Of lads and ear’oles: School,work,and the microsociology of social reproduction

Working-class contexts and working-class culture

If there is a moment in which the lads are complicit in the reproduction of class, then presumably there are also moments in which another future, a future characterized by class mobility, is possible. Willis himself acknowledges this counterfactual when he maintains that the combination of counter-school resistance, working-class context, and working-class culture explains the lads’ relegation to labour. Meanwhile, middle-class rebels and working-class educational conformists tend to experience different life trajectories:

… what non-conformists in middle class schools – no matter what their individual origins – are struggling for is some kind of conversion of their institutional opposition into a more resonant working class form. Insofar as they succeed … so does their future ‘suffer.’ Insofar as they fail, or insofar as, for instance, conformist working class boys in a working class school are insulated from working class culture, they become free from its processes, so they are likely to succeed. (Willis, 1981: 58–9)

As discussed in the above quote, Willis notes that the ear’oles’ conformist attitudes at school are alone insufficient to insure they do not suffer a working-class future. To be successful, ear’oles must also abandon their working-class mode of expression. Just a few short years before Willis published Learning to Labour, Bernstein (1971, 1973) began disseminating his extensive research on social class and language use. Bernstein’s observation that working-class youth are more likely to employ a restricted or basic language code in comparison with a more elaborated code in greater use among the middle class was generally assumed to point to a working-class deficit. Some subsequent work takes a more balanced look at class cultural differences in the logic of communication, the relationship between the individual and the group, and the rhythm of social life without assuming working-class deficiency (e.g. Jensen, 2012). Willis does not explicitly define a working-class mode of expression, yet it is safe to assume that he is referring to the behaviours of the lads as described in Learning to Labour. These are behaviours that Willis interprets as indicative of opposition to authority, as expressing a general lack of seriousness (e.g. drinking, smoking, and having a ‘laff’), and encompassing the endorsement of sexism and racism.

If all of these things are elements of the working-class mode of expression, very little remains to be counted as opposition to school. And, indeed, in distinguishing the working-class lads and the working-class ear’oles in terms of their orientation to school, Willis notes that it boils down to one fundamental distinction – believing in and identifying with school.

… the school conformists … have a visibly different orientation. It is not so much that they support teachers, rather they support the idea of teachers. Having invested something of their own identities in the formal aims of education and support of the school institution. (Wilis, 1981: 13)

Living between school and work

When I was first exposed to Learning to Labour early in graduate school, I was intrigued by the distinction between the ear’oles and the lads. For me, the point of engagement was a simple one: What about the ear’oles? How can we theorize the decoupling of class background and ‘classed’ behaviour in this group? Why don’t the ear’oles also see their early work experiences as reaffirming their working class futures? These questions are both academic and personal, because I am an ear’ole.

I was the first person in my family to attend college. I grew up in a very small and geographically isolated American coastal community that consisted primarily of working-class people – fishermen, builders, labourers – and a smattering of professionals. It was a fairly tight-knit community in the winter that swelled over the summer months as tourists and summer residents descended to enjoy the beaches and ocean breezes. During those summer months, there was no shortage of demand for labour, and locals tended to work multiple jobs to supplement their limited income during the remainder of the year.

I was no exception to this work norm. Beginning at age 12 (before it was legal to do so), I typically worked two or more jobs each summer, working as many as 60 hours per week without overtime pay or social benefits. I typically carried one job through the winter, working about eight hours a week on the weekends. Like the lads, money was of paramount importance since I provided all my own spending money and purchased my own clothes. However, there was also a normative pressure to work – the implicit idea that working and working hard is just what people do. In addition, my motivation to work during the summer also reflected the fact that, with school out of session, I had very little else to do besides work.

In the evenings after work, many young people tended to congregate in the village. They would eventually move on to doing something else that I would hear about the next day at work. Whatever it was often involved drinking and engaging in alcohol-fuelled hilarity (e.g. ‘surfing’ on the top of moving cars, ‘tagging’ abandoned buildings), constructing a bonfire on the beach or in woods, and hooking up. When I heard about their exploits I would wonder why it was I was never invited. But then, inevitably, I would recognize that I never hung around long enough to tag along. Instead I went home to the stack of novels I planned to consume that summer. ‘What is wrong with me’, I would wonder, ‘that I am not a part of this?’ It was a question that almost anyone in the community could probably answer. I was a ‘goody-goody’ and a ‘brain’. Kids like me didn’t spend their evenings carousing. I don’t recall it ever being stated explicitly but the underlying sentiment was that I was a ‘good’ kid who was going off to college and getting out of there, and I needed to/would behave accordingly – not like other kids who, in many ways, were already living the lives they would be living as adults. In truth, the story unfolded to form. Of the seven of us, two had children before the end of high school but did go on to graduate from vocational high school programs, one died of complications from an undiagnosed medical condition, another took his own life when he was in his 20s, two others worked in solid working class jobs (retail and truck driver). I was the only one of the group to go straight to university. To my knowledge, I was also the only one to complete a four-year academic program, and the only one to pursue post-graduate education.

Rereading Learning to Labour and reflecting on my own experience for this symposium, I find myself returning to the questions that animated my initial engagement with the text. (1) What are the everyday pragmatics of class reproduction? (2) Why do some working-class kids break with their class of origin when it comes to school achievement? (3) Does working during high school typically act as a substitute for attachment to schooling, thereby serving as the linchpin in the rejection of schooling?

Forty years after Learning to Labour, it is safe to say that much subsequent social scientific research on adolescent workers corroborates Willis’s view that work operates as an alternative to schooling for some students (Baert et al., 2018). Yet much of this work departs from Willis’s cultural argument. Instead, this work often assumes a rational actor orientation to decision-making, positing that adolescents are making goal-directed decisions when they choose to assume employment and determine how much they will work. Given this perspective, the general thinking is that work and school are in conflict. In light of this conflict, young people who work more hours are more present than future oriented (e.g. Warren, 2002; and for a critique of the bourgeois gaze around time orientation see Lund [this issue]).

The typical focus on time orientation fails to take into account a key element of the transition to adulthood that was quite crucial for Willis – the construction and enactment of self, in particular considerations of identity and belonging. Although the conditions of work are objectively similar for most young people, there are important differences in the meaning of work as it arises in the interplay between identity and social location. Among working-class youth in particular, the interaction between identity and social location as it relates to the meaning of work may result in the work–school conflict Willis identifies.

Returning to my own experience, although I can recall knowing I was ‘brainy’, I don’t recall a moment when I chose to be an ear’ole. Even if I had made that choice, I suspect the decision would not have considered materialist considerations of the nature of labour exploitation. I would argue that the same is true for the lads. In navigating the worlds of work, school, and peers, I thought about what I liked to do with my time, who my friends were (and were not), who I felt I was in relationship to my community, and, sometimes, some vague sense of possible futures. I would like to bring in a microsociological lens that sheds light on these motivating concerns and their impact on the process of social reproduction as it is unfolds for working-class youth – lads and ear’oles alike. This lens is the one provided by application of the theories of structural symbolic interactionism (SSI) and its corollary, identity theory.

Identity theory

Stryker’s SSI and identity theory provide fertile ground for the consideration of the interaction between young people’s student and worker identities and how they influence commitment or a lack of commitment to school. I apply Stryker’s theory to consideration of interaction between class background and worker-student identity conflicts in particular. The theory suggests that the worker’s identity is likely to be more salient and to become more salient to working-class youth than it is to a middle- or upper-class youth.

SSI applies the work of George Herbert Mead (1934) in assuming that individual and social meaning is created and constantly recreated in interaction (Stryker, 1980; Charon, 1989). In their interaction with others, individuals use symbols to create a shared definition of the situation, which subsequently organizes behaviour within the interaction. The definition of the situation sets the stage for future interactions. As a correlate of SSI, Stryker developed identity theory – the view that human behaviour is ostensibly individual, but that behaviour is profoundly shaped by social location and cultural meanings.

Behavior is dependent upon a named or classified world. The names or class terms attached to aspects of the environment, both physical and social, carry meaning in the form of shared behavioral expectations that grow out of social interaction. (Stryker, 1980: 53)

The SSI perspective views most behaviour as unproblematic and habitual because it is organized by the roles of people who are operating within an uncontested definition of the situation. Thus, the contemporary definition of the situation and roles may ‘be completely a matter of custom – or the product of earlier (and “successful”) behaviors of a person’ (Stryker, 1980: 56). However, given that people have many role identities, there are bound to be instances when two or more identities could be used to organize behaviour and define the situation. Identity theory is concerned with exactly these instances – situations where different roles cue alternative, and possibly contradictory, behaviours. Identity theory outlines the factors that predict the selection of one role identity over another in such situations. Selection of one role identity over another is determined by the salience of that role to the person. All role identities are positioned within a salience hierarchy, with position in that hierarchy determined by the individual’s commitment to the identity. The extent to which successful enactment of a role identity is crucial to the maintenance of one’s social ties determines the level of commitment to the identity. There are two components of commitment: interactional commitment determined by the number of relationships dependent upon behaviour consistent with a particular role identity, and affective commitment, meaning the extent to which the individual is emotionally affected by the relationships and activities tied to a role identity (Serpe, 1987). Research using identity theory has enjoyed some success in establishing the link between commitment and role-consistent behaviour (e.g. Hoelter, 1983; Stryker and Serpe, 1994; Serpe, 1987).

Identity theory does more than predict which of an individual’s role identities will be enacted in a particular situation. The theory also makes claims about the extent to which identity salience is affected by consistency of the role expectations held by self and others; the influence of salience on an individual’s perceptions of the situational applicability of a particular role and the types of situations individuals seek out; and the strength of the relationship between self-esteem and successful role performances and that between social norms and behaviour. A final contribution identity theory makes to a more microsociological addendum to Learning to Labour is Stryker’s argument that class is a role identity.

Among the class terms learned in interaction are the symbols that are used to designate ‘positions,’ which are relatively stable, morphological components of social structure. These positions carry the shared behavioral expectations that are conveniently labeled ‘roles.’ (Stryker, 1980: 54)

Theorizing the student-worker paradox

SSI’s key insight is that Willis can be said to be observing role-identity conflicts with social consequences. Willis documents the ways in which working-class youth struggle with confirming their attachment to a peer group that mirrors their working-class context or, instead, acting on attachment to the identity of student. Accordingly, we may surmise that among the lads the worker identity is very salient and consistent with class-based behavioural expectations. For this reason, there is tremendous overlap between the worker-role identity and the class-based social identity. However, granting that student-role identities may also be important to some working-class youth, we may surmise that, among those for whom that identity is very salient and inconsistent with class-based work expectations, there will be conflict between the student-role identity and the class identity. In this application of the theory, it is the ear’oles experiencing work-school conflict and struggling against the grain, not the lads.

Markel and Frone (1998) argue that role conflict may take a variety of forms and is central to the observed negative relationship between adolescent employment and school achievement. They argue that three factors are likely to result in work-school conflict: job hours, which result in role-conflict because the time requirements of work and school roles cannot both be satisfied; job dissatisfaction, which results in role-conflict because the emotional strain of unsatisfactory employment makes one less able or willing to meet the demands of other roles; and workload, which may make it difficult to meet the demands of other roles because one is fatigued and preoccupied with work responsibility. Although this work is useful in that it points to the importance of the work-school nexus in determining work impacts, it makes two critical blunders. First, what the research is treating as a characteristic of one’s work, work-school conflict, is not a characteristic of work at all but is a measure of the adolescent’s perception of the interplay between their work and student roles. Given the fact that the vast majority of adolescents are employed in similar work and attend similar schools, where do the differences in the incidence of work-school conflict come from? Second, research typically imputes the cause of work-school conflict to the simultaneous occupancy of both roles, when, indeed, differences in perception that are formed prior to employment may be at the heart of the observed relationships.

Although work is objectively similar for most young people, there are important class differences in the meaning of work and the incidence of work-school conflict. There are also class differences in the experience of identity conflict; in worker identity salience; and in affective commitment to the worker identity. As a result, there are class differences in the relationship between worker and student identities. For example, Lauder (1993) observes that there are apparent class differences among young people in New Zealand in the extent to which college is seen as the natural next step after high school. The middle- and upper-class youth in Lauder’s study view going to college a ‘no-brainer’, something that is not even questioned, even if one is unsure what one will do with his or her education. Working-class youth, on the other hand, experience conflict between student and worker identities. They see the decision to pursue further education as requiring the abandonment of the adult breadwinner role identity – an identity that is assigned to those who successfully complete high school, find jobs, and become independent. Although the preceding example does not relate directly to the issue of adolescent worker and student identities prior to high school graduation, it is still an illustrative account of class differences in the incidence of identity conflict. Everything else being equal, class differences in the experience of role-identity conflicts will lead to differences in identity salience even if there were no such differences prior to the conflict.

There are class differences in affective commitment to the worker identity. Schneider and Stevenson (1999) believe adolescents view employment during high school as an ‘encapsulated experience’, an activity that may supply money and opportunities to be social but is unrelated to their present roles as student and future occupational and educational identities. I contend that working-class adolescents are less likely to view their jobs in such a light. Even if they plan to attend college after high school, aspire to careers atypical of their class of origin, and their parents support them in this endeavour, the worker identity is more likely to tap into their cultural understanding of work and tie them to other workers through their bond as breadwinner. If my assertion is correct, then for working-class youth, typical teenage employment entails more affective commitment than experienced by non-working-class youth as a result of the meaning of the activity of work.

According to SSI, the greater consistency in the personal and work-based role expectations experienced by working-class adolescents will result in higher identity salience of the worker role among working-class adolescents (Stryker, 1980). The lads’ attachment to work is not the cause of their lack of attachment to school, but rather both their school and work behaviours reflect economic and work orientations and values formed prior to entry into the labour force. Children develop a fairly comprehensive pre-employment understanding of the economic structure of society and of workplace hierarchies and power relations. The knowledge that children have is gleaned largely from parents and thus resembles parental attitudes and beliefs (Kelloway and Harvey, 1999). Significantly, although all children develop an understanding of the role of work and basic work status hierarchies, Dickinson and Emler (1992) find that there are class differences in the perception of the possibility of work-related economic attainments. Furthermore, family of origin exerts significant influence on children’s work attitudes and beliefs about work as parental work attitudes and satisfaction influence children’s work beliefs and attitudes (Barling et al., 1991, 1998). Given that working-class parents are more likely than middle- or upper-class parents to be in jobs that are similar in task structure and workplace relations to typical adolescent work, we would expect to observe consistency in the performance expectations held by others in the work setting and the worker role as it is understood by working-class youth. We do not expect to observe such consistency for adolescents with other class backgrounds.

Rethinking conformity and nonconformity in Learning to Labour

What do we learn by using SSI to think through the differences between the ear’oles and the lads? What are the everyday pragmatics of class reproduction revealed in that comparison? Combining Willis’s ethnographic insights with structural symbolic interactionism yields important insight into the microsociology of social reproduction and the intergenerational transmission of social status.

If one is willing to grant that class, in addition to representing a location in social structure, may be a social identity, we may surmise that, among those for whom the worker identity is very salient and consistent with class-based work expectations, there is tremendous overlap between the worker-role identity and the class-based social identity. As a result, the decision to embrace the student identity at the expense of the worker identity can be understood as a separation from one’s class, a move toward class exit (Jensen, 2012; Lauder, 1993). Alternatively, for those with close ties between class of origin and the worker identity, enactment of the worker identity may be interpreted as a confirmation of the value of one’s class membership.

While Willis casts the ear’oles as the ‘conformists’ in Learning to Labour, application of SSI to Willis’s ethnography suggests that it might be more accurate to view these roles as flipped. It is the lads who conform with the behavioural norms and values of their class cultural milieu. If there is a choice for these working-class lads, it is a choice between belonging and loneliness. Tajfel and Turner (1984) also discuss the relationship between lower-class identities and individual social mobility. They contend that those who seek mobility will distance themselves emotionally from those in their class. In other words, although it may sound self-serving, in Willis’s account it is the ear’oles who stand to lose just as they are poised to reap the economic benefits of their attachment to school. As they move into different cultural worlds, these ‘class straddlers’ often struggle with feelings of inadequacy and guilt in a system that is not primed to recognize and embrace class heterogeneity (Carter, 2006; Collins, 1991; Dews and Law, 1995; Jensen, 2012; Lubrano, 2004). Meanwhile, the decision to affirm one’s class identity through successful performance of the worker role offers potential benefits in the form of consistency. Willis accounts for this in Learning to Labour. The lads’ identification with and positive evaluation of their membership in a working-class group allows them to reject the idea of school as a route to desirable social mobility. They likewise reject the idea that ‘clean’ work is desirable. Attachment to the world of the working class is a resource as they choose to reject the alternative student identity they encounter at school. The lads may be engaged in typical adolescent employment, but working affirms their class identity and places them in a new role in respect to their class of origin. That is to say, they are gaining new ties to their class through entering, or preparing to enter, the realm of adult breadwinners.