	83.3
Partner of foreign origin	11.7
Partner from upper-middle-class or upper-class background	5

Note: percentages calculated on the basis of the type of romantic/marital tie reported by each interviewee. Over their life-course, most interviewees developed more than one romantic relationship. Here are included only the romantic ties that interviewees considered the most significant or stable in their lives.

Findings

Romantic Relationships as a ‘Refuge’ from Class Dislocation

At the end of an interview spanning for more than three hours, Andrea, a doctor trained at PUC and now in her late 50s, remarked on the lingering class dislocation tied to long-range upward mobility in Chile:

When I left my home there was a giant desarraigo (uprooting). That hit me very hard on my departure from my home, when I came to [secondary] school in Santiago. Because your family shapes you with a social, cultural background with which you do not match (she uses this word in English) afterwards . . . And you remain desinsertada (dis-inserted). I think that people coming from the provinces experience that. And it lingers, in my case, up to this day. I say to myself: ‘no funco’ (I cannot work this out), I am a social huacha (orphan). And that is painful.

Andrea thus gives voice to a very prevalent finding across interviewees. Like herself, the long-range upwardly mobile typically struggle to find a durable sense of belonging between their ties of origin and those of destination: no longer identified with her family of origin – rooted in a small provincial town in Chile’s central coast – nor fully integrated to her current class location – amid successful upper-middle-class professionals in the capital – Andrea’s sense of belonging is durably, and painfully, at stake. This account echoes the persistent moral dilemmas, aching self-doubts and deep sense of ambivalence tied to the class dislocation very often accompanying long-range upward trajectories (Bourdieu, 2004[2002]; Friedman, 2014, 2016; Naudet, 2018[2012]).

Significantly, though, Andrea’s class dislocation has been partially tempered by the shelter she has found in her romantic partner, a bus-driver whom she met when completing her post-graduate education abroad. When I asked her about her main support in her life, Andrea immediately referred to her husband in the following terms: ‘I feel completely well with [him].’ This figure was her most meaningful romantic bond after scattered and largely disappointing romantic relationships at a university dominated by peers from privileged backgrounds – among whom Andrea faced repeated ‘barriers’ in her attempts ‘to share my intimacy’.

More importantly, and in sharp contrast with her wider sense of being a ‘social huacha’, Andrea further remarks: ‘I feel at home with him . . . [He] is my refuge.’ Against the backdrop of her class dislocation, the feeling of being ‘at home’ and finding a ‘refuge’ in her romantic partner carries for Andrea a significant sense of comfort, warmth and safety: ‘With [him] I feel safe, protected, at ease.’ As I further inquired about the reasons for this, she replied: ‘You know . . . with [him] I can be myself . . . I do not feel judged by him as I have felt judged in Chile.’ Crucially, it is that absence of judgement, Andrea suggests, which has been vital for the shelter she has been able to find in her romantic relationship – a consistent answer provided by interviewees who established a romantic or marital relationship with a foreigner (see Table 1).

However, finding this sense of being ‘at home’ or ‘refuge’ with her spouse has not been easy for Andrea. Upon their return to Chile, after their marriage, she became particularly aware of the ‘social difficulties’ and the ‘classism’ she and her husband faced. ‘Even though he is Italian’, she says, ‘people look down on him because he is not a professional, because he did not go to university . . . I mean most people do that . . . but also my colleagues.’ This insistence on being ‘a professional’ testifies to the central place education has become as the most determinant mechanism structuring Chilean society in recent decades (Wormald and Torche, 2004). Since the 1990s onwards, as the opportunities to access higher education substantially increased, the pressures to obtain academic credentials swiftly intensified – a process crystallising in the common belief that a person ‘without a degree is worth nothing in Chile’ (Mac-Clure and Barozet, 2016: 345). Notably, Andrea again remarks: ‘I really do not feel judged by him . . . [He] has given me another framework to develop relationships’, one highly dissimilar from the one she has experienced with the ‘Chilean upper classes’, both at university and in the workplace.

Like Andrea, most interviewees have found a ‘refuge’ from their class dislocation with romantic partners. Yet, unlike her, most of them have done so with romantic or marital partners sharing with them a similar class background and upward trajectory (see Table 1). Sofía, an engineer trained at UCH and now in her mid-30s, is a typical example of them. Sofia developed her romantic life with a partner sharing with him a comparable social origin and upward trajectory. Brought up in a poor neighbourhood in Santiago, her spouse made his way to higher education via a selective and prestigious state school. At the time of our interview, Sofia and her spouse had a relationship covering more than 15 years. ‘We share the same story’, she straightforwardly underscores. ‘A common social background. A common way of approaching life. And we have been through very similar challenges throughout our lives . . . That is a key thing for our lives and our relationship’, Sofia further points out, while her husband approvingly nods sitting beside her.

Much like Andrea, the significance of Sofía’s romantic life needs to take into account the wider implications of her long-range upward trajectory. As part of her social ascent, Sofia regrets the growing distance between her current life and that of her family of origin. Given her current job as top manager in a large private company and her choice of residence in a middle-class area relatively far from her childhood neighbourhood, Sofia remarks that most of her relatives now consider her ‘la cuica’ (the posh one) or ‘pelolais’ (a beauty stereotype tied to thin, tall upper-class women with long and smooth hair). ‘Most of the time this is a joke [Sofía treated as pelolais]’, she explains. ‘But they also mean it’, thus implying the boundary her relatives draw between them and her, setting them apart. After a pause, Sofía concisely but emphatically adds: ‘it hurts’. Echoing Andrea’s experience, Sofía has found in her marital relationship a central ‘place’ where to find a shelter from the dislocating effects tied to her long-range upward trajectory: ‘It is a place where I feel understood.’

Sofía’s experience was highly common. Rosa, a lawyer trained at PUC and also in her mid-30s, chose a romantic partner with a very similar social background and upward trajectory, whom she met after finishing university. Raised under acute material destitution, Rosa’s husband made his way upward through self-discipline and hard work but also the crucial help offered by a mentor who suggested law as a career at a critical juncture in his life. Finding extensive echoes in her own life, Rosa acknowledges:

For me, his story is super important for how we get along, our ways of being, the things we value and like, and how we want to form our family . . . and also how we relate to our families [of origin] . . . And he is so important for me because we have been through very similar experiences in our lives . . . And we understand and support each other from that basis [. . .] He is my safe space in my life.

Rosa’s account is highly meaningful for two reasons. First, for how she, much like Sofía, understands her romantic relationship as being chiefly shaped by comparable life experiences (‘we have been through very similar experiences in our lives’) and the accompanying cultural dispositions (‘ways of being’, ‘the things we value and like’). Importantly, this strong sense of compatibility Rosa finds in her marriage is anchored in a common class origin and trajectory (see Pasquali, 2014). Second, and very much related, Rosa explicitly describes her husband as being ‘my safe space in my life’ – a widespread view among female Chileans (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2012). Mirroring Andrea’s understanding of her romantic partner as her ‘refuge’, Rosa too foregrounds the shelter she has found in her romantic relationship – one characteristically offering a ‘safe space’ to counter the dislocating impacts of her long-range upward trajectory.

The prominence romantic relationships have for the long-range upwardly mobile can also be highlighted by their absence. The case of Marta, a lawyer from UCH and now in her late-50s, provides a telling counter-example. Throughout her life, Marta developed only one meaningful romantic relationship spanning for a couple of years with a Spanish lawyer while working abroad in Central America. However, upon Marta’s return to Chile, her romantic relationship ended. Since then, almost two decades ago, she has remained single. Reflecting on her experience of upward mobility as a whole, Marta admits: ‘All this has been a difficult journey, an experience with a lot of doubts and uncertainty . . . This country is very classist, and people are set a part from each other . . . Many times I have felt alone.’ With only ‘one or two friends’ with whom to find understanding or support – a highly prevalent trend among Chileans (Valenzuela et al., 2020) – Marta further acknowledged:

I would like to have a [romantic] partner . . . someone to share my life with, to share my experience, my difficulties . . . But it has not been easy for me, for a long time . . . Not with people like myself [someone with a similar class origin and upward trajectory] and clearly not with un cuico (a male posh individual) . . . which is almost impossible to happen in this country.

Marta’s account brings together the ‘difficulties’ (e.g. ‘uncertainty’, prevailing classism in Chile, loneliness) she has experienced as part of her social ascent and her desire ‘to have a [romantic] partner’. In this respect, Marta, one of the two out of the 60 interviewees who declared to be single, testifies to the strong hold the ‘couple-norm’ (Roseneil et al., 2020) retains in Chile, indeed cherished as ‘an idealised space of affective refuge’ (Sharim et al., 2011: 356). Thus, while Marta’s feelings about her singleness point to the powerful cultural pressures to be in a couple as a privileged form of intimacy (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2012), Andrea’s, Sofía’s and Rosa’s experiences attest to the important sense of ‘refuge’ they have been able to find in their romantic relationships. For the latter, this has contributed, at least partially, to mitigating the dislocating effects of their long-range upward trajectories and to affirming a greater sense of ‘ontological security’ (Friedman, 2014: 356).

Romantic Partners and the Adjustment to the Class of Destination

For the long-range upwardly mobile, the adjustment to the class of destination is primarily structured by the ties they manage to forge at elite universities and subsequently in the workplace. Doris, a doctor trained at PUC and now in her late-30s, met her husband at university – another student coming from a similarly disadvantaged background. Like the vast majority of interviewees, during her time at PUC, Doris had a ‘very tough time’ adjusting to an elite academic programme mostly attended by students from privileged backgrounds (Villalobos et al., 2022). Doris acknowledged she managed to make a few friendships with students from a similar social background. But when I asked who was her main support during her university years, Doris unambiguously replied:

At university, the most important person was my husband [who was then her boyfriend] . . . He was a tremendous support.

Interviewer: In what way?

Doris: Well . . . at some points tu quieres tirar la toalla (you want to quit). University was really difficult and challenging in so many levels . . . academically, socially, just emotionally draining for people like myself and where I came from . . . So, we always studied together . . . We help each other to face all the pressures . . . the lack of time, the choices we were facing about our [medical] training that you need to face at an early stage but we did not know much about, or just being tired . . . And the fact of feeling loved, loved . . . valued by him . . . that was very, very important for me.

Doris makes explicit how first-generation students struggle with their relative lack of cultural and social capital at elite universities (Reay et al., 2009), and also how this is accompanied by the intense stress they experience (Stephens et al., 2012). Importantly, in this specific context, Doris emphasises the role played by her romantic partner – not from her family of origin, friends or other forms of assistance – as a source of love, support and stability.

Doris’s firm reliance on her romantic partner when adjusting to elite universities is far from unique. Laura, a doctor trained at UCH and now in her mid-60s, offers another example. Early in our interview, Laura claimed that her spouse, who comes like herself from the same impoverished neighbourhood in the north of Santiago, has been ‘the main motor and support in my life’. After I inquired further on her claim, Laura explains:

[He] was really key in almost every aspect . . . First to prepare myself to get into university [. . .] Then at university, he was studying another career [a business degree] but he continued to help me all the way . . . when I was struggling, when I was feeling nervous or unprepared . . . he was there.

Interviewer: So, he supported you with exams, but also more broadly . . .

Laura: Emotionally, emotionally very much . . . We have been living all this together . . . I . . . we had a lot of uncertainty . . . with the pressure to perform well, not to disappoint your parents who had big hopes, to keep up and not give in . . . To face all that, [he] has been key.

Much like Doris, Laura recognises her husband’s ‘key’ role in facing the heavy emotional labour required to successfully adjust and navigate elite universities for first-generation students. This attests to the ‘emotional imprint’ (Friedman, 2016) associated with long-range upward mobility. Again, as Laura herself underlines, the strength of this romantic bond – the only one she as forged in her life – lies in the fact that both she and her husband ‘have being living all this together’. In this regard, Laura’s experience, as the vast majority of interviewees, confirms that romantic relationships among upwardly mobile couples can act as a ‘partnership of class migrants’ (Pasquali, 2014: 273–274), helping them to face together the common challenges posed by their upward trajectories.

Beyond higher education, the support provided by romantic partners to the long-range upwardly mobile was equally relevant to navigate the labour market. Catherine, a lawyer trained at PUC and now in her late-30s, one of the very few interviewees who married a person from an upper-middle-class background (see Table 1), offers a good illustration. For a long time after her graduation, Catherine doubted her ability to find a job in a highly competitive labour market. ‘I thought I was never going to be able to find a job as a lawyer’, she admits. ‘I had a strong feeling that my background put me at a disadvantage’, she further explains. After completing her graduate education, she found a job in a small legal firm. ‘For many years I felt they were doing me a favour [for giving her a job]. So, I did not dare to ask for an increase [in her salary]’, she remarks.

Like so many upwardly mobile women, Catherine, despite holding very prestigious academic credentials, faced a stiff salary penalty – a double disadvantage tied both to her class origins and gender (Friedman and Laurison, 2019). After more than five years working in this job, Catherine came to the conclusion that her superiors were preventing her from getting access to opportunities because of her ‘lack of confidence’ in asking for a pay rise or a promotion. Even if she considered her reduced salary as an ‘unfair discrimination’ compared with the one obtained by her colleagues, her boss remained unwilling to consider her demands when she finally took the courage to raise them. Significantly, in dealing with this situation, Catherine recognises the ‘crucial role’ provided by her spouse in the following terms:

[He] has been very important for me to moderate my workload, my rhythms, these crazy things that happen to so many lawyers, perhaps especially lawyers like myself . . . I suffered a lot, for working so much and not getting what I deserved. And he saw that and he listened to me, being there for me . . . [He] played a crucial role, advising me all along the way on how to approach my work, how to deal with my colleagues, bosses, most of whom have been cuicos . . . Because he is a psychologist . . . But also because of his [upper-middle-class] background . . . He knows the rules, what to say, how to approach people with confidence . . . The kind of things I did not know how to do.

Catherine’s account is relevant for at least two reasons. First, it shows that the emotional support the upwardly mobile require extends well beyond their adjustment to elite universities but is also crucially at stake in the workplace. As Catherine’s case confirms, the emotional sustenance provided by romantic partners for adjusting to their work is ‘crucial’, particularly in high-status professions in which they are likely to restrain themselves from asking for pay rises (see Macmillan et al., 2014), or seeking promotion due to lingering apprehensions about fitting in (see Friedman and Laurison, 2019).

Second, and closely related, Catherine’s upper-middle-class husband’s guidance shows how romantic partners from privileged backgrounds can help the upwardly mobile to master the complex cultural cues and dispositions (‘how to approach my work’, managing the ‘rules’, ‘approach people with confidence’) that are essential to success in high-status professional workplaces. In this regard, although cross-class romantic unions of this kind are particularly rare in my sample, they indicate the possibility of habitus change among the upwardly mobile induced by romantic partners.

Romantic Partners and the Support with Ties of Origin

Romantic partners are not only relevant for the adjustment of the long-range upwardly mobile to their class of destination, but also for how they deal with their ties of origin. Ana’s experience, an engineer trained at UCH and now in her late-30s, is telling in this regard. During our interview, Ana strongly underlined the multifaceted support she receives from her long-standing partner, now fiance – someone who shares with her a similar upward trajectory. Referring to the worries Ana is experiencing with her ageing parents, she says:

[He] is fundamental, fundamental. Because he supports me. I mean he has been my support in everything really. He understands my dad and his health issues and has been very gentle with that. He helps me and guides me with my family, with my work issues. I can cry with him. He has been strong for me . . . I think that if he was not there, I would feel super alone.

Ana is financially responsible for her retired parents. Like most Chileans, Ana’s parents – a small entrepreneur with secondary education and a housewife with primary education – worked most of their lives under precarious labour and welfare arrangements (Marcel and Rivera, 2008). In such conditions, unlike most societies in the Global North, kin ties tend to be overburdened with functions, demands and expectations (Valenzuela et al., 2006). For people like Ana, this is part of the ‘mandate’ (Castillo, 2016) closely connecting upward mobility and kin obligations in Chile – one expressed in the moral responsibility to remain connected, and supportive of, their families of origin. It is against this specific backdrop that Ana recognises the broad support she receives from her fiance: constant emotional assistance, guidance on how to support her family of origin and help to counter her sense of loneliness – a loneliness interviewees like Marta also stressed – often accompanying long-range upward mobility.

However, providing constant support and managing ties with their families of origin takes a lot of work. Like Ana, Laura, the doctor from UCH we encountered before, acknowledges her firm disposition to support her family of origin but also the ‘distance’ she now feels regarding her family of origin:

Many times I feel the distance from my family [of origin], but many times I also feel sobrepasada (overwhelmed) . . . [He] is really good to make things easier with my family [of origin], when things go wrong or there are misunderstandings or troubles . . . [He] has a very good sense of humour, so many times he makes heavy stuff to feel lighter. [He] knows them well and knows the kind of pressures that they put on me, and on us. And as we both come from the same neighbourhood, and he knows my relatives from a long time . . . He really understands me and supports me.

As part of her mobility journey, Laura openly admits ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘troubles’ with her family of origin – a mismatch rooted in the uneasy relationship between her changing cultural dispositions and the dispositions that remain among her ties of origin (see Curl et al., 2018). But to face and negotiate these ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘troubles’ with her ties of origin, Laura recognises the relevant support offered by her upwardly mobile husband. In all this, Laura’s account directly resonates with Pasquali’s (2014: 273–274) description of romantic relationships among upwardly mobile couples as a ‘partnership of class migrants’ – one that is significant not only to adjust to their class destination but also to offer ongoing support to, and negotiate ties with, their class origins.

Ana’s and Laura’s accounts are highly prevalent across interviewees. Carlos, a doctor trained at UCH in his early-60s, one of the few male interviewees who talked about his romantic relationships at length, also relies on his spouse to deal with the demands coming from his family of origin. In his own words:

[She] and I are committed to supporting our parents. But, of course, all that is not without problems. But since we come from a quite similar background and families, we understand and support each other well, and very much, when dealing with those problems . . . I really think that that is one of our key strengths of our relationship.

Interviewer: I see. But in what way?

Carlos: Well . . . in the way we relate to the demands of our families [of origin], when they need money from us, or when there is a medical need with our parents. In all that, we work like a team [. . .] We understand each other and do our best to support our families [of origin] in whatever way they might need from us . . . There is a common understanding of what we are facing in our lives. And I think that helps a lot, a lot.

Like Ana and Laura, Carlos too conveys a robust sense of responsibility to provide multifaceted support (financial and medical assistance) to his family of origin – a disposition shared with his wife because of their ‘quite similar social background’ and ‘a common understanding of what we are facing in our lives’. Interestingly, though, while Ana and Laura emphasise the personal support from their husbands, Carlos highlights the joint support he and his wife can provide to their parents (‘we work like a team’). This may well be indicative of wider gender dynamics at play in Chile, and Latin America more broadly, as expressed in the stronger personal dependence of women on their romantic partners, both in economic and emotional terms, and particularly for those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds (Rihm et al., 2017; Tobón et al., 2012).

Conclusion

Widening the geographical scope of existing research on social mobility beyond the Global North, this article examined how people experiencing long-range upward mobility face their class dislocation with their romantic partners in contemporary Chile. Against a backdrop characterised by a central reliance on couple life amid precarious welfare arrangements and very low levels of interpersonal trust, my findings reveal how romantic relationships, notably those forged among romantic partners sharing a similar class origin and upward trajectory, act as key intimate ties helping to mitigate the class dislocation tied to long-range upward trajectories. Most significantly, based on the common class trajectory and cultural dispositions shared by this specific type of romantic unions (see Toft and Jarness, 2020), these findings show how romantic partners offer to their upwardly mobile couples both a ‘refuge’ – contributing to sustain a greater sense of ‘ontological security’ (Friedman, 2014) – and multifaceted support throughout their mobility journeys.

This work contributes to the scarce sociological literature connecting class, upward mobility and intimacy in a number of relevant ways. First, these findings confirm Pasquali’s (2014) proposition that upwardly mobile couples in France function as a ‘partnership of class migrants’, facing together the many challenges and dislocating impacts of upward mobility. But my findings also refine this general statement as they show how the role played by romantic partners is highly significant for both the adjustment to their class destination (when navigating elite universities and in the workplace) and negotiating demands and ties with their class origins (especially kin ties) in the Chilean context. As such, they bring into sharper focus the specific settings and ties in which romantic partners provide this support to their upwardly mobile couples.

Second, these findings draw greater attention to the gender dynamics at work in these processes. Compared with their male counterparts, female interviewees are much more inclined to talk about their romantic relationships, and emotional lives more broadly, as part of their experience of upward mobility. Importantly, this may be a strong indication of their greater personal dependence on their romantic or marital partners, both in economic (see Bessière and Gollac, 2023[2020]) and emotional (see Hochschild, 2003, 2012[1983]) terms. While a substantial body of research demonstrates the relevant role of gender in shaping the mobility experience (e.g. Ingram, 2011; Lawler, 1999; Wilson et al., 2021), the specific gender imbalance reported in this article remains strikingly under-studied (however, for an exception, see Duncombe and Marsden, 1993). Future research should consistently probe this finding, alongside further scrutinising whether romantic relationships are experienced (or not) as a ‘refuge’ (see Costa, 2007; Langford, 1999; Safilios-Rothschild, 1977), both for men and women.

Third, this work charts new ground to explore the role that romantic partners may have in facilitating the adjustment of the upwardly mobile to elite universities and professional workplaces – an aspect notoriously under-researched. In this regard, although cross-class romantic unions are particularly rare in my sample, they show how romantic partners from privileged backgrounds can help their upwardly mobile partners to master the complex cultural cues that are crucial to success in high-status professions. At a more conceptual level, future research might fruitfully unpack how the upwardly mobile learn from their romantic ties a new set of dispositions, or habitus, more congruent or attuned to ‘the rules of the game’ of the occupational fields they are crossing or embedded in.

Although emerging from one emblematic nation in the Global South, these findings call for a new and broad research agenda in the study of class, social mobility and intimacy. This should acknowledge that intimate ties include romantic partners and friendships, and that these relationships can both assuage or strengthen inequality along class, gender and ethnic lines (see Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004; Roseneil et al., 2020). Conceptually, this agenda could draw greater attention to how romantic or amicable ties influence the mobility experience, and how this may vary with speed, range, direction of movement and the specificities of each occupational field (Friedman, 2016; Friedman and Laurison, 2019). Methodologically, this research agenda would gain by the implementation of mixed methods, either by a combination of survey and interviewing, or the latter plus ethnography. Geographically, future research should pay much greater attention to the study of societies in the Global South, as this can significantly contribute to challenge or expand existing knowledge on the mobility experience beyond the Global North.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sam Friedman for originally encouraging me to develop the idea that later crystalised into this article. I also want to express my gratitude to Bárbara Berger, Benjamin Brundu-Gonzalez, Francisco Durán, Gabriel Otero, Miro Born, the Sociology editorial team and three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: Becas-Chile 72170346 and Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social COES ANID/FONDAP/15130009.

ORCID iD

Malik Fercovic

Notes

Malik Fercovic is an independent researcher working on comparative research on social mobility into elite professions in Chile and Colombia. Malik is also a member of the research theme ‘Opportunity, Mobility, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality’ at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. Malik’s wider academic interests are in interdisciplinary approaches to social mobility and inequality and cultural sociology.

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